​We need a clear framing of where popular opinion in our country is in regard to starting an impeachment inquiry into Trump.
A recent Monmouth poll found 35% of Americans think we should start the impeachment inquiry. That's not a majority and that's what Nancy Pelosi and centrist Democrats keep touting as one of the main reasons why they can’t officially initiate the impeachment process. But, that's not a full picture.

For comparison, a Gallup poll taken between February of 1-4, 1974 found only 39% of Americans approved of impeaching Richard Nixon. Congress initiated the impeachment process on February 6, 1974. That’s how many Americans supported impeaching Nixon at the beginning of the Watergate hearings. We’re basically there right now (and we’ve been above that mark at various points throughout this year).

And here’s a deeper truth that Pelosi and centrist Democrats aren’t being upfront about:
A month into Nixon’s impeachment hearings, after two of his top aides and his most recent campaign chairman were indicted on conspiracy charges, only 43% of Americans approved of impeaching Nixon. One month into the impeachment process of a president who we identify as obviously guilty from our perch in the present and still the majority of Americans didn’t support impeaching Nixon.

It was only at the beginning of August 1974, after the House Judiciary Committee passed three of five articles of impeachment against Nixon (obstruction of justice, abuse of power and contempt of Congress), that a clear majority of 57% of Americans supported impeachment (including 31% of Republicans which rose from 12% in February of ’74 and 55% of Independents which rose from 38% in February). Nixon resigned soon after before the full House could vote on his impeachment.

So, what Pelosi and centrist Democrats are either unaware of or are conveniently leaving out of their statements is that we most likely will not have a majority of people in favor of impeaching Trump unless they do their job and start the process of impeaching Trump. By that standard, Nixon would have remained in office.

(As a side note, it’s also important to remember that the smoking gun, the audiotape of Nixon confirming his participation in and his cover up of Watergate, did not come to light until August 5, 1974. So, any idea of needing a smoking gun to start an impeachment inquiry is misleading, too. The smoking gun is what finally led Nixon to see the writing on the wall and resign, but he was already heading toward impeachment without it.)

Let’s take a look at a couple of the other reasons for Congress’ hesitation:

1.) Even if the House impeaches Trump, the Senate will acquit him.

Maybe. But, that’s not the point. Congress is mandated in the Constitution to oversee the president. That’s it. If the president has sullied his office or done harm to our country, Congress has a duty to hold him accountable.

And here’s the thing, in a July 1974 private meeting between Republican leaders, House Minority Leader John Rhodes estimated that Nixon’s impeachment in the House would receive as many as 300 votes (which would include 59 Republicans voting against the Republican president), well over the 218 needed to impeach Nixon. And, while Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott estimated that the Senate was a little shy of the 2/3 votes needed to convict, he also felt that support for the president was deteriorating (and this was before the smoking gun audio tape was released). This change came only when Republican representatives were forced to make a very public choice about whether they supported corruption or not.

We won’t ever know how many Republicans will stand up against Trump unless Democrats get the courage to put the evidence on display and shine that light on Republicans in the House and Senate (and any possible Democrat dissenters) and force them to choose between truth or corruption. Impeachment isn’t in the Constitution for when the truth is convenient. It’s there to force people to come to Congress and speak truth or face the consequences. Here’s what the Mueller Report says about it:
“With respect to whether the President can be found to have obstructed justice by exercising his powers under Article II of the Constitution, we concluded that Congress has authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice.”

2.) If the Senate acquits Trump, it will hurt Democrat chances in the upcoming election.

After Nixon’s impeachment, the majority of Congress remained Democrat. So, did the Senate. Furthermore, in the first Congressional election following Nixon’s impeachment, Democrats gained 4 seats in the Senate and 59 seats in the House. Then, in the first presidential election held after Nixon’s impeachment, Gerald Ford (the replacement for the remainder of Nixon’s term) was beat by Jimmy Carter – a Democrat. That seems to support the idea that, if you try a corrupt politician and expose their corruption, the public tends to support you in the following elections.

People like to bring up Clinton’s impeachment (initiated on October 8, 1998) and his subsequent acquittal in the Senate as a warning against going forward with the impeachment process when the public isn’t behind it. Like Trump, a Gallup Poll revealed that only 35% of Americans supported Clinton’s impeachment. But, while Clinton’s approval rating was above 60% at the start of his impeachment, Trump’s is currently at 39%.

Clinton’s impeachment is widely seen as a strategic move by Republicans to boost their control of the House and Senate in the November ’98 midterm election. Instead, the Republicans lost five House seats to the Democrats. But, the Republicans still retained a majority in the House and Senate (which neither lost nor gained a seat).

After the 2000 election (2 years after the initiation of Clinton’s impeachment), the Republicans still retained control of the House and Senate and also won the presidency. Of course, there’s a lot of controversy about how they won the presidency in 2000 and, within a few months of the election, a Republican Senator switched parties to join the Democrats, thereby giving Senate control to the Democrats. But, initially, the GOP had a House/Senate/President sweep in the 2000 elections. And there’s evidence that Clinton’s impeachment and the distrust and dislike of his behavior spurred Republicans out in high numbers and helped sway Independents to a slight majority in favor of George W Bush for president. One of his campaign mottos was “to restore honor and dignity.”

But, more importantly, Clinton’s impeachment charges were attached to when he perjured himself about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky and his attempts to cover that up. Definitely serious and flagrant violations. But, that’s a whole other ballgame compared to Nixon’s corruption charges or what can be gleaned from just Mueller’s redacted report on Trump.

So, what do we have to lose? Put the facts in the light and force Republicans in the House and Senate to stand up for truth or be remembered as treasonous cowards.

And, while I appreciate the effort that Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats have made to pass progressive legislation in the House, Mitch McConnell and the Republican-led Senate have stonewalled most of that legislation. So, if part of the House Democrat leadership’s argument for not getting behind impeachment is that McConnell and Republican Senators will acquit Trump, why does it make sense to devote time to legislation that you know the same Senate and our current corrupt president will not pass?

We are in a crisis right now. This is a broken government and the House of Representatives has the only weapon to hold our commander in chief accountable. And they’re not using it. High-ranking Democrats (including Pelosi and Schiff) have publicly called Trump corrupt in tweets and rhetoric and yet they won’t publicly put their weight behind the impeachment process. If Trump is out of line (and he is) and Congress feels he has abused his power (and they do), they have not only the right, but more importantly, the responsibility to initiate a full-on, absolute, 100%, no-tip-toing-around, impeachment process. If they don’t, I don’t think they deserve the seats they sit in.

In closing, here’s a bit from a May 21st Paste Magazine article (link in comments, along with a bunch of other links):

“One of the signature fights Democrats are going through right now is with congressional subpoenas, and the standard (or norm, if that helps the neoliberal wing of the party) was set on that topic in Nixon’s impeachment. It’s not that we should impeach Trump—it’s that we have no other choice but to impeach Trump. His lawlessness has driven us to this point, and if we are the nation we purport to be, then we will force him to defend impeachable actions going into 2020, and explain how his defiance of lawful subpoenas is any different from Nixon’s.

Of course after being impeached, Trump won’t get kicked out of office by Mitch McConnell’s Senate—removing Trump is not the point. It’s about demonstrating that the constitution still matters to one party, and by saying “I’m not for impeachment,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi is de facto agreeing with President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr’s Nixonian assertion that they are above the law assertion that they are above the law.”

A bunch of pertinent links:
Paste Magazine: Trump Just Did Something That Was In Richard Nixon's Articles of Impeachment
​The Hill: Majority Wants Trump Out, But Not Through Impeachment
Washington Post: Will Support Grow For Impeaching Trump? Data on Nixon Offers a Clue.
​CNN: House Panel Approves Impeachment Inquiry Parameters as Democrats Try to Clarify Their Strategy
Pew Research Center: How the Watergate Crisis Eroded Public Support For Nixon
Politico: Dems Stumble On Impeachment Messaging
Washington Post: Special Report: Clinton Accused
Gallup: Presidential Approval Ratings - Donald Trump

(photo credit to Alex Love from WJTV Jackson, MS)

This picture breaks my heart and makes me furious. I saw it yesterday morning and, since then, there’s been an update that she’s been reunited with her family. And I am glad to hear that. But, that doesn’t make this a happy story.

This is how you mess kids up. The idea that “their parents did this to them” is a cold-heartedly callous claim. These are kids. To go to your first day of school and at the end of that first day, when you’re excited to tell your parents all about your day, to find out that your parents have been taken away and no one can tell you where they are or what’s going to happen to you or them is beyond cruel. It’s inhumane. You don’t do this to kids.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of not knowing where your parents are after school. The closest I can get to that is, when I was 9, I got off the bus with my older brother and younger sister and we were met at the bus stop by our neighbors. My Mom had rushed to the hospital to be with my Dad who had just had a severe heart attack and was in a coma fighting for his life. We didn’t know that as we met our neighbors. All we knew was that Dad was sick and Mom went to be with him. But, there was a sinking feeling, an awareness that something was off, something was never going to be the same. And, yet, my siblings and I were lucky. We had loving neighbors surrounding us and we spoke to my Mom on the phone a few hours later. But, I can tell you that just those few hours of not knowing, of being separated from your parents (even when you’re surrounded by loving family friends) scars. It hurts deep. It takes years to trust that you can let go of your Mom or Dad’s hand and know that you’re going to see them again. It takes years to understand that just because someone is 2, 3, 4, or 5 minutes late doesn’t mean that they’re never coming home again.

This photo shatters me. I can feel her abandonment. And it’s different than mine because the country she lives in is not safe for her. She can feel that. Our president is making her feel that. We’re making her feel that.

That morning she got ready for school, probably specially picked out the cute outfit she’s wearing. Excited to set foot in a new classroom, in a new grade. Excited to be growing up. Or maybe she was a little nervous that morning and had to be reassured by her Mom or Dad that she was going to have fun and meet so many friends. And she let go of her Mom or Dad’s hand, stepped into that classroom and waved goodbye to her parents. Then, the door closed and we took her childhood away.

Some big-hearted strangers did the best they could to comfort her. But, they and that little girl know that all she wants is to be held by parents. We took that from her.

That is shamefully inhumane. Kids should not be treated this way. If you think this is an acceptable byproduct of combating illegal immigration, you don’t deserve to have the power to make that decision.

This girl’s parents and the 678 other workers arrested at seven Mississippi poultry processing plants are not dangerous criminals. And they didn’t covertly walk into those plants and work tirelessly for years without anyone knowing. Someone hired them, someone owns the factories that these people work in. If the crimes of the illegal immigrant workers are so heinous that they have to be hauled off so dramatically, shouldn’t the people who hired them and the people who own the facilities be hauled off with hands zip-tied behind their backs, too? Shouldn’t their children be left abandoned and crying after their first day of school, too?

It is important to understand that, in the history of our government, our implementation and use of the term “illegal alien” stems from racism. The first time our nation began using this phrase was to block Chinese people from immigrating here. White Americans were afraid that an influx of Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century would take away hard jobs and/or the influx of Chinese would pollute the purity of the white societal bloodline. So, legislation was put in place to ban Chinese immigrants from entering the country. Other Asian countries were eventually added to this list and bans in some form toward Asian immigrants stood in place until the early 1950s. In between those years, other races and nationalities were targeted as well. But, if you’re one of those white Anglo people touting proudly that your ancestors didn’t have it easy, but “they came here legally,” I urge you to take a look at the policies in place when your ancestors arrived. The United States had nearly open borders until the mid-1920s. That’s not to say that the lives white ancestors left behind weren’t hard or that their passage here wasn’t hard or that they didn’t face bigotry and hardship as a new immigrant in America, but it is to say that the idea of them getting into this country “legally” was, in fact, easier for them than for people of color.

As a country, we have continually wielded the label of "illegal alien" towards people we deem as undesirable. So, we shut the door on them while holding it wider open for who we deem desirable. Often, those we deem as undesirable are the immigrants who the Statue of Liberty calls out to the most: the tired, the poor, the immigrants fleeing war and poverty and trying to create a better life for their children. And this undesirability is most often directed at people of color.

​Because these undesirable illegal aliens are hungry to work, hungry to start anew, hungry to provide, hungry to give a better life to their children, they are easy targets. So, politicians and corporations and angry citizens make the illegal aliens into enemies and put the blame on them for what’s crumbling around us instead of fixing what’s actually wrong with our country. We say that they are leeching off our system, even though they are ineligible to receive welfare or just about any other benefit from our public programs (this includes DACA recipients) and there is no evidence to prove the contrary. We say that they are not paying taxes, even though the records clearly show that they are paying billions in federal, state and local taxes. We treat these illegal aliens as if they are destroying our country instead of adding to it. And, in viewing them as undesirable, we treat them and their children as if they are not deserving of human decency.
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So, we leave this little girl broken, alone and sobbing on the floor as if she brought this day upon herself.