The original intent/textualists on the Supreme Court should disagree with you. From the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_crimes_and_misdemeanors
My bold (do we still need to say that?).
WHOA!! 
WTG, Ben!
Your first paragraph refers to the English parliament - hardly applicable in the US. And if you read the full article, it is pretty clear that any effort to impeach under a “high crimes and misdemeanors” charge should be backed by specific charges. The Dems would be laughed at, and rightly so, if they attempted to impeach Trump on grounds that he is obnoxious.
Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to have seen the previous impeachment effort lead to a conviction. I just don’t see a viable impeachment strategy right now. Setting aside that we all know the chances of conviction are zero, and that it is ridiculously late in the game to be considering impeachment under any circumstances, the impeachment itself would have to be based on extremely compelling and specific grounds to minimize the inevitable accusations of placing politics above the nation’s welfare. Vague pronouncements “high crimes and misdemeanors” without identifying precise, illegal acts, would make it all too easy to heap scorn on the Democrats.
We did incorporate the English common law, though, so the English understanding of the phrase is relevant. My real intent (and I should have been clearer) was to point out that there is no obligation to point to a criminal statute that has been broken, and I think attempts to do that were a mistake. I do completely agree that the charges need to be specific, just that they don’t need to be actual felonies/misdemeanors under Federal or state law. A well document failure to “faithfully execute the office” should suffice. It is a Constitutional remedy, so failure to follow the Constitution should be impeachable.
Heck, I think you could make an argument that Trump shooting someone in broad daylight is not directly impeachable, unless doing so impedes his ability to faithfully execute. I wouldn’t make it myself, but could see some fancy-pants lawyer taking a swing at it.
I agree. Trump’s actions during these crises have been incompetent but they haven’t been illegal. We should be removing him from office under the 25th Amendment rather than through impeachment. But this is a moot argument; the Republicans are no more likely at this point to support a 25th amendment removal than they are an impeachment. And Trump won’t resign.
So we’re left with one legal option for removing Trump; vote him out of office in November. And vote out all of his fellow Republicans who have enabled him.
The charges do not have to be laws that are broken, as that’s kinda the point. We never said that Trump didn’t have the power to hold up funds to the Ukraine in exchange for political favors, we said he abused his power when he did so.
Same with this. He is entrusted with the powers that he has for the good of the American people, not for his own personal gain. There are many examples of actions that he has taken in regards to the pandemic that were not in the best interests of the American people, but only in his own. There are many examples, but the quickest that comes to mind was when he was using the power of the Federal Government to outbid states and hospitals for PPE and medical equipment, and then giving these supplies to a donor for him to sell at a profit. That to me, on its own, is entirely impeachable.
That said, I don’t think that impeachment is the right thing, as it’s just going to go exactly the same way as the last one did. The republicans will rally around him, and he’s not going to get tossed from office. They will instead use this as another example of the evil democrats trying to perform a coup, and try to use it to fire up his base.
OTOH, if Trump keeps decompensating, it may come a time when republicans are ready to cut him loose. Then maybe impeachment makes sense. Hell, McConnell may even beg Pelosi to send over articles to fast track for an impeachment vote. While this would be an optimal situation, I do not find it likely.
Like I said, best thing to do is for Pelosi to keep acting as the grown up, keep passing legislation that would help the American people, and let the republicans explain to the voters why they won’t take it up. If it is truly the case that the people won’t care about bills that don’t get passed, they will care even less about impeachments that are shot down.
My new fave word WRT trump:
It’s very easy to criticize a poor response to to a never seen before disease. Some very smart people who study diseases for a living expected it to act like other diseases they’d seen before. It didn’t and now many are dead.
But a democratic president could have made the same mistakes. There would have still been a huge amount of pressure at the start to not shut down unless the threat was severe and certain.
No competent president would have ignored his advisors for two months while trying to downplay the crisis in hopes of looking good for reelection.
Then there’s the little matter of high-ranking Republican officials engaging in insider trading while Trump dithered.
No way.
Oh please. Maybe so, but sensible person (even a different Republican president) would have listened to experts and also observed what other countries were doing that was successful.
I was working in a hospital since before it happened and the medical recommendations they were giving us at the beginning have changed tens of times. They seriously had no idea what they were dealing with. They’ve reversed policies several times.
You are saying that a Democratic president would have called it a hoax and refused to do anything about it?
Trump has not only not shown leadership, he has actively made the situation worse, not only with his messaging, but also with his actions and the actions of those around him that he has enabled.
While it has some novel aspects to it, it is not as though any of those really change many of the dynamics of an effective and reasonable response. As we learned more, things could have and should have adapted to the new information. Instead we keep getting nothing but lies about it from Trump. Since it was first reported, Trump has intentionally downplayed the virus, and only paid any attention to it when it started affecting the stock market.
I seriously doubt that a Democratic president would have said that the real problem is that there is too much testing. Do you?
At least they tried making policy. Trump’s policy never changed much from “ignore it and it will go away”.
I can’t disagree but the only country who really “got it right” was South Korea. Once Italy got hit the other countries finally started to understand how bad it was.
Just a few of the Trump statements that were completely at odds with the actual facts and what knowledgable experts were saying.
Any competent leader would never have said these idiotic things, given what the experts were telling him:
Jan 22 " We have it totally under control ."
Feb 10 “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away. "
Feb 24 “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. "
Feb 26 “When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”
Feb 28 “Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus”.
March 6 “ Anybody that wants a test can get a test. That’s what the bottom line is.” (This one was a blatant, dangerous lie)
March 17 “ We’re getting rid of this virus . That’s what we’re doing."
March 23 ““America will again, and soon, be open for business — very soon — a lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting. A lot sooner.”
April 15 “ We think some of the states can actually open up before the deadline of May 1. And I think that that will be a very exciting time indeed.”
And this last one has led to a complete disaster for Arizona, Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina etc. Trumps mouth-farts have led to decreased vigilance, decreased support for health authorities, and too-fast opening, which has led directly to more cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
New Zealand got it right.
Your position is too ludicrous to merit further acknowledgment.
They had a good response but they also got lucky as they weren’t hit until later. South Korea was smack in the middle of it and immediately made drive through testing free and available to all citizens.
I appreciate that bashing Trump is always welcome here and I’ve done some of it myself. My point was no one had enough information to respond correctly at the start. I’m not happy with the latter decisions Trump made either.
You brought up Italy. They did a lot better than the US. Loads better. The comparison isn’t even close.
There are few countries that did as poorly as the US. None of the ones that did as poorly are particularly developed, either.
The first confirmed case in the US was January 20. The first confirmed case in South Korea was January 20. Let that sink in a bit.
We didn’t start taking any appreciable measures until late in March and by March, South Korea already had things largely under control.
You can claim any leader could have made the same mistakes, but it is unlikely and few world leaders have - none in the developed world. Nearly any President, Democrat or Republican, would have taken this more seriously and caught on faster. Maybe not to the level of the best countries but certainly not as poorly as we have been doing to date. Instead, our current POTUS, after over 120k+ deaths, is STILL saying things like “it’ll just go away”. I cannot take seriously anybody who believes any leader would make the same mistakes. That’s just ridiculous.