Except for those in districts that are deeply, deeply blue, Democratic Congressional nominees won't be making the impeachment of President Donald Trump a campaign issue this fall. There's no percentage for them in doing so. For Democrats in contested districts, the "I-word", like Voldemort, is the thing that shall not be spoken. All it does is subject one to criticism for being too partisan and insufficiently interested in affordability, health care and other issues that pollsters tell us interest voters far more than the seemingly abstract issue of abuse of presidential power.

But "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump," the recently published account by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan of the last 20 months of Trump's gleeful, largely unchecked abuse of power, is a compendium of arrogance, titanic self-dealing, the crude deployment of government for personal gain and the assault on the rule of law so overwhelming as to challenge the conventional wisdom that if Democrats retake control of the House, impeachment of Trump is a bad idea because "it won't work."

The arguments against impeachment are familiar, reasonable ones. The two-thirds Senate vote necessary to convict Trump and remove him from office will never happen. Two prior impeachments, along with criminal convictions, numerous well-founded indictments on federal and state felony charges and a finding that Trump committed sexual assault, had no effect on half the country. Indeed, the only thing that has made a dent in Trump's approval rating is the high cost of gasoline. None of this suggests that another impeachment, resulting in acquittal and generating another claim of "Total Exoneration!" is worth the effort.

But there's this: The historically egregious record of Trump's orders that his government investigate and prosecute his critics and political opponents. His flagrant, massive sale of the Oval Office to those ready to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into his and his family's bank accounts. His relentless violation of federal laws. Trump is an openly lawless president who proudly proclaims that he can do whatever he wants, and who is backed in this by a Supreme Court dominated by his appointees. That Court has effectively mandated that he cannot ever be prosecuted for any crime he commits as president, regardless of how criminal his motive is.

Anyone who thinks that the assault on American democracy that began on Jan. 20, 2025 is going to subside over the next two years is not thinking.

Even if one believes that impeachment will not deter Trump in the slightest from persisting in a shameful campaign of abuse, surely the prospect of resigning ourselves to there being no consequences whatsoever will reinforce his confidence that there are no limitations on his power, and that he has nothing to fear from exercising it as he wishes.

If his abuse of power does not trigger impeachment, it follows inexorably that such abuse will be normalized, likely permanently, with the pernicious message delivered that it is acceptable — because it will have been accepted.

A House impeachment conducted methodically, setting out the facts in an unhurried fashion that the media will have no choice but to cover, documenting this president's abuse of power chapter and verse, will establish a record. It will be a statement for all time that this conduct is incompatible with what Americans believe they stand for.

Finally, it will be a needed rebuke to the cynical presupposition that a power-hungry attack on American democracy doesn't really matter to Americans — and a challenge to all of us to say that it does.

Here's how the Republican-controlled House put it in urging impeachment of former President Bill Clinton in 1998: "The ultimate issue is whether the president's course of conduct is such as to affect adversely the office of the President and also the administration of justice, and whether he has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as president and subversive to the rule of law and constitutional government."

In Donald Trump's case, there's only one answer to this question. Which means that if Democrats win back the House, they need to answer it.

Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States Attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment and a longtime columnist, he writes on politics, national security, human rights and the Middle East.

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