[D66] The impeachment crisis | wsws.org

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wsws.org:

The impeachment crisis
A plague on both political parties
19 December 2019

The US House of Representatives voted Wednesday night to impeach 
President Donald Trump. The speeches preceding the vote contained 
innumerable invocations of the historic significance of the move. But 
the history of previous impeachments only exposes the right-wing, 
pro-war character of the Democrats’ impeachment drive.

The first impeachment of a US president was directed against Andrew 
Johnson in 1868. It came in the wake of the Civil War, when Johnson, an 
anti-secessionist but virulently racist Democrat, succeeded to the 
presidency after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Congressional 
Republicans regarded Johnson as the ally of the former slaveholders, and 
impeached him for firing the secretary of war, a strong supporter of 
Radical Reconstruction of the South. Johnson’s acquittal in the Senate, 
by a single vote, was a signal of the turn by the Northern capitalist 
class away from the revolutionary-democratic struggle of the Civil War, 
in preparation to fight a new enemy, the American working class.

The second impeachment of a US president was only forestalled by 
President Richard Nixon’s forced resignation in 1974, after the House 
Judiciary Committee had voted articles of impeachment against him for 
obstruction of justice, abuse of power and contempt of Congress. These 
charges were bound up with the exposure of a massive program of illegal 
political repression employed by the Nixon administration to suppress 
the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. Nixon formed his 
unit of former CIA agents, the “plumbers,” to spy on Daniel Ellsberg, 
who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the media. When the “plumbers” were 
caught burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee in 
the Watergate building in July 1972, the chain of events was set into 
motion that led to Nixon’s ouster two years later.

There is no shortage of legitimate reasons for removing Trump. He has 
ripped thousands of immigrant children from their families in a policy 
branded as tantamount to torture by the United Nations. He has created 
concentration camps on American soil. He has misappropriated military 
funds in defiance of congress to build his garrison state along the 
Southern border. He has stated he would be willing to defy 
constitutional term limits and reject the outcome of an election in 
which he is defeated. He has sought to create a fascist movement on 
American soil.

But all of these fundamental democratic issues have been excluded from 
the Democrats’ impeachment drive, which is centered on claims that Trump 
has been insufficiently aggressive in fighting a proxy war against 
Russia in Ukraine.

“In the end, this impeachment is the first over a question of whether 
the president is selling out American national security,” writes David 
Sanger in the New York Times. “While Ukraine is the proximate event, how 
the president has dealt with Mr. Putin is the overarching theme.”

Sanger concludes, “the argument about Ukraine, the ostensible reason for 
the president’s impeachment, was not really about Ukraine at all. It was 
about Russia.”

But it was House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff—the pivotal 
figure in the impeachment drive—who left no question about the central 
demand of the Democratic Party for an escalation of the US conflict with 
Russia.

“Ukraine is fighting our fight against the Russians, against their 
expansionism. That's our fight, too.” Schiff said. “We used to stand up 
to Putin and Russia. I know the party of Ronald Reagan used to.”

“That’s why we support Ukraine with the military aid that we have,” 
Schiff continued. “The President may not care about it, but we do. We 
care about our defense, we care about the defense of our allies, and we 
darn well care about our constitution.”

Nowhere has anyone explained why Ukraine’s war with Russia should be 
“our fight, too,” or why the failure to fight this war to the Democrats’ 
satisfaction constitutes an impeachable offense.

The Democrats’ attempt to remove Trump aims to legitimize an intense 
escalation of the US conflict with Russia, a policy for which there 
exists no support among the mass of the population.

The Democratic Party is aware of the broad popular hatred of the Trump 
administration. But what this party of the rich and affluent fears far 
more than Trump’s reelection is a mass mobilization to remove him, which 
would inevitably challenge their own wealth and the capitalist system.

In the terms defined by the Democrats, the impeachment has no democratic 
or legitimate content. The complete remoteness from and indifference to 
any popular sentiment or demands gives it the character of a palace 
coup. The innumerable claims by various Democrats that their impeachment 
constitutes a defense of democracy is both unconvincing and untrue.

Even as they have moved ahead with their impeachment drive, the 
Democrats have worked with Trump to expand the military, gut 
congressional restrictions on the use of military force, and expand his 
immigration crackdown. On Tuesday, they approved the largest military 
budget in US history, and on Thursday, the day after the impeachment, 
they plan to pass USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement), a trade 
war measure targeting China.

As the impeachment votes were being cast, Trump was in Grand Rapids, 
Michigan, making a violent, demagogic and fascistic appeal to his 
supporters. Trump echoed the letter he had earlier sent to the House of 
Representatives in which he accused the Speaker of the House of 
“declaring open war on American Democracy.”

But in excluding all democratic issues that would succeed in mobilizing 
the population against Trump, the Democrats have actually played into 
the hands of the President, who has sought to mobilize his fascistic 
base on the grounds that he is a victim of a “deep state” plot.

The central lie peddled by Trump is to equate the Democrats’ efforts to 
remove him—together with those of the intelligence agencies and 
media—with socialism. This is his euphemism for any form of popular 
opposition to his administration. In the traditions of fascism, Trump 
falsely presents himself as the victim of a conspiracy between the 
“elites,” socialists and communists.

Whatever the outcome of the impeachment crisis, it will see a dangerous 
further movement of American politics to the right. If the Democrats 
fail to remove Trump—as seems likely—it will strengthen him. If they 
somehow succeed in orchestrating Trump’s removal, it would be seen as 
illegitimate by broad sections of the population, and would virtually 
guarantee an escalation of military conflict with Russia.

Whatever its outcome, the impeachment must be seen in context of the 
greatest crisis of American capitalism since the civil war. In their own 
way, both parties represent the twin imperatives of American imperialism 
under conditions of social crisis and the loss of its global hegemony.

The Democrats embody the drive to war; the Republicans, in the form of 
Trump, embody the move toward fascistic and authoritarian forms of rule.

The fight against Trump can only unfold on the basis of a social and 
political struggle rooted in the working class. The essential 
prerequisite for the emergence of such a movement is a total and 
unequivocal break with the Democratic and Republican parties. The 
attitude of the working class to this impeachment must be, amending 
Shakespeare, “A plague on both political parties.”

Patrick Martin and Andre Damon