How Democrats should impeach Trump: A plan from 2 realists (Philippe Reines & Tom Nichols)
Background on Reines, a Hillary Clinton advisor and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Strategic Communications
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Reines
and Tom Nichols, a professor at the Naval War College and a conservative NeverTrumper who urged Republicans to vote for HRC in 2016 and to vote Democratic in 2018, and who's said he'll vote for whoever the Democratic nominee is in 2020:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Nichols_(academic)
Their piece on impeachment, published yesterday by USA Today
How Democrats should impeach Trump: A searing constitutional duty, a plan from 2 realists
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/10/04/impeach-trump-abuse-obstruction-campaign-finance-emoluments-column/3851239002/
lists 4 reasons to impeach Trump:
In less than three years, the president has committed scores of potentially impeachable offenses, and it would be reckless to try to bring him to account for all of them. (Impeachment, it bears repeating yet again, is a political judgment, not a legal finding.) How should the Democrats decide which ones to pursue? One article of impeachment, or 20? Republicans think the right number of charges is “none,” while Democrats — rightly — could come up with dozens.
We believe the House should pursue a limited, but varied, set of articles revolving around abuse of power and obstruction of justice. Impeachment should serve as a reminder that there are many more offenses against the Constitution than outright treason or bribery. The Founders inserted a broad category of “high crimes and misdemeanors” to capture what James Madison called “the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief magistrate.” (Actual incapacity would later be remedied by the 25th Amendment, whose defects should by now be obvious to all, but that is a subject for another day once our current national crisis is over.)
Trump should be impeached for abuse of his office, obstruction of justice, breaking campaign finance laws and violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clauses. The primary articles will bring into sharp relief that this president endangered the nation for his own self-serving purposes, while the emoluments charges should be a reminder of a sacred principle to which we seem to have somehow become numb: The president can never monetize his or her time in office.
-snip-
Whether it fails or succeeds in the Senate, the House should impeach Trump as an exercise in the restoration of civic health. Americans must confront, yet again, the potentially dangerous nature of their own institutions of government if those institutions are allowed to function without some kind of commitment to public spirit, patriotism and trust from the people who occupy them.
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