EDITORIAL: Democrats risk their own day of reckoning

OPINION:

The die is cast. President Trump’s enemies have gambled on removing him from office, and now they have nowhere to go but forward along a perilous path. As Democrats line up to pass judgment on the president, they are setting in motion their own day of reckoning.

The Democrat-controlled House Judiciary Committee approved on Friday two articles of impeachment on twin party-line ballots of 23-17. Not a single Republican vote joined in charging the president with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Chairman Jerrold Nadler has effectively tossed a political stink bomb into the midst of the full House, which must deliver its own verdict when Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls her chamber to vote later this week.

Never before in the nation’s 243-year history has a political party sought to depose an opposition-party president without a shred of bipartisan support. Still, the House tally is not really in doubt. Democrats hold a 17-seat advantage and Mrs. Pelosi doesn’t take kindly to deserters. She may, however, give a handful of endangered members permission to vote “nay” on impeachment to save their blue-party skins when they next face voters.

Then it’s on to the Republican-led Senate for a trial in which, unlike the House proceedings, Mr. Trump is promised a fair opportunity to defend himself. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has suggested that the case against the president may prove so inept as to warrant a quick acquittal. He would, however, take his cue from White House lawyers who could contest every accusatory jot and tittle in order to draw back the curtain on a scheme that more Americans are viewing as a soft coup.

Abuse of power is an ambiguous term that doesn’t easily fit into the categories of “high crimes and misdemeanors” proscribed by the U.S. Constitution. It is the dubious product of a July 25 phone call in which Mr. Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for assistance in uncovering the roots of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax and whether a Ukrainian corruption link led back to energy company machinations by former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Summoned by House Intelligence Committee chief inquisitor Adam Schiff, a clutch of second- and third-hand witnesses attempted to divine the president’s intent. Like the lesson from parable of the blind men and the elephant, they only succeeded in revealing their own subjective viewpoints.

The case for obstruction of Congress is equally flimsy. A president’s refusal to produce witnesses and documents subpoenaed by members of Congress is common. The customary remedy is to seek adjudication in federal court. Impatient to impeach, Democrats have skipped the scales of justice and attempted to pull rank on a co-equal branch of government.

“Civilization as we know it today is at stake in this election,” Mrs. Pelosi bewailed recently. No lawyer, the speaker might as well have been channeling historian and poet Carl Sandburg, who famously once said: “If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.”

The Pelosi party has been howling “impeachment” since the day more than three years ago when The Donald defeated Hillary Clinton. Since the House hearings began in earnest, public support for impeachment has crumbled. A recent Monmouth University poll found 45 percent of respondents favor the president’s expulsion from office, but 50 percent are opposed.

Tellingly, the president is forging ahead of top Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden in the critical battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. “Democrats racing towards impeachment are at serious risk of leaving behind the voters they need to retake the White House next year,” says Republican pollster Alex Conant of Firehouse Strategies.

At least one Democrat disenchanted with his party’s anti-Trump plot is preparing to jump ship and join the Republicans. Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, a moderate and critic of the impeachment process, is on the verge of switching parties, according to Politico.

Judging the fate of a fellow citizen is a sober responsibility; weighing the impeachment of a president is a dreadful one. It was said in ancient times, “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.” Fast-forward to the cusp of the new year: Americans won’t have forgotten the acts of Congress by Election Day 2020.