The wrong person at the wrong time, and party leaders are cringing.
From the moment the 2024 presidential election was called for Donald Trump, it was only a matter of time, once he took office, until Democrats again started talking about impeachment. On April 28, Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) revealed he had filed no less than seven articles of impeachment against the president. The roll-out did not go well, and, indeed, another impeachment seems like pure desperation for a flailing, directionless, and effectively leaderless party.
To be clear, this writer does not think it is tasteful to ridicule others for their appearance or accent. Nevertheless, it is hard to fathom why House Democrats allowed Thanedar to move ahead with this course of action and especially to post a video to X announcing his articles of impeachment.
According to his congressional web pages, Thanedar was born into poverty in southern India. He gained undergraduate and master’s degrees in chemistry, later emigrating to the United States, where he completed his PhD. He ran successful pharmaceutical businesses before getting into politics. Today, Thanedar represents Michigan’s 13th Congressional District.
A rags-to-riches story, then. An American dream narrative. One cannot help but admire the congressman for that.
Impeachment or Improv?
But optics are everything in politics – perhaps now more than ever in today’s bitterly partisan America. Thanedar has an almost unfeasibly thick mop of hair and an accent so thick that, if one only heard his voice without knowing his ethnicity, one could be forgiven for thinking he was parodying the denizens of his homeland. Surely even the most hardcore progressives who would love to see Trump impeached yet again would have been biting their tongues.
Thanedar’s video had some X users wondering if this was a Saturday Night Live skit. This may seem inappropriate to some, perhaps, but the honorable gentleman from Michigan was just not the one to make this grave announcement.
By vowing to impeach Trump even before he took office in 2017 and then staging two theatrical efforts during Trump’s first term, House Democrats had already rendered impeachment hollow and gratuitous. Thanedar did not add any much-needed gravitas with his delivery, which reminded one of a Daily Show comedian.
It did not help matters that the congressman did nothing but reel off just about every anti-Trump soundbite used repeatedly by many Democrats and others on the left for the past eight years.
The seven articles of impeachment – that are going nowhere unless and until Democrats take control of the House of Representatives in 2027 – are as follows:
- Obstruction of Justice and Abuse of Executive Power
- Usurpation of Appropriations Power
- Abuse of Trade Powers and International Aggression
- Violation of First Amendment Rights
- Creation of an Unlawful Office
- Bribery and Corruption
- Tyrannical Overreach
Democrats Ponder the Pitfalls
Rep. Peter Aguilar (D-CA), who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, brushed aside the idea. After observing that impeachment “is, at times, a tool that can be used,” Aguilar, not in so many words, acknowledged the futility of using it unless Democrats could be sure of a conviction in the Senate. He told reporters on Capitol Hill, “[W]e don’t have any confidence that House and Senate Republicans would do their jobs. And so this is not an exercise that we’re willing to undertake.”
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) was less obtuse. “We’re going to win elections,” he told the Washington Examiner. “We’re not playing those stupid politics. Next question.”
DC’s most well-known left-leaning paper reports that top Democrats inside the Beltway are unwilling to discuss impeachment. That may be because they realize that even if they win the House in next year’s midterms, they are unlikely to win the Senate – much less have the votes they would need to remove President Trump.
There could be another reason. Democrats are already feeling the weight of historically low approval ratings. That may well be tied to the fact that, since January, they have made it abundantly clear to the American people that the party is focused entirely on stopping the Trump agenda – the very thing he was elected to pursue – and not at all on doing anything constructive for American citizens.
For Democratic lawmakers, there is also the danger that if they push articles of impeachment now, they will be signaling to voters that impeachment proceedings are a certainty – should they win a House majority in 2026. Despite a recent slew of polls that, at first glance, suggest America has abandoned Trump, his policies, notwithstanding the jitters over tariffs, are still popular. In that light, how many voters are going to pull the lever for Democrats, knowing that a Democratic majority is going to grind Congress and the executive branch to a halt by punishing the president for doing all the things he was elected to do?
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