Nov.11

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Project 2027, Part I: Impeachment

We will begin this item, and this series, by sharing our 2026 Republican Party "autopsy." Here it is:

Your party is led by a sociopath who cares nothing for the country or for the Republican Party, and is only interested in enriching himself, in stroking his own ego, and in doing battle with his many and varied enemies, real and perceived. Nearly all of the other officeholders in your party enable this person, but without being able to channel any of his electoral mojo.

Until something in the previous paragraph changes, you will continue to lose elections where he is not on the ballot.

That concludes our autopsy.

In other words, post-election, there really isn't very much interesting to say about the state of the Republican Party. Especially since the immediate post-election maneuvering—the promotion of Stephen Miller to White House Chief-of-Staff, the election of Jim Jordan as the GOP leader in the House, the retention of John Thune as the GOP leader in the Senate—makes clear that there will be no change of course (at least, not anytime soon).

The Democrats, on the other hand, have been handed a historic opportunity. The voters have sent a clear message (several messages, actually), and have handed the blue team the largest majorities, in both chambers, of the 21st century, along with a sizable chunk of the state-level offices. There are obviously challenges, as well—herding the cats is never easy, not controlling the White House is a rather serious impediment, and who knows where the economy is headed. If the Democrats cannot seize the moment, then this could be 1974 all over again. But if they rise to the occasion, well, it could be 1932 all over again if the Democrats get the trifecta in 2029.

That is what we want to write about in this series. We were initially going to call it "Democratic Autopsy," because that is the term often used for these post-election analyses. But because it's usually the loser that gets autopsied, and the Democrats clearly weren't the loser, that didn't seem quite right. So, we went with "Project 2027."

Project 2025, which our chosen title references, is an exercise in advocacy. It is a wish list from the Heritage Foundation, along with ideas about how to achieve their goals. The various Project 2028s, all of them with a name derived from "Project 2025," are the same thing, except with left-wing goals. Please do not interpret this series as an exercise in advocacy or lobbying; we just couldn't come up with a better name that succinctly describes what we plan to do.

The guiding concept here, in so many words, is this: We are going to imagine that a think tank, or some such organization, has come to us and asked us: "Given what you saw in the election, and given what you know of politics, what do you think the Democrats' battle plan should be for the next year or two?" In other words, we're not writing up a wish list. We are writing up a list of lessons we think the blue team should draw, based on the past few decades, the past few years, and, of course, on the election results. There will be things we think are correct lessons, and that we will lay out, that we are sure have no chance of actually coming to fruition.

Because we are talking about lessons, we came dangerously close to calling this series "The Fog of War." That is the name of the documentary in which Robert McNamara talked about the lessons he drew from his career, particularly his time as Secretary of Defense. And the title of the film is a play on The Art of War, which is also a set of useful lessons. We similarly considered "How to Win Friends and Influence People" as the title. But all of these names, while offering greater fidelity to the idea behind this series, won't make any sense to someone who did not read our explainer. Project 2027 is considerably more easy to grasp. And we'll just have to hope that either people will have read this explainer, or else they will understand that we don't do advocacy.

We have enough to say that we've already sketched out 12 entries in the series. We reserve the right to add more. Our subject today, as readers can see from the headline, is impeachment.

To start with—and we have been watching this closely and thinking about it carefully for many months—we think the Democrats simply must impeach someone. From a political standpoint, the base—both the longtime stalwarts, and many of the new arrivals—are sick of misconduct and of corruption, and an impeachment would signal in a very visible way that the blue team has gotten the message. From a good governance standpoint, the shady members of the Trump administration—and there are many of them—need to be served notice that there's a new sheriff in town.

At the same time, we are equally confident that the first target should not be Donald Trump. There is no way he would be removed, at this point, so a Trump impeachment would just be for show. It would also play into right-wing/Fox narratives that the claims against Trump aren't serious, and that impeachment is just a knee-jerk, politically motivated maneuver. Oh, and impeaching Trump would be politically unpopular. There have been several recent polls of this, but the latest from Reuters/Ipsos, which was just released yesterday, is both representative and instructive. They have Trump's approval at 32%, so this is not some sort of MAGA-friendly sample. And yet, 42% of respondents said it would be bad for the country to impeach Trump, as opposed to 33% who said it would be good for the country. Trump impeachment #3 might be politically advisable at some point, after he does something obviously impeachable (say, ignoring Congressional directives on the Iran War). But it's not advisable right now.

So, it will have to be one of Trump's underlings. And the obvious target is Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) actually twice took his shot at impeaching Hegseth (you can read the articles of impeachment here). The first attempt was derailed when Mike Johnson adjourned the House until after the election. And the second attempt was derailed yesterday, when a procedural vote failed 211-204, in part because many Democrats were occupied at an event on the other side of the Capitol.

This is a little bit of a setback for Massie, although he's moved on to a new project, namely a resolution calling for an end to the Iran War under the terms of the War Powers Act. It's not much of a setback for the Democrats. They had to vote for impeachment, because they don't want a vote NOT to impeach to be held against them. However, there was no guarantee that Johnson would actually send the articles of impeachment over to the Senate before this session of Congress expired (then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, sat on the first articles of impeachment against Trump for about a month, while she negotiated to make sure there would be a real trial). Even if Johnson had delivered the articles of impeachment, John Thune might have pencil-whipped them right into the trash, without a trial.

Once the Democrats take control, they'll have more than enough votes in the House to impeach. And they'll be able to make sure that there's a real trial in the Senate. They will also have considerably more votes in the Senate (as many as 9 more) than they do now, which makes the possibility of removal from office a bit less remote. And there are plenty of arguments for impeaching Hegseth:

1. Military Morale Is Crumbling: Hegseth and his boss just love to lavish money on the military. And they love to issue forth with lots of cock talk. But this is not impressing the rank and file troops. Common Defense does an annual poll of active-duty service members. They released their latest a few weeks ago, and the numbers are pretty eye-opening. Fully two-thirds of active-duty service members believe decisions are being made primarily for political purposes, rather than readiness or national defense, and more than half of respondents say that makes them more likely to leave the military when their current hitch is up. About half don't support the war in Iran, exactly half disapprove of Trump, and 55% disapprove of Hegseth.
   
   
2. Military Discipline Is Crumbling: Naturally, the general public is not going to be privy to a lot of the information that would be needed to assess the current state of military discipline. Nonetheless, there are clues that are visible even to John Q. Public. For example, the boards that have been convened to expel trans members from the service have defied that directive in 9 of the 12 cases that have been adjudicated.
   
   
3. High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Part I: We imagine that everyone reading this knows that the Constitution is silent on exactly what qualifies as "high crimes and misdemeanors," and that Gerald Ford famously said that it is "whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history." Nonetheless, by any reasonable standard, Hegseth is guilty of such offenses.
   
   To take just one example, there's the news that broke this week, about how Hegseth decides on high-level promotions. His staff keeps secret files with printouts from the Internet that speak to certain "aspects" of a candidate's résumé. Specifically, if there is evidence that a candidate supported COVID-19 vaccination, participated in the withdrawal from Afghanistan, backed DEI initiatives, or is friendly with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley (who has been critical of Trump since retiring from the military), then that candidate is out. This approach has had the feature-not-a-bug effect of discriminating against candidates who are women and or minorities, which is illegal. Further, the candidates are not able to see or respond to the files containing the adverse information. That is also illegal.
   
   
4. High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Part II: Some may feel that bureaucratic shenanigans, even sleazy ones, aren't enough to merit removal. Very well; what about something a little bloodier? Hegseth was closely involved in the strikes on alleged drug-running boats. Exactly what the authority or evidence for these strikes was has never been clear, and without such evidence then the Secretary has aided and abetted murder. Further, per a leaked report published in July, the strikes have done absolutely nothing to reduce the quantity or the lethality of the cocaine making its way into the U.S.
   
   For a second example, the U.S. bomb strike that killed 120 school-age girls happened because the U.S. had out-of-date maps. And why were the maps out-of-date? Because the Pentagon office responsible for that task had its budget cut. And who cut the budget? Pete Hegseth.
   
   The articles of impeachment, which are linked above, lay out the details for these crimes and several others.
   
   
5. Conviction Is Possible: There is, as we note above, no chance that Donald Trump will be removed from office, even if he is impeached. With Hegseth, by contrast, you can squint your eyes and say... maybe. Depending on how the races in Alaska and Mississippi turn out, the Democrats would probably need about a dozen Republican votes. We can imagine some Republicans voting for removal because they agree Hegseth needs to be removed. We can imagine others voting for removal because they want to use Hegseth as a scapegoat for what happened on Election Day, so as to avoid having to openly blame Donald Trump. There might even be a couple members who vote for removal because they don't want a vote to save Hegseth to be used against them in 2028. It's not exactly the same, but Sen. Susan Collins' (R-ME) vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh might be the single biggest reason she'll be out of a job in January.

If Hegseth is indeed impeached and removed, it could set a very interesting precedent. The whole notion of impeachment was cribbed from England, as so much of the Constitution was. And when Parliament invented this tool, about 700 years ago, it was the best idea they could come up with to check abuses of power by the king. They could not remove the monarch, but they could certainly remove his ministers, even if they were acting on the king's orders. The U.S. has never used impeachment in that way, but it could certainly start doing so with Hegseth, If so, that would be at least a partial remedy to the Supreme Court's ruling making Trump a king, for legal purposes.

So, that is our first lesson for the Democrats: Impeach Pete Hegseth.

We have a brief poll on impeachment; click here to weigh in. We'll share the results in the next entry in the series.

In that next entry, we will talk about keeping, or jettisoning, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Chuck Schumer (both D-NY) as the Party's leaders in Congress. If readers have thoughts on the subject, let us know at comments@electoral-vote.com. (Z, V, L & A)