Yes, Donald Trump has committed impeachable offenses. That case is not difficult to make. But in today’s Democratic politics, too many campaign on promises of impeachment instead of promises for the people. And right now, with the country in crisis, the difference in focus matters enormously.
Impeachment is a conviction that requires a two-thirds Senate majority. That threshold does not exist. It will not exist after the next election, or the one after that. Every congressional Democrat who knows this and still beats the impeachment drum is engaged in performance, not governance. If it goes through, we’re left with President Vance, and that won’t solve anything. Democrats are pushing this as a substitute for actual change, but the people deserve better.
What’s needed in Congress right now isn’t chest-thumping tribalism, but radical pragmatism. Members willing to pick up the hardest problems, work across the aisle where necessary, and actually legislate. The kind of governing that doesn’t trend on social media but makes life materially better for the people who sent them to Washington.
Take housing. The cost of living crisis is felt every time a family renews a lease or a young worker calculates whether they can afford to stay in the city where they grew up. Expanding housing stock while protecting existing affordable units, shoring up Section 8 and Mitchell-Lama housing, and reducing maintenance burdens on co-op and condo owners – these are tractable problems with workable solutions. Congress could address them. It mostly hasn’t.
Or healthcare. Dental and vision coverage for Medicare beneficiaries is not a radical idea – it is a low-hanging, long-overdue fix that would improve the lives of millions of seniors. A Congress serious about goveming would have done it years ago. A Congress obsessed with messaging hasn’t gotten there yet.
On immigration, the status quo is a failure by every measure – a byzantine system that punishes people who have spent decades contributing to this country while doing nothing to address the backlog clogging the courts. A practical path forward might look like a “blue card”: a route to citizenship for undocumented individuals without criminal records who have lived, worked, and paid taxes here for fifteen or more years. It’s not amnesty. It’s an acknowledgment of reality, and it’s the kind of idea that only emerges when legislators are focused on solving problems rather than winning news cycles.
None of this is glamorous. None of it will go viral. But this is what governing actually looks like – grinding, unglamorous, consequential work on behalf of people who are too busy living their lives to follow every procedural maneuver on Capitol Hill.
Impeachment may be warranted. But Congress does not have the luxury of spending its finite time and resources on the latter when the former is not within reach. The
American people are not asking to be represented in a symbolic rebuke. They are asking to be prioritized.
