Joel Mathis

Republicans defending Donald Trump from impeachment keep making a curious argument: Of course, Donald Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton, received nearly 66 million votes . That's ... more. But she lost the Electoral College, which places more emphasis on where voters cast their ballots than the number of votes a candidate receives, and Donald Trump won the presidency. Ever since, Republicans have argued for the rightness of the Electoral College by arguing the founders had antimajoritarian designs on protecting the people's rights, and it's a lousy argument  -- one I guarantee they wouldn't be making if they'd lost two elections in 20 years despite winning the popular vote (just as most Democrats would also be on the other side of the issue) -- but fine. That's what makes the "63 million voters" argument against impeachment so interesting. It relies on a particular kind of democratic legitimacy that Donald Trump hasn't earned

The next election is sacred, too. In recent weeks, Republicans have defended President Trump against the prospect of impeachment by suggesting that Congress would be undoing the results of the 2016 presidential election by removing its winner from office. If Democrats in Congress were acting in the complete absence of wrongdoing by the president, the GOP argument would be powerful. But there is plenty of evidence of wrongdoing, and the Republican argument is misguided. It isn’t difficult to understand why. But let’s break down what the president is accused of doing, and why it is impeachable. The allegation is this: That President Trump abused his power… ...to pressure Ukraine officials to investigate Joe Biden and his family… ...in order to undermine Biden’s chances of winning the White House in 2020. Again: President Trump used his official power — the power voters gave him — to put his thumb on the scale for the 2020 election. The 2016 election was important. It w