Not a bad idea. Therefore, the Dems probably won’t go for it.
Censure would allow the Democrats to move on: Obviously, the Speaker wants to send a strong message to her base that she hears their concerns and is acting on them. But every day that Democrats are not talking about health care is a day that they are slowly but steadily losing the election. The media has a limited attention span, and right now impeachment is king. While impeachment might excite the partisan bases on both sides of the aisle, to the vast middle that isn’t paying attention to the latest revelations that are dripping forth on the front pages of The New York Times, this is time not well spent making the case for their reelections.
Censure would be better for the country than impeachment: What the president did with his Ukrainian call is clearly not impeachable. But it wasn’t a perfect call either. We all know that partisan Democrats have wanted Trump removed from office since the very day he entered it and have come up with a variety of theories as to why he should be thrown out, from invoking the 25th Amendment to the current impeachment imbroglio.
But the American people, in their collective wisdom, through a process designed by the Constitution, put him there, and they have the right to have their voices heard to replace him, should they decide that is the correct path to pursue. Short-circuiting the people is a very bad precedent and would needlessly divide the country for generations.
In 1998, some congressional Republicans and Democrats floated censure as a possible alternative to impeachment and when I worked for the House GOP Leadership, I thought that would have been a more prudent approach.
Part of the challenge with censure is it’s not outlined in the Constitution as a way to punish the president for actions that fall short of high crimes and misdemeanors. And indeed, the only president to be clearly censured by the Congress was Trump’s hero, Andrew Jackson. He was censured by the Senate because he defunded the Second Bank of the United States. That censure was later expunged from the record by Jackson’s Whig allies late in his second term in office.
I would vote against censure of this president, if I were in either the House or the Senate, because I think this has been a partisan exercise not worthy of the Congress. But if I were a congressional Democrat, I would prefer censure to impeachment. Impeachment would be bad for the country but probably good for the president. Censure wouldn’t be nearly as bad for the country nor nearly as good for the president.
But, they no more want to move on than the people have that collective wisdom. This all assumes, of course, that the House goes ahead with the impeachment charade – it’s already losing steam. And, again, it won’t help them with 2020.
