Progressive Democrats turned up the heat last week in their effort to convince party leaders to start impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump. Among other things, they cite as impeachable offenses the president’s unprovoked attack on Venezuela and his use of the Justice Department to target his political opponents.
ABC News quotes Kat Abughazaleh, who is running for Congress in Illinois, calling for Democratic leaders to “‘grow a f—ing spine.” Abughazaleh, who says political leaders have helped convince Americans that we “shouldn’t take measures toward a future that we want to live in,” calls impeachment “just another tool in the accountability machine.”
President Trump has committed impeachable offenses, but that does not mean that impeachment is the best remedy.
President Trump has committed impeachable offenses, but that does not mean impeachment is the best remedy. It would be, at best, a distraction from Trump’s real vulnerabilities, and even if it succeeded in elevating JD Vance to the highest office in the land, it would not spare the nation from the plague of cruelty and corruption we have experienced since Jan. 20, 2025. That is, it would not save American democracy.
Even though this isn’t the time to actively pursue impeachment, that doesn’t mean Democrats should be silent or fail to talk about why impeachment is warranted. Failing to do so normalizes the president’s abuses of authority and, as they accumulate, habituates people to them.
But, contrary to what Abughazaleh is doing, Democrats definitely shouldn’t make impeachment a part of their platform. The best chance Democrats have to check the president’s lawlessness, corruption and abuses of power is to win control of the House of Representatives and/or the Senate later this year. To do so, they must convince voters that they care more about their own conditions than about holding Trump accountable.
The president and his allies are already using the threat of impeachment to rally the troops. On Jan. 6, President Trump told an audience at a House Republican policy retreat that “if we don’t win the midterms … they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.”
In July, NBC News quoted a senior Republican strategist actively involved in congressional races, who said impeachment “will be the subtext of everything we do, whether it’s said overtly or not.” John McLaughlin, a Trump pollster, told NBC News that Republicans had a lot of work to do getting “happy and complacent” Trump voters fired up and that if Republicans lose in the midterms, “Democrats will begin persecuting President Trump again. They would go for impeachment.”
Democrats should not take the bait. In this case, as in others, leaders and citizens must temper a commitment to democratic principles with prudence.
That’s not an excuse for inaction. Prudence doesn’t mean acquiescence in the face of assaults on our constitutional order. But it does mean choosing the best course of action given current circumstances. This is never more important than when anti-democratic forces seek to provoke a response that will give them an excuse to double down on their anti-democratic actions.
Democrats should not take the bait.
“Today, many Democrats have understandably questioned whether impeachment is possible again under the current political reality,” Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., observed this month, as she argued that “Democrats cannot remain silent or passive in the face of actions this extreme from this Administration.”
On Jan. 11, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., provided an example of what it means to speak out when he accused Trump of committing far more impeachable acts in his second term than in his first. Even so, Murphy recognized that any effort to impeach the president should wait until after the 2026 election.
Some of his colleagues in Congress clearly disagree. In April, Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Mich., introduced seven articles of impeachment against Trump. He argued that the president should be removed for ignoring “the Constitution, Congress, and the courts.”
Thanedar offered a persuasive bill of particulars, ranging from obstruction of justice to taking away Congress’ power of the purse. He said impeachment is necessary to remind the American people that obeying the Constitution is “not optional.”
Nonetheless, his impeachment resolution attracted only one co-sponsor. In December, that co-sponsor, Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, introduced his own impeachment resolution, labeling Trump “an abuser of Presidential power who, if left in office, will continue to promote the incitement of violence, engender invidious hate, undermine our democracy, and dissolve our Republic.” Green noted, among other things, that “President Trump called for the execution of six Democratic lawmakers, all of whom are currently serving in the U.S. Senate or U.S. House of Representatives and who previously served in the U.S. Military or in U.S. Intelligence communities,” who had made a video reminding members of the military of their duty to disobey illegal orders. This is not the time for Democrats to go tilting at windmills. But when Green tried to force a vote on his impeachment resolution, almost two dozen of his Democratic colleagues voted against it, with another 47 voting present. Even if an effort to launch an impeachment inquiry were to pass, the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee would be in charge of leading it. That’s one reason going forward with a serious impeachment effort now would be futile as well as make it harder for Democrats to work to ensure free and fair elections in November. This is not the time for Democrats to go tilting at windmills. This is a time for what Alexander Hamilton called “sound discernment.” Sound discernment suggests this is not the time for impeachment, even if it is merited. Instead, Democrats should heed Hamilton’s admonition that it is often preferable to “incur the negative inconveniences of delay” than experience “the positive mischiefs of injudicious expedients.”
Austin Sarat
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. The views expressed here do not represent Amherst College. 
