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Nope, Tucker: There’s nothing “undemocratic” about impeachment
In an essay admirable for its honesty about the utterly indefensible behavior of the President, Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel argue that the President’s wrongs notwithstanding, impeachment would be “undemocratic.”
It need not be.
The Constitution requires that
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States
That means while it’s possible for a conviction in the Senate to entail that the President cannot run for re-election, the language of the Clause doesn’t require it. Austin Sarat shows that history has in fact not required it. And Ned Foley argues that in Trump’s case — for reasons Carlson and Patel lustrate—a conviction should not include a disqualification to run again. Let the Senate declare the President guilty of “Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”—for which the evidence seems clear—and them remove him. Then let the People, if they want, to forgive him, by reelecting him.
But then why, the anti-impeachers insist, go through the trouble? Why spin the cycles of DC on a process that at most would remove the President for less than a year?
