The impeachment of President Donald Trump formally began on Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2019 and concluded on Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2020 with his acquittal.
On Thursday, Feb. 13, political science professor William Schaefer broke down the partisan nature of Trump’s trial in the Senate and how his impeachment could impact the upcoming presidential election.
Schaefer addressed a crowd inside the packed Guthart Cultural Center Theater, delivering the first installment of the 2020 Political Science Talks Politics series at Hofstra. The talks are presented by the political science department and co-sponsored by the Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency.
“We have never seen a more partisan impeachment process,” Schaefer said. “Politics, on both sides of the aisle, dominated what is purportedly supposed to be a legal process.”
He noted that while the process for removing a president is outlined by the U.S. Constitution, “impeachment is what Congress says it is.”
As a result, Trump’s fate was left up to a hyper-partisan Senate, of which, Schaefer noted, 96 of the sitting 100 members had already “given their position on whether they would vote to convict or acquit” before hearing from either the House managers or the president’s team.
“This is the only trial in my lifetime that I’ve ever seen where there was no evidence presented, no witnesses called,” said Schaefer, a former prosecutor.
“In all previous impeachments, we’ve had an average of 33 witnesses testify during the Senate trial; in this trial, we had zero,” he noted, adding that the defense of the president by Republicans in the Senate prohibited a fair trial.
Schaefer argued that American voters are not upset with the outcome of Trump’s impeachment, but rather the way his trial was treated and carried out by the Senate.
The American population was also further polarized and siloed by impeachment, Schaefer said. “The Trump impeachment, in my mind, reflects a level of political polarization among the American public.”
Support for either Trump’s removal or acquittal never decidedly tilted in either direction, acting as proof of how equally divided the nation was and remains.
Because of this fact, and a number of other differences, Schaefer admitted that he is “not sure” if the previous presidential impeachments in U.S. history, those of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton – as well as the near-impeachment of Richard Nixon, lend any insight into Trump’s case and how it will impact the November election.
Better predictors for the 2020 election, Schaefer said, have recently been put forth in the work of the political scientist Rachel Bitecofer, who has found that the upcoming election will be decided by two main factors: enthusiasm among the party’s base and the turnout of independent voters.
“As they approach the election, both parties should learn a lesson,” Schaefer said. “For the Democrats, the lesson is do not focus your attention on the impeachment and the issues surrounding abuse of power and other actions by the president.” Instead, he said, they should focus on issues important to the American people and their base. “Every single public opinion poll we have says that issues such as healthcare, national security, gun safety [and] the economy [are] far, far more important [to voters]” than the Trump impeachment.
“If there was one lesson I think we did not learn from 2016 it is that Democrats must give disaffected Democrats and independents … a reason to vote for them and not a reason to vote against Donald Trump,” Schaefer said.
“If the Democrats are able to give them something to vote for, they can flip those states,” said Ibrahim Naseer, a sophomore political science major, referring to the so-called Rust Belt states that were previously Democratic strongholds in the Midwest but were won by Trump in 2016.
“It is not enough to – as Hillary did – say Trump’s crazy and bad; yeah we all know that,” said Charles Timm, a junior philosophy and history double major. “Democrats need to present an alternative vision for how [they] will improve people’s lives.”
Democratic enthusiasm, which peaked during the 2018 midterm cycle, is currently lower than that of the Republican base, which, as Schafer said, is “taking to heart the argument persuasively made by Donald Trump that this was an attempted coup to de-legitimize the American public’s decision to elect him.”
“I don’t know if Trump should be so gracious to the Democrats … if he wants to drive the enthusiasm up for his base, he really should hammer hard on this concept that [impeachment] was a coup attempt, because that seems to be paying dividends for him,” said Benjamin Morawek, a junior political science major.
Morawek agreed with Schaefer, though, that by continuing to criticize Democrats and disloyal Republicans following acquittal, Trump “cuts against his whole argument.”
“This way, he looks more like a crime boss … where his whole point should be that he’s above that, that he hasn’t done things that are wrong, that his impeachment was completely baseless,” Morawek said.
After being acquitted by the Senate, Schaefer said, “[Trump] chose instead to go on to, what many people said, and I think it’s true: revenge, retribution and recklessness.”
“The very conscience of the Republican party is at stake,” Schaefer said. “[Trump’s] behavior is relegitimized if elected in the fall.”