"Is it ok for a president to solicit interference from another country in our elections?" Republicans have been running away from reporters wielding a version of this question in previous weeks (in some cases quite literally).
(This post makes the following assumption: Trump is guilty of secretly pressing Ukraine to announce an investigation into his political rival. If you want to dispute that premise, Please do it elsewhere. The purpose of this post is to debate whether or not he should be impeached for it)
Trump’s actions are not trivial. They are the opposite of that.Originally Posted by MMC
We must impeach because if we let this slide, we will have started down a path towards losing our democracy. Already we can complain about how corruption, gerrymandering and voter suppression have seeped in the system. But for now focus on the next step of our political devolvement: political prosecutions.
Before you try to argue that trump is a victim of a political prosecution himself, remember that this process is taking place within the bounds of the constitution (despite unsubstantiated claims to the contrary by partisan interests). By contrast, Trump tried to use Rudy as a back channel in order to start an investigation.
Why should trump be impeached? Because elections are sacred. Let me repeat: sacred. It’s appalling enough when an individual does something to subvert our elections. But it must be deemed unforgivable when the highest elected official in the land, trusted with the awesome powers of the presidency uses those powers to deceive us in an election. Sure, it could be argued that Trump has already been deceiving us on many topics since before he was even sworn in but this time he crossed the line. Until now he has never before leveraged personnel, political capital, and taxpayer dollars to do it in an election. He took the power we gave him and assaulted us with it, fooled us with it.
He tried to fool us into thinking that his rival organically merited an official investigation by a disinterested third party. Please don’t argue that Joe is guilty of something and therefore it’s all good. It does not matter if Joe is guilty. Don’t take my word for it. Deposition transcripts describe an emphasis on the importance of the announcement itself. Less important is an actual investigation. In fact, Ukraine president Zelensky had been scheduled to do an interview on Sept 15. The aid was released on Sept 11 so the interview was canceled. But why do Ukrainians have to come to the US to announce investigations internal to their own country??
If we are to keep our liberty and our democracy, “the price is eternal vigilance.” This is because the death of a democracy does not occur all at once, but slowly. We are the lobster in a pot of water on low heat. By the time we notice the pot is boiling we are cooked. Although democracy dies in small steps, Trump’s attempt to subvert the upcoming election would have constituted a giant one. Just because some of us like his policy that doesn’t mean that we can let it slide just this one time. That’s the trap. This is where we need to pay the price of liberty; time to be vigilant.
To keep our democracy from slipping further, we must draw the line. If we fail to hold a corrupt leader accountable, there is no going back. The next corrupt leader will cite precedent and move that corruption just a tad further along the next time. Eventually this democracy will be indistinguishable from Russian democracy.
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