that’s the day impeachment proceed-
ings begin,” he said. “The passion on
the left is too great.”
The Democratic leadership contin-
ues to insist otherwise. Nadler eventu-
ally defeated Lofgren in a vote by the
full Democratic caucus in the House,
118–72. Their diferences haven’t proven
especially divisive, and they are by and
large in accord on the issue of impeach-
ment. As Lofgren put it, “We have a
sense of history and obligation, though
that might not be exciting to the lib-
eral base.”O
n a pleasant Tuesday night in
May, the liberal base in Des
Moines showed up early at an event
space near downtown. An hour before
Tom Steyer was to conduct what he
called a town meeting in support of
Trump’s impeachment, more than a
hundred people had lined up outside,
waiting to be admitted. “This Presi-
dent has failed his most important re-
sponsibility—protecting our country,”
Steyer says in one of his cable-news
commercials. “The first question is
Why? What is in his and his family’s
business dealings with Russia that he
is so determined to hide that he would
betray our country? And the second
question is Why is he still President?”
Thanks to the advertisements, as well
as appeals on Facebook, Steyer’s self-
funded operation, called NeedTo-
Impeach.com, has drawn millions ofsupporters. In Des Moines, more than
four hundred people turned up, filling
the room to overflowing. “I go to po-
litical events in Iowa all the time,” Pat
Rynard, who runs a Web site on local
politics called Iowa Starting Line, said
as he watched the crowd stream in.
“The people here are not the people
who usually go to political events in
Iowa. This is more people than the
Democratic candidates for governor
draw for their rallies. He’s mobilizing
a whole new group.”
Through sheer force of personal-
ity—and about forty million dollars
of his own money—Steyer has be-
come the public face of the movement
to impeach Trump. He has forty full-
time stafers, and on his national tour
he conducts town meetings, talks to
local news media, and raises his own
profile. (By political standards, the
town halls are lavish afairs, with top-
notch production values. The Des
Moines event featured what caterers
call “heavy” hors d’œuvres for every-
one.) Steyer’s town halls, which last
about an hour, begin with a presenta-
tion of one of the latest impeachment
commercials, after which Steyer gives
brief remarks—lasting about ten min-
utes—and then takes questions from
the audience. The curious thing about
his event in Des Moines was that it
didn’t have much to do with impeach-
ment. In his opening comments, he
mentioned that he had eight groundsfor impeachment, though he didn’t
identify them. (They are spelled out
on his Web site, and are basically an
expanded version of the five counts in
Representative Cohen’s resolution.)
He also mentioned, but didn’t name,
a group of legal scholars who support
his campaign, and he did the same for
a group of psychiatrists who asserted,
in a panel discussion he hosted, that
Trump is unfit for the Presidency, as
well as a “dangerous, unstable, and de-
teriorating person.”
Steyer, who is sixty, made his name
in politics raising money for John Kerry
and Barack Obama, and then became
a climate-change activist. He has now
positioned himself outside traditional
political categories. It’s a strategy, al-
beit with very diferent goals, that
Trump pursued in his political career.
Bannon, expressing admiration for
Steyer’s tactics, told me, “Steyer is a
little bit the Steve Bannon of the left.
The Democratic Party has not yet had
its civil war. The populist movement
on the left has not happened yet, but
Steyer sees it coming, sees the anger
behind it.” In Steyer’s remarks in Des
Moines, he attacked both parties. “The
political establishment does not like
what we have to say here,” he told the
crowd. “They say we are normalizing
impeachment. We are not normaliz-
ing impeachment. If we ignore what
Donald Trump has done, what we’re
doing is normalizing his behavior.”
Asked at one point about the last elec-
tion, Steyer said, “Two people won the
2016 election: Bernie Sanders, who is
not a Democrat, and Donald Trump,
who is not a Republican.” Steyer also
funds, to the tune of thirty-two
million dollars, a voter-registration
project aimed at young people, called
NextGen America, that is ostensibly
nonpartisan. Steyer is using impeach-
ment much the same way Trump used
issues like immigration: to show that
he’s with the Party’s base, not with
its elders.
In our conversations, Steyer showed
that he had mastered the politician’s
art of ducking the question of whether
he’s running for President. “I believe
that we are on a disastrous path,” he
replied when I asked. “There is an ab-
solute void of explaining to Americans
what the real stakes are.” A questionTO WHITE NOISEYou are the sound silence
makes in its sleep, air madevisible by smoke, deepest
breath with no breathing,O my personal ocean, O un-
broken shush of mortality,O my digital sister, thank
you, thank you for keepingthe children from climbing
over the fence of sleep.—Carrie Fountain