There's Good News, Too

Since President Trump’s inauguration, American democracy has taken some serious hits, but it has also continued to demonstrate amazing resilience.  There’s good news, too.

• Perhaps most importantly and against President Trump’s explicit orders, a number of current and former administration officials have responded to congressional subpoenas and testified to the House Intelligence Committee.  The drumbeat of their testimony has been relentless.  The prepared statements of several of these officials — especially former ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor and National Security Advisor Alexander Vindland, a lieutenant colonel stationed at the White House — have been careful, well-documented and damning.  While Taylor himself did not listen to the phone call from Trump to Zelinski, Vindman did.  Taken together the two testimonies provide almost ironclad evidence of the quid pro quo offered by Trump to Zelinski in their phone call.  Perhaps more important for democracy, the Executive Branch (president) is having less and less success in blocking the Legislative Branch’s (Congress’s) constitutional responsibility for presidential oversight. 
• In a news conference, the President’s Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, acknowledged the quid pro quo nature of Trump’s request for a “favor” from the Hungarian president.  When challenged by reporters Mulvaney tried to double down and emphasized the quid pro quo, only to have to walk the statements back a few hours later.  
• Over the objections of Trump’s attorneys, a federal court judge in New York State ruled that the state should be allowed to see Trump’s tax returns and other financial records.  Since this is a state (as opposed to a federal) issue, the President has no control over it and could not be pardoned for it by either himself or the next president.
• President Trump’s precipitous withdrawal and the easily predictable slaughter of many Kurds in northern Syria have provoked widespread criticism across the political spectrum, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Polling has shown a dramatic increase among Americans favoring not only impeachment hearings (58%) but also conviction by the Senate (almost 50%).  Even among Republicans, 30% favor impeachment hearings and almost 20% support removing Trump from office.

There can hardly be doubt that the President will be impeached by the House of Representatives.  Conviction and removal by the Senate had been considered impossible until now; after this week, however, it can now only considered unlikely … and the investigation is just beginning.

More important than even the poll numbers and the intransigence of the Republican Party, what seems most heartening is that democracy’s defenses seem to be holding, if only shakily.  While Republican officeholders still maintain a consistent wall against Trump’s impeachment, support for their position is wavering.  Holes in the President’s capacity to block testimony from administration officials are beginning to show.  The judiciary system seems to be upholding its constitutional responsibility to limit Trump’s power.  All this gives me hope that our commitment to democracy and to a free press will hold.

The change in the polling numbers is also heartening if only because the honest reporting of responsible news outlets seems to be getting through.  Rather than quoting Trump without qualification, mainstream journalists are now regularly using phrases like “he said, without evidence” and “this is contradicted by ___,” when quoting Trump.  While mostly invisible to the public, some cracks in Fox news’s unwavering support for the President are showing.  The free press continues to function.

While the damage to our democracy continues to pile up, we should not forget our democracy’s profound resilience.