The impeachment crisis: A plague on both political parties
19 December 2019
The US House of Representatives voted Wednesday night to impeach President Donald Trump. The speeches preceding the vote contained innumerable invocations of the historic significance of the move. But the history of previous impeachments only exposes the right-wing, pro-war character of the Democrats’ impeachment drive.
The first impeachment of a US president was directed against Andrew Johnson in 1868. It came in the wake of the Civil War, when Johnson, an anti-secessionist but virulently racist Democrat, succeeded to the presidency after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Congressional Republicans regarded Johnson as the ally of the former slaveholders, and impeached him for firing the secretary of war, a strong supporter of Radical Reconstruction of the South. Johnson’s acquittal in the Senate, by a single vote, was a signal of the coming turn by the Northern capitalist class away from the revolutionary-democratic struggle of the Civil War, in preparation to fight a new enemy, the American working class.
Read more at https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/19/pers-d19.html
Sarah Sanders: This impeachment sham will get Trump reelected
Tipping Point
December 19, 2019
The release of the Articles of Impeachment (AOI) in the din of Republicans howls marks a tipping point in public trust and political legitimacy. The problem is not just adversarial political opposition, but rather the bulwark stance against the underlying order that privileged decency, respect, and commitment to our social institutions. Many politicians are motivated by fear of President Trump’s wrath to oppose their next election. Seasoned diplomats and decorated veterans are pilloried and intimidated when they report under oath about White House shenanigans that run counter to established procedures and protocols involving national security and foreign relations. Even the FBI is attacked for investigating well-documented Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Read more at https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/19/tipping-point-2/
“We Have to Hold This President Accountable”: In Historic Vote, House Impeaches President Trump
December 19, 2019
President Donald Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives in a historic vote Wednesday, making him only the third president to be formally charged with high crimes and misdemeanors under the Constitution. By a vote of 230 to 197, the House passed the first article of impeachment, which accuses President Trump of abuse of power. The House also approved the second article, which charges him with obstructing Congress by refusing to cooperate with the impeachment investigation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now says she will hold the articles back from being sent to the Republican-controlled Senate for a trial until Democrats are convinced it will be fair. “If we do not hold this president accountable for his abuses of power, we essentially watch democracy die,” says our guest Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Democratic congressmember from Washington. “That’s not going to happen on our watch.”
Read more at https://www.democracynow.org/2019/12/19/donald_trump_impeachment_vote
The Democratic Leadership’s Strategy on Impeachment Is Doomed and Dangerous
It’s hard to take the charge that Trump is a threat to national security seriously when Democrats in Congress are happy to help him shovel more money at the military.
By Aaron Maté
Dec. 19, 2019
House Democrats’ vote to impeach President Donald Trump may offer immediate feelings of satisfaction, but it should not be mistaken for a path forward. Behind their lofty rhetoric, Democrats have presented the public with a weak impeachment case and doubled down on a Cold Warrior–inflected, failure-ridden political playbook.
Article I of Impeachment asserts that Trump “compromised the national security of the United States” by freezing military funding to Ukraine as it fought Russian-backed forces. Congressional Democrats and their impeachment witnesses repeatedly promoted the theme.
Read more at https://www.thenation.com/article/impeachment-democrat-pelosi-doomed/
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