Eric Zuesse

The only individuals who possess the Constitutional power to introduce a bill of impeachment against the President are the members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Republicans there have said that they won't do it, and the reason is that they won't impeach him for doing things that George W. Bush did -- and that's all they'd be able to prove against him. So: that's understandable -- they don't want to look like fools, especially heading into the 2014 elections. But what about House Democrats? So far, they've not done it because the Party base, the people who elected them, think it would be disloyal. Boy, are they wrong! Democrats impeaching and removing Obama is, to the contrary, the only way to salvage the Democratic Party.

As things now stand, Republicans will win back control of the U.S. Senate in this November's elections, and President Barack Obama will thus spend his final two years in office rubber-stamping Republican-passed laws into effect regarding U.S. foreign policy, the military, spending-priorities, his emerging (perhaps nuclear) war against Russia, and many other things. Some of his vetoes on other issues, such as abortion, will be overridden by Congress. Obama will be even more despised than he now is, because he will be the dream President for the billionaires who fund the Republican Party (he’ll prove himself to have been the Republican-in-sheep's-clothing "Democrat" that they previously could only hope for and dream about). The American masses will rightfully come to loathe him, and they will rightfully blame the Democratic Party for it, because they will see him as not only a liar, but a traitor, and they won't ever again trust the Democratic Party, which will then be finished.

Even as things now stand, this recognition is beginning to sink in, among the broader public.

According to "United States presidential approval rating" at wikipedia, "President Obama has averaged an approval rating of 48% through his first five-plus years in office, which has dropped his average approval below Richard Nixon (49.1%) and George W. Bush (49.4%)."

On June 24th, I headlined at Huffington Post, "Gallup: The Lowest-Rated Living President Or Ex-President Is Barack Obama," and I opened:

A Gallup poll published on June 20th shows that the only living current or former occupant of the White House who has a negative rating from the U.S. public is its current occupant, President Obama, with 52% unfavorable, 47% favorable. All others of them are favorably rated. The least favorably rated of those (the one closest to Obama in unfavorability) is George W. Bush, with 53% favorable, 44% unfavorable. His having invaded Iraq for non-existent WMD, and produced the 2008 crash, have apparently been forgiven, which is remarkable, and which is due to his having increased his favorability rating from only 32% at the crash in 2008. Next-least favorably rated is Jimmy Carter, with 52% favorable, 32% unfavorable, and a remarkably high 16% “No opinion” or undecided. He has now become a rather popular former President. Next-least favorably rated, and virtually tied at the very top as being one of the two top-rated recent Presidents, is G.H.W. Bush, with 63% favorable, 31% unfavorable. That compares with Bill Clinton’s 64% favorable, 34% unfavorable. Although Clinton has a 1% edge on “favorable,” his “unfavorable” rating is 3% higher than the senior Bush’s; so: the person with the highest overall ratio of favorable/unfavorable is actually G.H.W. Bush, who is, thus, the highest-rated living current or former President.

Of course, people’s Presidential ratings are highly partisan. G.W. Bush is popular now only because 88% of Republicans rate him favorably -- their post-crash disappointment with him is, in effect, gone. The only reason why G.H.W. Bush scores significantly higher overall than does G.W. Bush is that he scores far higher than “Junior” does among Democrats, only 26% of whom approve, whereas 44% of them approve of his father, G.H.W. Bush. (The latter is favorably rated by 89% of Republicans; so, Republicans give him only an insignificant 1% edge over his son.)

On 18 July 2014, I documented that, "Obama is a terrifically unpopular President, and his being called a 'Democrat' is, in fact, destroying the Democratic brand, which desperately needs to be rebuilt." However, the many negative reader-comments there from my fellow Democrats suggest that they need more data in order to recognize that their Party's brand has actually been destroyed by Obama. So: here that it is.

Here are Americans' Party-affiliations shown by Gallup since 2004.

I’ll boil it down:

In 2004, there were more Republicans and lean-Republicans than Democrats and lean-Democrats on only 9 out of the 35 Gallup polls taken during that year.

In 2005, this went down to only 8 of the 42 polls.

All the way from 2006-2009, which is four straight years, there were no such occasions at all; Democrats consistently outnumbered Republicans.

Then, in 2010, starting in the 27-30 August 2010 poll, after hundreds of millions of dollars spent mainly by the Koch brothers and their friends, frightening Americans against "Obama's death panels" and "fake birth certificate," 6 of that year's 22 Gallup polls on Party-affiliation showed Republicans outnumbering Democrats.

In 2011, that happened again in 10 of the 19 such polls.

In 2012, it happened on only 1 of the 21 polls.

Since then, it hasn't happened even once. But look there at the percentage of Americans who are now turned off to both Parties and who therefore identify as "Independent." On 8 January 2014, Gallup headlined, "Record-High 42% of Americans Identify as Independents: Republican identification lowest in at least 25 years." It's not that people have been gravitating to the Republican Party; it's instead that they are gravitating away from both Parties.

We are entering the period of America’s great cynicism.

Ever since that time, that 8 January 2014 report from Gallup, this 42% has risen to 45% in the latest such poll, which was taken July 7-10. Furthermore, in that July 7-10 poll, there are 42% who are or lean as "Democrat," and again a close 40% who are or lean as "Republican."

What has been happening, in other words, is disgust with both Parties, and a re-evaluation of what America is: is this still really a democracy at all -- really?

Consequently, the latest analysis by the Washington Post concludes that there is an 86% likelihood that Republicans will control both houses of Congress in 2015 and 2016, and only a 14% chance that one house (the Senate) will be in Democratic control during Obama's final two years in office. There still are Democrats, but they no longer care enough about politics for them to be able to prevent an Obama-Republican alliance from taking over this country and dragging it into far-right territory, in terms of governmental policies.

Basically, Democrats are demoralized because they've voted twice for a man who deceived them both times, and they are beginning to recognize that Obama is such a liar that they no longer have real hope for America. By contrast, Republicans have plenty of hope, for passing and getting signed into law almost their entire agenda, during the next two years, 2015 and 2016.

Strategically, Democrats in Congress therefore need to pull a rabbit out of a hat. If they don't do that, they're merely staying terrified, in a dead Party as it's going down and sucking the country down the toilet with them, where Republicans want it to go: the toilet of further decaying infrastructure, increasing concentration of wealth, and more gated communities, while the entire public sector gets privatized and prices for formerly public services soar, while those aristocrats' stocks soar even more than before as a result.

The latest poll on impeaching Obama shows that whereas only 19% of Americans supported impeaching Bill Clinton when Republicans started pushing for it in 1998, 33% of Americans already favor impeaching Obama right now (18-20 July 2014). That figure is 3% higher than the 30% who favored George W. Bush's impeachment in the same poll taken during 30 August through 2 September 2006, when the nation was absorbing his lie about his being certain regarding the continued existence of "Saddam's WMD" -- his actually fake "justification" for invading. Democrats in Congress then did not press for GWB's impeachment, because they feared it would be seen as "partisan." What would be their excuse now, when they actually need to do their job in order to prevent their Party from going down the toilet?

Furthermore, as that same poll-report also shows, that 19% rose to 29% by six months later, when the impeachment-vote actually took place. Starting with a 33% base now, outright majority-support for impeaching President Obama would certainly be within reach, especially because it would be led by Democrats (against a fake one of themselves), and because the case against Obama would be vastly stronger and far more serious than Monica Lewinsky’s stained dress.

Granted: the vast majority of Democrats are (as all polls show) so uninformed and misinformed as to think that impeaching Obama would be attacking the Party instead of preserving and restoring it. They're still Obama's suckers. But Democrats in Congress are not. They have a job to do, both for their Party, and, even more importantly, for their country.

Will they do it?

If not, then here is one more Democratic voter who will be becoming an "Independent." But I then certainly wouldn't ever vote again for the Democrat who represents me in the U.S. House of Representatives, to whom I have communicated all of these facts.

On 30 June 2014, Gallup headlined "Americans Losing Confidence in All Branches of U.S. Gov't," and the next day, July 1st, they bannered, "Americans Less Satisfied With [level of] Freedom." That second poll reported also that ever since Obama entered the White House, the percentage of Americans answering "Yes" to the following question has risen from 66% then to 79% now: "Is corruption widespread throughout the government in this country?" This soaring sense of public corruption cannot be good news for political incumbents. Americans now are becoming alarmed at Washington's corruption. Congressional Democrats have one way to show that they're breaking away from the banksters' President. It would be a game-change, and not only for them but for the country.

America needs it. Who will step forward, then, to do what America needs to be done?

If the pressures from the Republican Party base succeed in getting a House Republican to come forth with an impeachment bill before any House Democrat does, then the bill will cite Republican reasons, and Democrats in both the House and the Senate will need to vote against it (because of its phony reasons), and they’ll have permanently lost their only chance to redeem not just the nation but themselves, and especially their Party. That’s why Obama is trying to goad House Republicans into doing it -- so as to protect himself. But his success in that regard would destroy his (nominal) Party. And that’s precisely why a House Republican just might do it. House Democrats would be colossal failures if they don’t do it first, citing (authentically) Democratic, true, reasons (of which there are many). That would have John Boehner tearing his hair out. The stakes in this are immense.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of Christ's Ventriloquists: The Event that Created Christianity.