We never needed a Mueller report to tell us that Donald Trump should to be impeached. Yet there are now some people in both parties who suggest that a report Americans have not yet read means that presidential accountability is off the table.
They are wrong.
So are those in both parties who propose to wait until the 2020 election to address this president's disregard for his oath of office and reckless abuses of his authority.
The time to impeach is now.
Not in 2021. Not in 2020. Now.
The Republican defenders of this presidency, like the Democratic graspers for the next presidency, want to wait. Both sides are playing politics, and both sides are wrong.
Last October the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report that concluded that the world has 12 years, at most, to achieve drastic reductions in carbon emissions to minimize catastrophe. The United States is not going to act while Donald Trump remains president.
There are other reasons to seek Trump's immediate impeachment. Even before special counsel Robert Mueller "did not exonerate" Trump on allegations that he obstructed justice, we had ample reason to insist that Congress follow the lead of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Michigan, and Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, who have called for Trump's ouster.
"We can investigate to the extent that we engage in what Dr. King called the 'paralysis of analysis.' Just investigate until it's time for another election," Green said. "My dear friends, my dear brothers and sisters, those who desire to wait may do so. I will not wait." On this point, there is bipartisan agreement; Florida Rep. David Jolly, a Republican, recently said, "the bar for impeachment has already been met."
An outspoken advocate for Trump's impeachment, billionaire activist Tom Steyer, tells The Progressive that "we're seeing, and we'll continue to see, more and more destructive behavior from this president." That means there is "a huge cost to leaving him in office _ to the safety of the country and the American people and also to the sanctity of the Constitution."
Steyer's group, Need to Impeach, has garnered more than 7.5 million signatures in support of "a movement to tell the truth and protect the American people and the Constitution."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi still urges a cautious, wait-and-see approach. That's absurd. We have watched Trump attack press freedom, give aid and comfort to racists at home, and laud dictators and outright fascists abroad.
We have seen him deny climate change, attack health care protections, forcibly separate migrant children from their parents, gut net neutrality and pack the federal bench with creep-show characters whose judicial activism denies women's rights, voting rights and labor rights.
We've seen enough. That's why, in February, 53 percent of Democrats polled indicated that they wanted congressional Democrats to make Trump's impeachment a "top priority," up from 39 percent the month before. With this in mind, Need to Impeach and other groups are organizing town hall meetings and media campaigns to get Republicans in swing districts and reluctant House Democrats to recognize their duty to the Constitution.
This isn't about generating a sense of urgency. That already exists. The point is to communicate to the American people and to the leaders in Congress that it is constitutionally and politically appropriate to make the removal of the president an immediate aim.
The time for waiting and seeing is over.
