Democrats Are Deluding Themselves About Obama's Impeachment

     The last few weeks have seen quite a bit of discussion about conservatives and their obsession with impeaching President Obama.  Most of it has centered around how "insane" it is and how the Republican establishment has distanced itself from such fractious and negative rhetoric, noting that Democrats have raised so much money that the tactic seems to be damaging the Republicans chances in the 2014 midterms.  One could say the right is crazy to be calling for impeachment proceedings since it backfired on them so horribly with the Clinton impeachment.   Did it really, though?

     Let's take a trip down memory lane, back to the halcyon days of 1998. The stock market was way up and climbing, unemployment was way down, the Republicans were still riding high on Newt Gingrich's Contract With America.  While the '96 election resulted in Clinton winning a second term and not much change in the Congress, the GOP was still ascendant and seemed to be capable of doing no wrong.  When the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, it seemed as if they finally had some dirt on the President that would stick: the President had lied under oath, committing perjury, a felony that would have resulted in him being removed from office. 

     Gingrich and co. struck fast and struck hard: they impeached the President on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, which could result not just in his removal from office but 10 years in prison.  More than that, though, was the media blitz: 24 hour news channels carried near constant coverage, debate and analysis of the scandal.  It seemed to be all anyone talked about, and the more we learned, the more absurd the whole thing became.  What started with tapes of a White House intern discussing her relations with the President (made without her knowledge or consent) devolved into jokes about stains on blue dresses, debate over the definition of "is" and what exactly constitutes "sexual relations."  It was everything the news media could want: politics, sex, drama and enough legal mumbo jumbo to fill in the 23 1/2 hours a day they had after reporting on the actual news with analysts and pundits and talking heads to "explain" it all to us.  

      For the Republicans, it looked like another sure fire win: how could the American people hear that the President not only cheated on his wife in the Oval Office but then lied about it under oath and not turn against him and his party?  Come November, they were going to get a 2/3 majority in the House and Senate no problem.  Then nothing, not even an Al Gore Presidency, could stop them from carrying out their Contract With America. Except it backfired: people still supported the President, by about 2:1.  While the GOP didn't get creamed in the midterms, they didn't gain anything and in fact lost a few seats in the House.  Gingrich's grandstanding and attacks on the President were seen as mean; political manipulation instead of genuine outrage.  Besides, Clinton wasn't seen as doing anything that other Presidents didn't do (JFK, we're looking at you).  As far as most Americans were concerned, who cared what the President does with little Willy as long as the economy is chugging along?  Newt Gingrich and Ken Starr, apparently. 

     Now let's fast forward two years, when the Republican party nominated a man for the highest office in the land in what can only be the worst practical joke ever played.  I remember thinking to myself that George W. Bush could not be serious, that there is no way this man has been nominated to be President of the United States as anything other than a joke.  I mean, he could barely speak coherently.  The man ran an oil field at a loss for Christ's sake.  How the hell do you not make a profit with an oil company unless you're one of the most incompetent people in the world?  Yet here he was, a serious contender in the 2000 Presidential election.  

     Now, some people claim that Al Gore lost that election because he didn't take W. seriously enough.  They claim that he didn't campaign hard enough, that he distanced himself from Clinton when he should have used the President's charisma and relatively high poll numbers to boost himself.  It cannot be denied, however, that the Lewinsky scandal and impeachment circus cast a major shadow over the election.  Try as he might, Gore could never distance himself enough from the entire process to prevent W. from using the phrase "restore honor and dignity to the White House" as a rallying cry for conservative and religious voters.  People were so tired of the nonsense, the bad jokes and brain numbing debates about minutia and semantics that came to symbolize the ridiculousness both sides were willing to stoop to that they chose a man who was the literal opposite, almost out of spite.  Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar, W. was a C student. Clinton was a moderate, W. was a puppet for a neo-con cabal.  Clinton worked with the world when it came to military measures, W. squandered the largest international support the US had had since WWII on carrying out a personal vendetta.  Clinton balanced the budget, W. left us farther in debt than we had been in 100 years. Clinton oversaw the largest economic expansion in the US since the 1950s, W. left us with higher unemployment and debt than any time since the 1930s. Talk about a really bad joke.

     So what does this have to do with Obama's impeachment?  Well, pundits are out there right now talking about how the whole thing has backfired on the GOP; how Americans are sick of the partisan politics and bickering in Congress and that they view this and Speaker Boehner's lawsuit as another Tea Party ploy to waste time and money on petty political nonsense instead of actually fixing things, and it is. The left wing media is predicting that it will affect the Republicans' chances in the midterm elections in November, and not in a good way.  Sure, antics like this might shore up support with the nut jobs and whackos who are still looking for Obama's birth certificate, but the GOP already had their vote.  This sort of thing won't help with moderates and Democrats who might be frustrated with Obama's administration but are more frustrated with Congress and it's lack of perspective.  Odds are, the more the right talks about suing and impeaching the President, the more it helps the Democrats come November.  But the GOP isn't looking at November.  They're looking to 2016.

     Assuming the GOP can generate the same kind of three ring circus for a lawsuit against President Obama they managed with President Clinton, this could potentially hurt whoever runs on the Democrat ticket in '16, especially if it's Hillary. It would only be a matter of time before we hear the accusations of "do you really want four more years of this? Remember what you got last time a Clinton was in office?"  In fact, they've already started, although barely a rumble now.  Make no mistake: the Republicans are playing a long game here, and the Democrats, as usual, are walking right into it, thinking they're so clever to turn the right's vitriol around on them.  If they're not careful, we're going to wind up with 4 years of another President Bush, or worse, President Christie.  

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana