Impeachment was never going to dislodge President Donald Trump from office, because the Senate was never going to vote to convict. Thus it is worth remembering Bernie Sanders’s early warning that impeachment could devolve into Trump dominating political attention at the expense of bread and butter issues that voters really care about.

Could there have been a left version of impeachment? Unlikely. But technically speaking that could have happened if a critique of class power had been the central issue. For that to have happened, emolument clause violations, and specifically domestic emolument clause violations, needed to be the central focus.

The two emolument clauses in the Constitution prevent gifts from foreign powers and limit presidential remuneration to only the presidential salary. Trump’s emoluments clause violations, to the extent we can determine without a legally empowered investigation, appear to involve payments made to him by way of booking large chunks of unused rooms at his hotels, and perhaps buying condominiums in his properties.