We have more articles on Donald Trump in this issue than I like. Trump thrives on attention—of both the positive and negative variety. His personal ratings are, and always will be, his chief concern. So while we have been dedicated, for the most part, to covering on-the-ground activism since the election, we are turning our attention to the President in this issue to lay out a detailed argument for his removal.
John Nichols wrote the book on presidential impeachment. Back in 2006, in his classic work The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism, Nichols made the case that impeachment is an essential instrument of democracy, designed by the founders as an important check on executive power.
In this issue of the magazine, he writes that the time to take up that instrument is now.
“The truth is, you could make a credible legal and Constitutional case for impeachment against any recent President,” Nichols told me when we were discussing his piece. There is no problem, he stressed, finding sufficient Constitutional justifications (on war powers alone, there were ample grounds to impeach Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama). Impeachment is fundamentally a political act, and requires political will. And the political will to impeach Donald Trump is growing.
We are proud to publish the case for impeachment, laid out by Nichols in this issue, and to add The Progressive’s voice to the call to remove the worst, most corrupt, and most anti-democratic American President in modern times.
Managing Editor Bill Lueders takes on another fundamental Constitutional issue in these pages, one that has been a bedrock value of this magazine since its founding, with his report on the campus free speech debate. In an essay that would bring a smile to the face of our late editor and free speech absolutist Erwin Knoll, Bill points out what’s wrong both with students preventing conservative speakers from making remarks on campus, and with the overwrought reaction of Republicans who want to punish the people who disrupt conservative speech. The solution to despicable political speech is more speech—not the aggressive suppression of ideas by campus thought police or overbearing government officials.
Publisher Norm Stockwell has a terrific interview with one of our favorite writers, Naomi Klein, who has written a whole book on Trump. “What I am trying to do is put Trump into some kind of historical context,” she explains. “I think there’s a way in which Trump is so bizarre and extreme that there is a narrative that tends to emerge around him which treats him like an aberration, as opposed to a logical conclusion of a great many trends.”
Among the trends Klein identifies is the rise of the “brand.” Not only corporations, but individual people are devoted to continually burnishing their personal brands. Marketing has permeated our culture to such a degree that our politics have merged with reality TV. If we are to resist the corporate takeover of every corner of our existence, we must recognize and fight back against this phenomenon.
As the start of a new school year nears, we have three great reports by our education writers Jeff Bryant, Ashana Bigard, and Emily Kaplan. They show, collectively, that a more humane vision of teaching can have a profound effect on the lives of children and can lead us toward a vision of ourselves as more than cogs in the corporate machine.
The brilliant economist Gordon Lafer reports on the relentless, fifty-state campaign by corporate lobbyists to do away with employee pensions, and why their vision is bad for all workers. And our good friend Scot Ross urges Democrats to wake up to the fact that student debt is a massively important issue to a whole generation—and one that will affect the outcome of future elections.
There’s more: Chris Persaud reports on how one community in Florida transformed itself when black voters became a political force. And Kate Aronoff updates us on the crucial work of Indivisible, the movement that is bringing together the broad swath of people who are determined to resist Donald Trump.
Keep the faith! And thank you for all you do!