The Impeachment Non-Event

The impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump starts soon. Maybe. Probably.

Since there’s little chance the Republican Senate is going to give into Democratic House demands, eventually the Articles of Impeachment will be conveyed to the Senate and a trial will start.

I’ve written on this blog and elsewhere that Donald Trump deserves to be impeached and he technically deserves to be removed from office — though many of his offenses occurred before he was even elected.

My fear has been that impeachment helps Trump. 

I dislike Trump, and my moral compass tells me impeachment was deserved.

My academic, scholarly, research-based analytical compass? It tells me this is a win for Trump, no matter how much I dislike that.

As background, I study behavior, biases, and decision making. My doctorate is in rhetoric, scientific and technical communication. My passion is the rhetoric of economics, which led me to create this blog. Why is it that good economics are seldom adopted as public policy?

Well, it turns out that logic, reason, and even moral decency aren’t how we make decisions.

We (as in “humanity” in general) are a tribal animal species. We are born into or join a tribe and then defend that tribe. You can reject the theories of evolutionary psychology, but they seem to be proved again and again.

Donald Trump knows he is the symbol of the Trump GOP Tribe. He has the instinct of a showman, a good con artist. A salesman. Let’s be honest: that’s what wins in politics, too often.

Republicans in the House and Senate are afraid of their voters. The voting base, the primary voters in the GOP, follow Trump. If a Representative or Senator turns on Trump, the base voters will take this personally.

I don’t doubt some Republican officials have developed a genuine loyalty to Trump and believe their strange defenses of him. We do this with friends and family all the time: rationalize evidence against someone we want to protect.

Attacking Trump is perceived as an attack against his voters, by those voters. That’s the reality Democrats have no accepted. As a result, they haven’t used framing that appeals to GOP, moderate, and independent voters. They’ve allowed everything from election night 2016 onward to be about Donald Trump. His supporters take that personally.

This was how Clinton voters approach Bill Clinton, too. They rationalized and defended him. The excuses offered by Clinton supporters should now be looked back upon with shame.

Trump plays the victim, on behalf of his voters. Trump is no victim of anything but his own hubris. But, some of his follower are victims of biases, hatred, and stereotypes. They hear attacks on Trump and relate to those.

Trump is going to ride impeachment right into the 2020 election. It’s going to energize his base. They will be there for him.

I’m not sure the dead-end impeachment will energize Democrats and it certainly isn’t energizing independents in polling data. Trump fatigue could actually help him win again.

It doesn’t seem that Democrats have handled the impeachment well. They should have let subpoenas work through the courts. They should have been more patient, building a case to use during the election. Instead, they rushed. That rush to impeach could prove costly. Polls now suggest a majority of voters consider Democrats to be acting out of partisanship instead of national interest. Yet, most also believe Trump did something wrong. Reflect on that. Democrats had a chance to demonstrate they weren’t merely being partisan. They lost that chance.

Appealing only to their base leaves Democrats right where they were before impeachment.

Trump has to be pretty pleased, so far.