An old ad campaign for a perfume once advised: Promise her anything, but give her Arpège. That strategy may work in romance – and I’m skeptical about that – but it doesn’t work long in politics. That’s especially true when you court lunatics and then have to give them reality.
Such is the dilemma Democrats now face, Axios reports. They spent the last eleven years stoking delusional hatred of Donald Trump and lost an election on their bet that they had successfully “disqualified” him in 2024 through lawfare and sheer hysteria. They lost that bet and have spent the next 18 months escalating that failed strategy, through “No Kings” rallies and threats of removal from office by various means.
Now the lunatic fringe expects them to actually do something to remove him after hyping up this campaign to a fever pitch during the war. And Democrats realize that they don’t have much to give … not even a vat of Arpège:
Even Democrats who have called to impeach President Trump acknowledge there is little chance of it happening unless they retake control of at least one chamber of Congress.
Why it matters: Democratic lawmakers are stuck. They know impeachment won’t succeed, but their base keeps demanding they up the ante with drastic acts of anti-Trump resistance. …
That has led lawmakers to pay lip service to moves like impeachment and the 25th Amendment in response to the latest Trump outrage, and then focus their attention on more plausible but less flashy tactics.
Driving the news: Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) told Axios that while she “called for 25th Amendment and impeachment” over Trump’s posts about Iran on Truth Social, she doesn’t think it is “the best use of our time.”
All of this is a waste of time. Democrats impeached Trump twice during his first term, and it had no effect on his political career. Impeachment is essentially a form of censure unless 67 senators agree to remove the impeached official. Democrats wielded impeachment as a partisan attack, and the removal vote reflected the temperament of both impeachments. Even if Democrats took both chambers of Congress in the midterms, they still cannot get to 67 in the Senate, which would mean that impeachment would be yet another censure exercise that means nothing in terms of Trump’s hold on the office.
Lately, however, the argument has grown vastly more stupid by bringing up the 25th Amendment in the context of congressional action. Democrats have responded to the delusional radicals they keep courting by promising to initiate a removal through the 25th Amendment, including a “virtual briefing” by Rep. Jamie Raskin today:
Trump’s comments about Iran this week have led dozens of Democrats to call for his impeachment or removal through the 25th Amendment to the Constutition.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) announced Wednesday that Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) will lead a virtual briefing about the 25th Amendment on Friday.
It should be a short briefing, and anyone who attends it should travel by a short bus. Section 4 of the 25th Amendment makes very clear that it only pertains to a presidential disability that makes the elected executive “unable to discharge the duties of his office,” not for being in the opinion of the opposition a Nazifasciststinkybottom. That is what impeachment covers, although using it for those purposes is why impeachment has been devalued down to an impotent censure.
Furthermore, Congress has no role in initiating a removal under the 25th Amendment. Let me repeat that: Congress has no role in initiating a removal under the 25th Amendment. Section 4 makes clear that this has to be initiated by the executive branch:
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
The only exception to that would be if Congress had created some form of independent body to provide an outside review of presidential disability. However, the phrase “by law” is important here. Congress would have to create such a body in a bill that requires a presidential signature. No president, and certainly not this one, would sign a bill that creates a star chamber that can remove presidents at whim. And the situation around the previous, dementia-stricken president provided a much stronger case for such a body than anything Trump has done in this term or his previous term.
If Raskin’s briefing lasts longer than it takes to serve coffee and pastries, he should be required to pay rent for the room.
All of this is just demagoguery, but it’s not cost-free demagoguery, as Democrats are discovering. Having hyped up the crazies to a fever pitch, they are now in the difficult position of explaining their impotence not just in this session of Congress but also in the next. They have overpromised and now are stuck in the predicament of vastly underdelivering to people who are not exactly the tea-and-crumpets set. Democrats unleashed lunacy over the last several months and have nothing left to offer them.
All of the Arpège in the world won’t cover up that stink. And Democrats are just beginning to realize it.
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