Donald Trump should resign. Congress should demand it

I do not think the president actually believed it Thursday when he said that any attempt to impeach and remove him “would destroy the Democrat Party.” He added that it would be “impeachment for no reason, what for having a successful country? Our country is more successful now than at any time in its history.” That claim was barely plausible before Tuesday. The midterms, however, were a generational wipeout. They were bigger than any wave election going back half a century. The result is that Donald Trump’s name is mud. While his delusions know no bounds, I don’t think even an old scammer like him believes it.

The damage is deeper than Trump cares to know. The Democrats reversed the decade and a half that began with the 2010 midterms. During that time, Republicans repeatedly routed Democrats for not only federal offices, but state and local offices, down to the level of town comptroller, boards of education and county commissioner. There’s a legion of sheriffs that was swept into office by the white-power reaction to Barack Obama’s election. Tuesday’s midterms rolled back all that. The Democrats' numbers are now where they were in 2008.

“We really haven’t seen anything like this in 50 years,” Amy Walters, the editor-in-chief of the Cook Political Report, told New York magazine, noting that it took 15 years for the Democratic Party to come back from the “shellacking” of 2010. “We’re talking about the federal level, but it’s the state level as well. And so that is also a seismic change.”

This historic reversal should alarm Trump. His hold on the Republicans originated during the backlash against America's first Black president. That backlash was the context in which conservatism became white nationalism, or maga. (Remember that Trump was one of the original “birthers.") Tuesday’s elections restored the Democrats to the early years of Obama’s first term. That suggests that the backlash is now finally spent, which suggests that Trump is also finally spent. Exhaustion begets exhaustion, and while he may be acting like he’s untouchable, given the wholesale collapse of his coalition, Trump is very much touchable.

I’m sure there are some Senate Republicans who are still willing to defend the president, but at this point, it feels like the Democrats’ game to win or lose, not Trump’s. So the question is how to proceed, and one option seems obvious when you think about it: ask Trump to resign.

To be sure, Trump is a demented narcissist who has no future. In essence, he’s a suicide bomber. He would rather blow up the party than let any Republican think about succeeding him. But that’s all the more reason why his party might want his departure to be a consequence of choice rather than of impeachment. The Republicans would have to spend capital they don’t have defending him against Democratic aggression. That might please GOP voters still clinging to the glory days. But to spare themselves from going down with a sinking ship, the Republicans might prefer he leave on his own, “in service to the nation.”

I admit I don’t know what incentives they might offer. What I do know is things are not going to get better for them as long as Donald Trump is in the White House. His reaction to the midterms pretty much justified their outcome. While previous presidents acknowledged defeat, and their own role in it, Trump denied having anything to do with the wipeout and chose to spend Wednesday giving reporters a tour of a new ballroom construction site, as if he had not just seen Americans reject the open corruption that a new ballroom construction site represents. It was enough for a CNN talking head to wonder aloud if he were “dissociating.” “This is how he wants to spend his time in Washington and now, because he has only two years left, he thinks he can focus even more on some of these vanity projects.” 

But the biggest reason the Republicans should be thinking about asking the president to resign came today when he replaced Susie Wiles with Stephen Miller. As the White House chief of staff, Wiles is chaos incarnate, but she is not directly responsible for dispatching a paramilitary police force to harass, terrorize and murder immigrants and citizens around the country. Stephen Miller is. Along with the economy, ICE is why Hispanic voters revolted against the Republicans. Sixty-eight percent of them disapprove of Trump’s deportation policies, per the Associated Press. They were key to flipping a Senate seat in Kansas. They were key to turning all of Texas blue. Trump should have fired Miller to show he learned a lesson. By elevating Miller, however, the president is telling the world, but especially his own party, that he is going to double down on the worst that the American people rejected.

Again, things are not going to get better. The Democrats should capitalize on that by asking Trump to resign. There is no downside to asking, no cost to them. All they need to do is point out how it would be better for everyone if this demented narcissist, who has no interest in being president, not to mention being commander-in-chief, would leave on his own. The American people have spoken. A new era has come. The old days are over. Yet he’s clearly not hearing the message. So it’s up to his party to step up and explain what’s happening. The Democrats can say Trump and the Republicans have a choice: the easy way or the hard way. 

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I don’t want to hear about the vice president. As I said before, no one likes JD Vance. He has humiliated himself so often, he can’t be trusted or taken seriously by anyone. But by asking Trump to resign, the Democrats can exploit his cynicism and ambition. He has already blamed Trump’s war against Iran for midterm losses. (And Trump agreed!) If there’s a chance for him to be president before the first ballot is cast in 2028, it’s possible he will take it. And if he does, that might hasten the unwinding of the Trump era even faster than it already is. 

The Democrats have spent years on defense.

Here's a rare chance to go on offense at no cost.

Coda

As I was writing this piece, Stephen Miller got on the TV. After the midterms, he's no longer as scary as he was, but he's still pretty damn scary, as his boss, a demented narcissist, just gave him a promotion in the White House. Pay attention to Jake Tapper. The news anchor is a cynical opportunist. He knows which way the wind is blowing. It's not hard to imagine him, and others like him in the media, seeing Trump's resignation as bipartisan compromise.

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