Losing an election, even by a landslide, carries none of the stink that removal from office would, or even that impeachment without removal does. Bill Clinton was impeached but not removed, and it contributed to a widespread desire to change partisan control of the White House in 2000 and eventually to a mass cultural rethinking of Clinton’s qualities as a man and a president. George Herbert Walker Bush lost his re-election campaign to Clinton and our public institutions canonized him. News channels ran live footage of his casket traveling by train to its final resting place in College Station, TX.Well, news channels might well run live footage of Clinton's casket as well, when the day comes.
Bush lost badly, but Clinton won far less than 50% of the vote, so that contest didn't seem like the classic one-on-one drubbing we generally describe as "losing an election by a landslide." I'd compare the "stink" of Clinton's impeachment to the "stink" of Jimmy Carter's loss in 1980. Carter was humiliated. On the right, he's still regarded as a pariah. It's only a post-presidential career as a living saint that's removed that stink.
(Yes, that was a three-way race, too, but Reagan cleared 50% and won a massive number of electoral votes.)
I'd be delighted to have Donald Trump lose a 1980-size landslide. But that won't happen. No Republican will ever lose that badly. There are too many tiny states with three electoral votes each that will never vote for a Democrat.
And so I'd like to see an impeachment, because it seems like the only way to end Trump's career in a manner befitting him. But a landslide drubbing, if it could happen, would be just as good.
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