How Democrats Lost the Impeachment Debate – The American Conservative

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 21: House Intelligence Committee ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) delivers opening remarks during an open hearing in the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center June 21, 2017 in Washington, DC. Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson testified before the committee about Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential elections and his department's response to the threat. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

To put it mildly, House Democrats impeachment scenario hasnt gone as planned. According to the Real Clear Politics polling aggregation, since the end of October, Trumps approval rating has ticked up a little, while his disapproval has ticked down. And according to FiveThirtyEight, support for impeachment has declined slightly over the last month.

These small shifts might not seem earth-shattering, yet the failure of the hearings to dump Trump seems to have been shattering to some Democrats. Hence this November 22 headline in Politico: Vulnerable Democrats panic amid GOP impeachment ad onslaught. We should note that the headline was later softened, such that panic became merely spooked. Still, Trump foes have been disappointed to discover that Ukraine-gate hasnt been the Watergate II they were hoping for.

To be sure, the Democrats and their allies fervently believe they have made their case, that President Trump attempted to manipulate U.S. foreign policy for political advantageeven if, of course, he ultimately delivered to Ukraine the very military aid that the Obama administration had denied.

Nevertheless, that legal case, such as it might be, has been obscured by poor opticswhich are obvious to see. As Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican though hardly a partisan barnburner, observed on Meet the Press, I think the Democrats had a bad week.

Of course, with Trump, one dreads making any prediction about what could come next. Theres always another bombshell about to go offand who knows where the shrapnel will fly.

Still, it is possible to look back at the hearings and assess what went wrong for Team Impeach. In a nutshell, House Democrats gambled that a procession of witnesses, most of them careeristsor, if one prefers, foreign service and military officers, yet still careeristswould deliver a knockout blow to Trump. Yet what emerged from their testimony was that, well, they were bureaucrats.

As Mark Hemingway wrote for The Federalist, these people were mortified by the fact that Trump administration policy was made byTrump. In the words of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, Trumps Ukraine policy was inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagencythat is, the interagency process of which Vindman was a part. Yet as Hemingway added tartly, Nobody elects an interagency consensus.

Indeed, as Byron York of The Washington Examiner pointed out, Vindmans perspective is a classic bureaucrats view of government and the world. York then added, speaking of the fabled interagency process:

Needless to say, Trump does not do that sort of thing. The president is remarkably freewheeling, unbureaucratic, and certainly not always consistent when it comes to making policy. But he generally has a big goal in mind, and in any event, he is the president of the United States. He, not the interagency, sets U.S. foreign policy.

In the words of Harry Truman, The buck stops here. Here, that is, at the desk of the commander-in-chief, not in the cubicles of bureaucratic functionaries.

So now we begin to see how the Democrats made their mistake. Having gotten their inspiration in the first place from that Deep State whistleblower, they then assumed they could carry on their investigation, relying on still more Deep Statists. But these individuals dont typically make for good witnessesat least up to the level of convincing people to think, okay, having heard these second- and third-hand allegations, I now agree we should impeach Trump.

On November 25, Congressman Matt Gaetz poured acid on the political effectiveness of the Democrats chosen witnesses:

In the State Departmentpeople think theres only one way to do things. That they have to do it through their precise diplomatic channels & only in the way they all learned going to the same schools & working at the same think tanks.

Thus we can see a wide cleft here, between the delicate and precise culture of the bureaucracy and the churning and heaving culture of the anti-bureaucracy, led by you-know-who. For their part, the Democrats made the mistake of siding with the bureaucratsand when was the last time a bureaucrat won an election, to say nothing of a national election?

In fact, if we peer down into that wide cleft, between bureaucratic super-ego and presidential id, we see something even deeper than the Deep Statewe see the fundamental workings of the human brain.

Here we might summon up the work of Roger W. Sperry, who in 1981 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Sperry argued that two hemispheres of the brain are responsible for different functions: the left brain deals with words, facts, and sequences, while the right brain deals with visuals, emotions, and intuitions. The theory further holds that for most people, one hemisphere or another is stronger; thus left-brainers are more words and facts driven, while right-brainers are more visuals and emotions driven.

Now it must be footnoted that as a matter of medical physiology, the left-brain/right-brain dichotomy is debatable. Yet as a matter of pop psychology, its even more debatable, in that the duality is seemingly irresistible as a matter of parlor discussion. Why? Because each of us can see see the dueling personality types all around usand theres nothing more compelling, of course, than human nature.

For instance, the left-brain/right-brain concept helps explain the rise of political correctness. According to Greg Piccionelli, a Los Angeles-based attorney-inventor-biologist, the hard categorical thinking of left-brainers can easily turn into hard-left dogma.

Dogma isnt new, of course, and its always been spread across the left-right spectrum. But these days, left-brained PC dogma has received an enormous reinforcement: from the PC. That is, political correctness has been bolstered by the personal computerand by supercomputers, artificial intelligence, and big data.

Of course, when everything is online, its hard not to be cyber-immersed. And thats the point: to borrow a phrase from Marx, computers are the dominant mode of production, and so its no surprise that thinking machines are affecting our thinking. (Last year, this author wrote about PC/PC dogma in regard to the censorship of the Monty Python comedy troupe, as well as re: Brett Kavanaughs Senate confirmation hearings.)

Of course, in this world, everything has its dialectical negation. And for left-brained culture, that dialectic is Trump, who is obviously strongly right-brained. Whatever else one might think of him, Trump is real and raw, the exact opposite of ordered and dogmatic. No wonder he and Marie Jovanovitch didnt hit it off.

Its this mental cleft, left-brain versus right-brain, that provides the ultimate backdrop for the impeachment battle. As brain-pundit Piccionelli puts it, If there was a personification of left-brain-ism, its Adam Schiff, and most of the Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee. And those witnessesthey were even more left-brained.

Of course, one could say that its in the nature of such hearings to be dry, proceduraland left-brained. To which Piccionelli answers, Okay, but nobody told Trump and the Republicans they had to play by those rules. They were emotional and passionateright-brainedand it worked better for them.

What the Democrats needed, Piccionelli says, is some right-brained passion of their own. They needed someone to look directly into the camera and say, This is wrong! Piccionelli says. They needed someoneMember of Congress or witnessto connect with the ordinary right-brain emotions of Americans.

To be sure, practicing politicians, in both parties, tend to be pretty good at connecting to votersthat is, after all, how they got elected. Yet Piccionelli speculates that the Democrats, as the tech-ier partyif anyone in Silicon Valley likes Trump, he, she, or they hide it wellhave been more influenced by politically correct modalities.

That is, without even realizing it, Democrats have slipped into the sort of PC consciousness that makes for cold dogmatism, the attitude that just cant believe that everyone cant see the obvious truth of its argument. And here we might pause to note the baleful influence of ultra-woke college campuses, which provide up-and-coming Democrats with great skill in one-way preaching, but less skill at actual debating.

Meanwhile, lower-tech Republicanswho probably didnt go to Woke U.are more in touch with right-brain humanity.

So lotsa luck, Democrats, if you pass impeachment in the House. That Senate trial, dominated by Trumpy right-brained Republicans, wont be in the least bit woke, but it sure will be lit.

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How Democrats Lost the Impeachment Debate - The American Conservative