AN IMPEACHMENT DRIVE WOULD END IN FAILURE. IT MIGHT BE WORTHWHILE ANYWAY.

Last night I had an argument at Bluesky with Gabe Garbowit, a former staffer for Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota. Garbowit is a passionate advocate of impeachment. He wants every Trump critic to work for an impeachment of President Trump, and -- this is where I disagree with him -- he believes an impeachment could end in a Senate conviction.

That is ... not going to happen. An impeachment, which is the congressional equivalent of an indictment, requires a simple majority in the House, but a conviction requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate. That's 67 votes, at a time when the Democratic caucus has 47 members. In 2021, after January 6 -- an insurrectionist riot seen on national television that was intended to overturn the results of a free and fair election -- only 7 Republicans voted to convict Trump, 4 of whom aren't in the Senate anymore. Where are the 20 Republicans who'd vote to convict now? (Actually, the number would probably need to be 21, because we can expect John Fetterman to vote for acquittal.)

But after arguing with Garbowit last night, I looked back and remembered that I'd agreed with him a couple of weeks earlier when he posted this:

I think a push for impeachment could be useful not because it would be likely to remove Trump from office, but because it would frame the issue this way:

* Trump has violated the law and the Constitution, in ways that we can list (and it's a long list).

* There is a constitutional remedy for the lawlessness of Trump and his administration.

What I thought when I read the earlier Garbowit post was: Yes, there should be a well-maintained web page listing all of Trump's impeachable offenses since January 20, and it should be the basis for a House effort to impeach Trump that, ideally, would be sponsored by every Democrat in the House. I know that won't happen, but even if 75 or so House members sponsored the impeachment resolution -- and sponsored another resolution, presumably with an expanded list of impeachable offenses, every time the original resolution fails -- it might become a rallying point for anti-Trump citizens.

It's certainly an idea that ordinary Trump critics have arrived at spontaneously:

I'm not sure that this town hall attendee is actually a Republican, but here's what she says:

I've been in Spokane for 39 years from New Jersey. I've never been involved in politics before, but this is getting really scary. So the things that frighten me is the way this insane president talks about Canada as the 51st state, taking Panama by force, and buying Greenland. How does this person qualify as sane? Why is he not being impeached?

This category of Trump crazy talk isn't really impeachable, but voters believe in the idea of impeachment as a check on a lawless president -- and that should be encouraged.

If we talked about this more, there'd be "Impeach Trump" chants at every GOP town hall, at every Democratic town hall, at every anti-Trump political rally. Democratic challengers to Republicans in swing districts would generate energy by saying that they're ready to impeach Trump even if the GOP incumbent isn't. Maybe you doubt that we'll have fair elections in 2026 -- I certainly have my doubts -- but this could have value now. Eventually the Very Smart pundits who act as gatekeepers for what is acceptable in our political conversation will have to start talking about impeachment, the way they're now talking about an anti-Tesla movement that a few weeks ago seemed like the work of a few scruffy malcontents.

Of course, Trump and Republicans would publicize every failed vote in the House -- and they'll all fail as long as Republicans hold the majority. But there's something to what Rebecca Traister wrote last week:

I have been thinking a ton about the rise of the Tea Party, and how starting in 2010, this hyper-conservative faction of the right knocked off a bunch of moderate Republicans and decided to start voting—over and over again—to defund Planned Parenthood. This tactic was absolutely batshit according to most political metrics: first, Planned Parenthood was massively popular; more popular than either party or any presidential candidate. If you had polled Americans and taken your milque-toast cues from the results—as Democrats have been doing since the Clinton administration—you would never have launched an attack against one of the most beloved entities in the country and expected to gain from that. Second, and this was of course part of the strategy, these votes were destined to fail. Obama was in the White House, Democrats controlled the Senate (at least in theory). Yes, that meant that there was no chance that the constant agitating to defund Planned Parenthood was going to work and that Republicans would have to pay the electoral price. But through a Just Win Baby lens, the insistence on continuing to vote on a losing measure, over and over and over again, should have been a sign of weakness. It definitely wasn’t.

In being willing to fight and get beaten on something—even a massively unpopular thing that no one really wanted—the Tea Party was using muscles that Democrats have allowed to atrophy: right wing lawmakers were showing their base, and their opponents, an eagerness to bare their teeth, sustain injury, risk humiliating defeat, and in doing so, present themselves as warriors on behalf of some principle, idea, piece of policy that (to them) was worth losing for.

Continuing to fight for something makes it seem like a reasonable idea. That's how Republicans have moved many unreasonable ideas into the mainstream.

Maybe Democrats should try that.