The Democrats Will Never Learn That Shame Isn't Enough

On Tuesday, Nancy Pelosi followed up a controversial New York Times interview in which she said House Democrats should not impeach Donald Trump with a speech in which she asserted that the president is “goading” Democrats into impeachment because it would help him politically. Pelosi and her fellow party leaders appear committed to a strategy of repudiating Trump's corruption by waiting for a “big” Democratic win in the national elections 18 months from now, rather than by exercising their constitutional powers.

What's interesting about this is not just that it seemingly misreads the dynamics of the moment, but that it is the same strategy Democrats have used to approach all of this century's political crises: declining to punish the people responsible for them because of the belief that doing so would be “divisive” and the expectation that public shame—a collective “coming to our senses”—would prevent the problem from recurring instead. Remarkably, this strategy has failed every time they've tried it. Look!