If they follow the path carved out by Republicans after 1994, easily-caricatured Democratic committee chairmen — who may well hail from the liberal coasts — would dominate the cable airwaves bashing the president rather than promoting the policies that got them elected, which is not a good look for the independent swing voters that Democrats will need to regain the White House in 2020. And every candidate for the party’s presidential nomination would be constantly pushed by the news media to comment on the matter of impeachment, rather than differentiating themselves from Trump on the basis of their policies.
Democrats can, of course, claim something of a mandate to bring a measure of accountability and transparency to a Trump administration that has brazenly operated for two years with none. Voters have clearly turned on the rubber-stamp yes men, many of whom were decisively defeated.
But Democrats should focus on policy disagreements and ostentatious malfeasance, not personal peccadilloes, in choosing their investigatory targets. Fruitful areas of inquiry include Trump’s botched “zero tolerance” border enforcement initiative, conflicts of interest with lobbyists entering the administration and public corruption by Trump’s cabinet members.
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