Billionaire Capitalism and Impeachment

If we grasp the concept of billionaire capitalism as a political movement, the battle of Trump’s impeachment is easy to understand. Because otherwise we have to explain these events as a response to Trump’s unbridled desire for a second term, including a Republican response that doesn’t make much sense otherwise.

Because why would Republican Congressmen and Senators almost universally back Trump on this issue? Some of them (Gardner and Collins in particular) risk losing their seats over their votes to acquit Trump. And if he had been convicted, his most likely successor as head of the GOP would have been a Senator—Ted Cruz or Rand Paul, perhaps.

And even if none of them dared vote against Trump—except for Romney—the senators might well have dragged the process out, calling witnesses and examining evidence, before finally voting to acquit. Political damage to Trump—in the long run—opens up opportunities for other Republican politicians, especially senators. And even in the short run, having Trump as the GOP candidate in 2020 has some distinct risks; having him run and win might be worse for the GOP than losing the White House.

And why open themselves up to the charge of conducting a sham trial? Keep in mind that most Republican senators do not risk losing their seats this election. Of the 23 running for re-election, only 5 or 6 of them could conceivably lose. That’s out of 53 total; the 47 or 48 who are safe must include some who yearn to appear on Mount Rushmore. If public opinion turns against Trump for any reason, even slightly, having to answer to voters in 2024 for refusing to conduct a serious trial in 2020 might be difficult; in fact, it could be career-ending.

Whenever you make a significant decision in politics, something the voters will remember for years to come, you need to have a good story ready in case it goes wrong. (Picture John Kerry attempting to explain his vote for war in Iraq.) In this case, a Republican Senator has to be able to say, “we listened to the witnesses, we looked at the evidence, and I personally agonized over the decision to acquit—-of course, if we’d known about the money-laundering and Kushner spying for the Russians, we’d have done it all differently. But we did the best we could with the evidence we had.” People might buy it, or they might not—but it gives you a chance, in any case.

But the “sham trial” charge has the potential to stick like napalm to the careers of those who supported it. On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine the Schiff and Pelosi won’t look good in the history books of the future, if there is a future.

You could say that Trump’s supporters might have punished senators who allowed witnesses, but I doubt it—Trump’s supporters believe he’s innocent or at least not terribly guilty, and that witnesses and evidence would show that. And as long as Trump was acquitted in the end, they wouldn’t care.

So if Trump’s supporters really don’t care and if the “sham trial” is hazardous to the careers of Republican senators, then what’s really going on here? At one point, even Trump wanted witnesses—including the Bidens and Hillary Clinton, of course—in an effort at complete exoneration.

And yet, there are no witnesses. A glaringly obvious question is: why not? It makes no sense, really.

But it does if you factor in billionaire capitalism as a political movement. Forget Trump and McConnell—what was billionaire capitalism trying to achieve here? It was trying to do a couple of things: to normalize using foreign governments to influence American elections in favor of Republicans, and to change the Constitution so that no Republican president can be impeached. Both goals are vital to billionaire capitalism’s future.

A secret hidden in plain sight is that it’s quite difficult for a Republican presidential candidate to win a majority or plurality of the popular vote. That’s happened only once in the last generation—in 2004. During that same period, Democrats have won the popular vote six times—-that’s measuring from 1992 to 2016. A Republican Supreme Court awarded the presidency to Dubyah in 2000, although Gore won the popular vote, and Bush ran as the 9/11 incumbent in 2004—and even that election was fairly close. And 2004 was sixteen years ago. Demographics, right-wing extremism and the increasing unpopularity of evangelicalism have reduced the old Republican coalition to 45%-47% of presidential voters. Their hold on Congress has been based on gerrymandering and voter suppression.  In 2012, Romney convinced himself that he could win by getting a significantly higher percentage of the white vote than McCain got; that didn’t happen.

Hence, every modern Republican campaign is focused on “the base,” an implicit admission that the GOP message has no crossover appeal. There are no new voters longing to wear bow-ties and vote Republican.

In is therefore unlikely that Trump will win the popular vote in 2020—not absolutely impossible, of course, but unlikely. If he wins the election, it will probably be much the same way he won last time, by eking out an electoral victory with some narrow victories in swing states…and with help from Putin and other foreign governments. For all the ink spilled over Trump’s supporters, the biggest political faction in the country (about 45% of voters) is composed of people who are strongly opposed to Trump.

A lot is at stake here for billionaire capitalism. They are losing their ability to win presidential elections without the Electoral College and the Viagra of foreign intervention. Back in their salad days, beginning in 1980, they swept three presidential elections, enacted huge tax cuts, exploded the deficit, gave China MFN status, destroyed the savings and loan industry, witnessed the fall of the Soviet Union and saved Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. It was a string of glorious triumphs, even if most of them laid the groundwork for future disasters. The Democrats were weak and indecisive, unclear how to govern even if they re-gained power.

Now, in 2020, billionaire capitalism might seem close to cementing its hold on power, and yet the opposition is stronger and more self-aware than in 1980. And the Republicans have less public support than they enjoyed before 1992.

Still, an actual billionaire occupies the White House! They no longer have to govern through proxies like Reagan and the Bush family. Furthermore, two billionaires are running for president in the Democratic primary, an obviously hopeful sign.

Their propaganda machine is well-honed, and the concentration of wealth continues. Despite the mounting climate crisis, they have been able to prevent any effective counter-measures. They seem powerful beyond measure.

And yet, they are unable to get the votes; that doesn’t always keep them from seizing power through gerrymandering, Russian interference or glitches in the Electoral College, but it is a serious complication.

Without foreign interference the American people would likely shake off rule by billionaires in the next election or two, and the concentration of wealth and power would slow and finally halt entirely. At that point, billionaire capitalism as a political movement would have failed. In terms of public opinion, billionaire capitalism has probably peaked.

So, they have to have foreign interference, and ideally the public would come to accept that as the norm. If this were a merely of matter of Trump’s actions, you would expect to see a range of opinions among Republican and Democratic senators—and you do see that with Manchin and Romney, but their views are simply a vestige of a normal impeachment process.

This was not solely a vote about the actions of a single president; this was a vote on whether foreign interference in our elections is allowed.

So why not allow witnesses? Because the case for foreign interference in American elections had already taken a hit by the House’s vote to impeach and the cogent presentation by Schiff and others before the Senate. McConnell made the decision to move the issue out of the public eye—a retreat, leaving Schiff’s arguments effectively unanswered—to limit the losses.  Keeping this discussion going had higher risks for the GOP than it did for the Democrats. Of course the Republicans will still accept Russian help in the 2020 election, but they’ll have to do that in secret.

The second point was whether it will be possible in the future to impeach any Republican president, regardless of his actions. When Trump’s lawyers argued in court that Trump has “absolute immunity” from investigation, they were arguing in effect against the power to impeach at all. If the House can’t investigate the President, then it obviously can’t impeach him, and since it’s a long-standing policy that the president cannot be indicted while in office, then there is in effect no check on the president’s powers. If he murders a reporter—or a hooker—on Air Force One, then there is apparently no way to bring him to justice.

This is important because a billionaire president will have to commit impeachable offenses in order to establish a billionaire state like Russia. He cannot eliminate opposition and plunder the country without violating the law, without committing clearly impeachable acts.

You got a somewhat different argument with the same conclusion when Dershowitz claimed that anything the president did was licit, if he believed it to be in the national interest. And if he believed his re-election was in the national interest, then anything he did in pursuit of that goal was legal and proper—not impeachable.  That’s ridiculous in terms of what the Founders intended, but it shows you where the Republicans want to go with the power to impeach—they want it eliminated.

That would seem to be patently unconstitutional, but Barr and the Federalist Society are working overtime to construct arguments otherwise. It might seem that “unconstitutional” is pretty cut and dried, but think: the Constitution is a remarkably brief document; it’s 4,543 words in the unamended form (including the signatures), and 7,591 words with amendments. That’s about 17 pages of a blog like this, printed out on letter-sized paper.

So however precisely written, it must include generalizations and abstractions, and those leave plenty of conceptual white space for the rest of us. “Oh, the courts interpret the Constitution,” you might say, but in reality the people do so as well. It’s a truism that the Constitution changed radically as a result of the Civil War, but the New Deal and the Cold War played the same role.

When Nixon imposed a wage-and-price freeze in 1971 on the entire country, without authorization from Congress, was that constitutional? Is the FDIC constitutional? The draft? When FDR imposed a Bank Holiday which resulted in the closure of institutions that the auditors determined were unstable, was that constitutional? To my knowledge, none of these issues went to the Supreme Court, so their constitutionality is determined by public opinion—and public opinion was okay with all of these examples.

And this public opinion is often guided by the informal influence of lawyers and judges, just in their capacity as private citizens. If 90% of the lawyers in this country laugh at Dershowitz’ arguments, then that is important in terms of public opinion.

For that matter, where in the Constitution does it give the courts the power to declare unconstitutional laws passed by Congress, or executive orders issued by the President? Yes, that power seems logical given the idea of separation of powers, but it was not explicitly given.

Can the President refuse to respond to any subpoenas by Congress? If there’s no pushback and public opinion allows it, then yes, it becomes in effect constitutional.

However, the fact that the House called Trump’s bluff and impeached him for obstruction probably means that his extreme obstruction remains unconstitutional—for now.

And this was another reason for McConnell to move for an early acquittal without witnesses. Dershowitz’ argument was not something he wanted repeated more or less endlessly over several weeks—especially as paraphrased and punctured by Schiff. This would not be a good look for a Senate pretending to uphold constitutional norms.

McConnell is a master of acting large and in charge when he’s being forced to retreat. This is not of course a decisive defeat for billionaire capitalism, and they will try again. But on the two points of making foreign intervention in elections the norm and of making impeachment of a Republican president impossible, the Democrats made an honorable fight of it.

And Romney, like a ghost from the past, could not bear to break his oath before God to “uphold and defend the Constitution.” If this country were swept away entirely and all that was left was a smoking ruin, I would share my last rat with Mitt Romney.