The framers, in fact, wanted a government that wasn’t too sensitive to voters — that mediated voters’ whims and prejudices through representatives presumably taking a longer, cooler view. Senators’ six-year terms reflect that. As Alison LaCroix, a University of Chicago professor who teaches constitutional law and American history, told me, “The Senate is supposed to have a little more deliberative power and maybe be a little less beholden to the people.” When senators say they should kick an issue back to the people, they’re arguably violating the spirit of the chamber.

LaCroix made another excellent point: What’s happening to Trump isn’t muscling voters out of the process but, rather, taking into account what voters recently did. “You only get an impeachment vote when people have changed their minds,” she said, referring to their opinions about a sitting president. “The votes comes from the House, and we know, from things like the midterm elections, that some amount of people have changed their minds. Another party has gained control of the House. That has to be telling us something.”

Granted, that switch in the House majority wasn’t a referendum on Trump’s interactions with Ukraine, which were the grounds for his impeachment and hadn’t yet come to light. But they were absolutely a referendum, in part, on his behavior and character. Lawmakers who are now assessing and acting on the worst of that behavior and character are hardly turning a deaf ear to voters.

If Republican leaders were really so invested in a government that didn’t diverge from voters’ desires, more of them would be questioning the Electoral College. Because of it, the country has a president, Trump, who received about three million fewer votes than his opponent. Because of it, George W. Bush won the 2000 presidential election despite being the choice of fewer Americans than Al Gore. But both Trump and Bush are Republicans. So it’s fine if the system and voter sentiment aren’t perfectly aligned.

Similarly, Republicans — Democrats, too — are fond of tarring opponents by saying that they’re too beholden to polls. The implication is that elected officials should have the courage of their own convictions and not outsource their judgment to constituents. Saying that only voters should decide Trump’s fate is precisely such outsourcing. And Election Day is essentially the biggest poll of all.

There’s an additional, profoundly important wrinkle in the case of Trump’s impeachment and trial. They stem specifically from actions he took to corrupt the next presidential election by getting a foreign government to smear a potential rival. To give those actions a pass is to green-light more of the same or worse, meaning that voters’ verdict on Trump’s behavior might be fatally tainted: not a clean expression of popular will but a product of, well, cheating. The election can’t be the remedy when the election is what’s at issue.

But McCarthy, McConnell and other Republicans are determined to spare their party the humiliation of Trump’s removal and to protect themselves from his wrath (and his base’s fury) if he isn’t saved. So they reach for whatever arguments they can. Some are more plausible than others. The assertion that an election next November forbids honor this January is a joke, and the framers would have laughed at it.

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