The Fatal Flaw in the Impeachment Clauses

I argued in my post on 8/26/19 that there is a fatal flaw in the 25^th Amendment in all those cases in which the president, although in fact no longer up to the responsibilities of the office, is determined to stay in power.  

Unfortunately, contemporary politics has produced a similarly baleful defect in the impeachment process. It is so clear cut it could almost be a theorem of game theory. It’s the Senate.

Few, if any, senators of the president’s party can be reelected without support of the president’s base, unless that base falls utterly apart. Vote to convict the president, and be primaried, or have the base revenge itself against you by voting for the other party’s candidate. Best case is they stay home in the next election, but that would already be enough to spell the defeat of almost any senator. The bigger their margin in the last election was, the larger the potentially revengeful base is going to be.  

A few senators will be planning to retire, and those elected a year or so ago may take the risk that tempers will cool in 5 years. That will not, however, pry nearly enough senators of his party away from supporting their president to get reach the 2/3 vote needed to convict.

The party-before-country-syndrome is serious, but the my-career before-everything-syndrome spells an acquittal in any Senate trial unless the president’s treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors appear egregious enough to the base to turn it.

With cable news and the internet the base can expose itself only to anti-impeachment news and opinions. People hate cognitive dissonance.  The more the president’s support is rooted hatred, fear, and despair, the harder it will be to reverse it, no matter how serious the president’s misdeeds. And if the misdeeds strengthen the hand of the president against the hated other, they will seem positively good to much of the base. 

Nixon very likely would have been impeached and convicted, but the Republican Party, and the Trump base is very different from Nixon’s party and base.