The Electors failed to do their plain duty — protect the country from a cheap, blinking-neon demagogue — when they met last December, and it appears unlikely that Congress will do it’s duty, either. We, the People, will have to do it ourselves, then. So argues Michelle Goldberg in her column in today’s New York Times, and she’s right.
It is not necessary that the president commit crimes, though Trump has committed more than the mind can readily recall: The Emoluments Clause, obstruction of justice, offenses against the First Amendment, undermining our elections … on and on. As legal scholar Cass Sunstein points out, taking a 6-month vacation in Madagascar is not a crime, but certainly is impeachable.
The Congress may, and the Founders expected would, remove a president for being an awful president, for being an instrument of harm to the country — no crime required. It won’t happen, though, unless we light a fire under Congress and demand they do their duty and remove him.