When you express skepticism about impeaching Donald Trump to some comrades on the Left, there’s a reflexive, almost formulaic, reaction. You don’t understand how terrible he is, and how great the urgency of booting him is. The man is a walking insult to our Constitution! Sure, the articles of impeachment may not cover his worst crimes, but hey, we can turn it all to our advantage. Max Sawicky deftly assembles all of this in the first hundred words of his polemic.

Leaving aside the Constitution, because it’s part of the problem — Trump wouldn’t be president were it not for that near-unalterable relic of slavery days, the Electoral College — one can concede some of this. Yes, Trump is awful, and it would be a blessing to be rid of him. He’s a bigot, a grifter, and a would-be authoritarian. But impeaching him less than a year before the election is not the answer to much of anything. It’s a distraction from ejecting him in the most definitive way possible: beating him decisively in an election.