The modern Democrat Party has not accepted presidential election defeats since the election in 2000 when they tried to steal the Florida electoral votes from Bush. In the 2016 election to this day Hillary Clinton has not accepted defeat. She was very confident that she would win for a number of reasons. She began to believe the partisan and biased media polls that said she would win in a landslide. She and many in the legacy media forgot that these polls oversample Democrats in order to tamp down Republican turnout. Bur she also thought she would win since President Obama engaged his intelligence team to spy on the Trump campaign and obtain opposition research. In addition, she partnered with the Russians and Fusion GPS to create a false dossier that would be used to derail the Trump campaign. None of this worked.
The Democrats saw that their only strategy after Trump’s election was to win control of the House and impeach. With the help of George Soros’s money, they did. But here’s the thing, the Democrats who won these GOP seats were moderates. They did not run on impeachment. Nancy Pelosi instinctively knew this and she realized that impeachment was a bad idea. After the Mueller investigation failed to find any Russian collusion or obstruction of justice it seemed like the idea was over. She held it off despite huge pressure from the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez radical left wing. Pelosi stated repeatedly that the only way she would initiate impeachment was if it was bipartisan. In the end the radicals won and she caved. It was a partisan impeachment.
The Founders were very worried that impeachment could be used as a partisan weapon. They required that “high crimes and misdemeanors” were necessary to impeach a President. They referred to treason and bribery as a reason. This was based on the treason of Benedict Arnold who met with British Major John Andre to discuss handing over West Point to the British, in return for the promise of a large sum of money and a high position in the British army.
The Pelosi impeachment was flawed in that no actual crime was alleged let alone committed. In a desperate move the impeached President Trump on obstruction of Congress and abuse of power, two subjective claims that have no constitutional standing for impeachment. There was not one Republican who voted for impeachment, and two Democrats voted against it. It was the very thing our Founders wanted to avoid. Fortunately, the Senate soundly acquitted the President.
It is easy to imagine that Democrats will use impeachment every time they lose and have a majority in the House going forward. Hopefully the Republicans will continue to be the only Party that honors their oath to uphold the Constitution and will resist the urge for revenge.
