The dramatic vote that made Donald Trump the third US leader, and the only first-term president, to be impeached has disclosed more about Washington’s current dysfunctions than a shelf of political memoirs. By voting unanimously against the measure, the GOP – a party whose self-righteousness peaked during its 1998 Christmas-time impeachment of President Clinton – has now, perhaps irretrievably, branded itself the party of Trump. Its willingness to overlook, dismiss or deny plain facts about his misconduct, and to stand squarely behind his dismissal of democratic accountability has clarified the battle lines for the next election and exposed much that was previously subtext and innuendo.
Nowhere was the divergence of facts and consequences clearer than in Trump’s rambling address to a rally in Battle Creek, Michigan. “It doesn’t really feel like we’re being impeached,” he joked. “The country is doing better than ever before. We did nothing wrong, we did nothing wrong, and we have tremendous support in the Republican Party like we’ve never had before — nobody has ever had this kind of support.”
The Washington Post reports that after telling his supporters “I don’t know about you, but I’m having a good time,” Trump “kept talking and kept delaying his return to Washington. His face flushed and grew slick with sweat, and his voice strained. He bragged and fumed, imitated and mocked, cast himself as a victim and attacked those who dared to challenge him, including a recently widowed congresswoman … He spoke extensively off the cuff, then suddenly switched to a traditional campaign speech, then cut himself off with a tangent. He repeatedly repeated himself.”
Despite such confusion, Trump is obviously correct in one important sense. His current approval rating averages 43 percent on FiveThirtyEight’s database of polls, the highest it has been since March 2017, and his head-to-head polling against likely 2020 opponents is narrowing from the double digits lead they previously held. This discounts the fact that even Fox News’ polls have consistently shown that a majority of the country approves of his impeachment and removal. (Since October Fox polls have consistently shown that between 49% and 51% of voters favour impeachment – with between 43% and 46% opposing.) Either way, the current standoff suggests that divisions in American politics, like those in Brexit-era Britain, are irreconcilable, with both parties treating their opponents’ arguments as acts of bad faith.
As the tussle for a Senate vote plays itself out with each news cycle, the administration’s apparent indifference to the process takes Trump’s presidency even further into the realm of anti-politics which provoked the crisis. And while it remains unlikely that the GOP-controlled Senate will vote for impeachment, the successful vote in the lower house has forced Trump’s hand in several ways. It has made clear that he is a creature of habit: soliciting foreign interference in elections, always suspecting that the “deep state” is ranged against him, mocking opponents, ignoring or covering up inconvenient truths and legal embarrassments. It has also shown that he is willing to seek a second term though the most brazen appeals to hyperpartisanship and nativism.
Forty-three percent of the United States has essentially validated Trump’s pre-election boast that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Now he seems confident that this may be enough to win re-election. With the Democratic field still wide open, the chosen nominee will need to address this division more effectively than their counterparts in the British election, and to counter the universe of alternative facts and anti-democratic contempt which animates Trumpism and its enablers.
