Last Friday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that Democrats would be starting impeachment proceedings against President Trump. The announcement came after an anonymous whistleblower exposed that the President had put pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky to investigate whether Hunter Biden, son of the frontrunner in the Democratic primary race and former Vice President Joe Biden, abused his father’s position by investing in and becoming a board member of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holding.
Regardless of either Biden’s innocence, the fact that a sitting President would use the powers given to him by the Constitution to go after a political opponent is shocking.
In her press conference Friday, Pelosi said, “the President has admitted to asking the President of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically… the actions of the Trump presidency revealed a dishonorable fact of the President’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.”
Pelosi followed this up by saying that the House of Representatives would follow up with impeachment proceedings against the president.
Furthermore, the fact that House Democrats are moving forward with impeachment may be just as shocking.
As recently as September 20, Pelosi indicated in an interview with NPR that Democrats would not be moving forward with impeachment. She said that the party was worried that impeachment could distance swing voters and moderate Democrats from the party’s base.
Importantly, the revelations of the past week may not change that fact. According to fivethirtyeight.com, multiple polls showed that Democrats did not have a majority supporting the decision to move forward with impeachment. Despite the lack of popular support, the Democrats still decided to go ahead with impeachment proceedings.
Enacting policy that they believe to be right for our country, instead of sticking to policy that will keep them in office, is a great change for the Democratic Party.
Over the lifetime of current St. Lawrence Students, safeness has defined the Democratic Party. Progressive ideals have given way to “electability.” A party that has time and again promised progress has remained staunchly conservative in its policy.
In 1992, Bill Clinton promised he would be a candidate “For People, For Change;” during his presidency, he gutted welfare and passed a crime bill that both exasperated America’s mass incarceration problem and disproportionately targeted minorities.
Our last president of the Democratic Party, and our first African American president, Barack Obama, a moderate liberal, had to pick one of the most conservative members of the democratic party as his running mate. An appeal to “electability” forced our first African American president to run with a man who opposed busing. Our first African American president needed to run with a man who supported Clinton’s crime bill. Our first African American had to run with a man who eulogized notable segregationist Strom Thurmond.
In that eulogy, made five years before his run for the White House, Obama’s running mate boldly highlighted all the excellent things that Senator Thurmond has done.
At one point saying, “he had set up reading programs to get better books for separate, but equal schools”. During the election, Obama’s running mate informed America that candidate Obama was, “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Essentially, Vice President Biden was the Vice-Presidential candidate because he was able to tell America that despite being black, Obama was presidential.
Having Joe Biden run with Obama was an appeal to electability. The Democratic Party and our country should be ashamed that we’ve valued electability over a person’s ability to righteously govern.
The Democratic Party should be ashamed that they’ve consistently let an appeal to the masses compromise the values that they’ve claimed to uphold. That’s starting to change.
The undertaking of impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump is one of many recent examples of prominent Democrats supporting policy that runs counter to what polling suggests the majority of Americans support.
Elizabeth Warren, who currently leads presumed frontrunner Joe Biden in the key states of Iowa & New Hampshire is an example. Only 23 percent of Americans support Medicare for All without a private option, a Warren policy.
Still, Warren has been surging in polls. I believe that people are excited about her campaign because of her policy being authentic to her ideals as much as it is in the particulars of the policy itself.
The framers of the Constitution chose a representative legislature primarily because it was beholden to the will of the people while still being divorced from the views of the majority. In Federalist Paper #51, James Madison writes:
In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
Essentially, ideal representation doesn’t necessarily mean that the representative follows the will of the people on every policy. That would both defeat the need for representation and ensure that our government implicitly doesn’t consider the voice of the minority.
It follows, then, if we want to have a government that works for all our people, we need to stop electing candidates who believe that their reelection depends on following the majority opinion on every issue.
We need representatives who believe that their election mandates them to be a voice for all their constituents and aren’t afraid to enact a vision that is good for all people. We need representatives who believe that the act of just & good governance is more important than holding office.
Ultimately, you’re going to vote in the Democratic Primary next year and you’ve been frustrated with the party’s inability to enact policy that matches the ideals it promotes; if you’ve been frustrated by the party’s inability to do more than condemn a president who has disgraced the office; and if you want to have a President who respects you as a constituent than don’t vote for someone who is “electable.”
If you vote for someone because they are “electable” then you’re conceding that a candidate who actively compromises your values should hold office.
Next year, vote for a candidate who you believe has a strong vision to make our country a great place for all of its citizens to live in and, more importantly, vote for a candidate who will stand up for those ideals even if it means they lose an election.