Impeachment is usually discussed with the implicit or explicit understanding that, while the process is important, Trump will probably not be removed from office. Those who do not think the Democrats should move forward on impeachment point out that removing Trump is a nonstarter since you’d need 67 votes in the Senate. Those who believe that Democrats should impeach argue that the process of impeachment—standing up for the Constitutional order, letting people know that Trump is violating the Constitution, putting forward evidence, holding hearings—is valuable in itself, whatever the outcome.
I lean towards thinking that the impeachment process would be valuable in itself. But I also think that there is a small chance that come 2027, Democrats may in fact have a plausible path to actually removing Trump.
“Plausible” does not mean “likely,” and I think that there are a bunch of things which would have to align before there’s even a small chance of the Senate voting for removal. But it’s worth thinking about what would have to happen to increase those chances. And it’s also worth recognizing impeachment with a real chance of success (even if small) is going to look different than impeachment where failure is a foregone conclusion.
I think two things have to happen to create a (narrow) path to impeachment. First there would need to be a blue wave. And second, Trump would need to overreact in catastrophic ways to that blue wave.
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Blue wave
Currently, Republican polling is collapsing across the country. In the House, FiftyPlusOne gives Democrats a 96% chance to win, with the median outcome of Democrats winning around 235 seats. The Senate forecast gives Democrats a 62% chance to win, with the median outcome at 51D-49R.
With 51 Democrats, the chances of a removal vote are pretty small; you’d need 15 Republicans to vote to convict Trump. However, currently Democrats are at least slightly ahead in polling in 52 states and tied in one (Iowa.) They have also seen polling shift dramatically in their direction in a range of states (KS, SC, FL, NE, SD, MT).
So, imagine that these trends continue. In November, Democrats end up with 250 seats in the House and 56 or 57 seats in the Senate. They also come close in a couple of very unlikely places—say, a five-point spread in Mississippi and/or South Dakota.
This would mean (obviously) that the Democrats would need five or six fewer Republicans to remove Trump than in a less overwhelming win. It would also mean that Republicans, even in safe Republican seats, would be very worried about 2028 and the consequences of two more years of Trump on their future election prospects. Republican incumbents in competitive IA, NC, AK, and IA and KS, all of whose terms are up in 2028, would see a bleak reelection effort ahead. Removing Trump would be divisive and harm Republicans overall, since his supporters would be alienated, and he himself might try to sabotage the GOP in 2028. But if the blue wave is big enough, even the thickest Republicans would have to think about whether sticking with Trump would be more damaging than jettisoning him.
Trump does divisive and unconstitutional shit
Probably, under normal circumstances, even a massive blue wave would not lead Republicans to remove Trump. Their preference would be to hunker down and hope that things got slightly better for 2028 than they had been in 2026.
However, Trump is never normal circumstances. The last time he faced defeat in an election, in 2020, he spent months attempting to overthrow the results and then staged an armed insurrection which caused his approval to plummet and split his party in ways that have ongoing repercussions. The coup also led to an impeachment and a Senate vote in which seven Republicans voted for removal, leading to a 57-43 outcome.
Obviously, 57 is not 67. But the vote does suggest that sometimes, under some circumstances, some Republicans do have a line, especially when Trump puts them actually physically in danger.
What might Trump do after the 2026 election that could lead to a Republican backlash? Since it’s Trump, the mind boggles at the possibilities. We know he will deny the election results. He could try to bring lawsuits. He could also try to bully state representatives into refusing to certify elections, as he has in the past.
And from there, who knows? He could call on ICE agents to seize ballots. He could call on the military to seize the House and Senate. He could even specifically target some Republicans and frame them as enemies—perhaps verbally attacking, or even trying to arrest, Wyoming or Utah leaders who support mail-in voting. We know Trump doesn’t really recognize any limits. He’s tried to use violent to overthrow elections before.
Actions like this would be extremely dangerous and would damage democracy even if they didn’t succeed. (A military coup which succeeded would end democracy, period.) So these are not things to hope for!
They are possibilities though. And were Trump to attempt the more extreme ends of election interference, I think we would see many of the dynamics we saw in the 2020 coup—though exacerbated, since Trump’s approval is starting out much lower, and he has two more years in office. Public opinion would fall perhaps as low as 25% approval; many of Trump’s allies would denounce him in order to try to get out of the blast radius. Democrats would feel impelled to impeach. And some Republicans would vote for removal. Maybe enough to actually get rid of him.
Strategies for removal
If Democrats have a good or great but not overwhelming midterms, if Trump’s election denial is confined mostly to angry social media posts and sulking, then the impeachment process would probably be about highlighting crimes rather than pushing for actual removal. In that case, there would be incentive to look to bring a range of charges, and to focus on things that will be most humiliating or most damaging to the president. That could include his Epstein stonewalling, but also quite possibly his illegal war in Iran (which is incredibly unpopular), his personal corruption, his illegal use of the Justice Department for political prosecutions, and so forth.
If, however, we are in a position where there is a real possibility of picking up 10-12 Republican votes and removing Trump, the calculus changes. The Republicans, in that situation, would have a lot of say over which charges are brought and which you’d want to avoid. The Iran war has a good deal of Republican support, and asshole hawks probably wouldn’t be willing to vote to remove a president for foreign policy abuses anyway. If Republicans aren’t going to vote for removal, then you go ahead with those charges because fuck them. If there’s a real possibility that they will remove him if you let them pick the grounds of removal, though—well, you let them pick the grounds of removal.
Even in the best-case scenario, in other words, removal would involve painful trade-offs. Nor would removal solve all our problems, or anywhere near. A Vance presidency is an awful prospect too, even if he would likely be severely chastened following a brutal midterm loss and the impeachment and conviction of his fascist leader. And it’s worth emphasizing again that even if everything aligns, Republicans have major partisan incentives not to remove Trump, and they may well decide that nothing Trump does is as damaging to the party as attempting to eject him.
But despite all that, there is a path that might end in Trump’s removal, and given current polls, we seem to be taking our first steps down that path right now. Whether we’ll actually get rid of Trump is another question. I think it’s useful to remember, though, that the future is hard to predict, and while often that means you don’t see the awfulness coming, it can also mean that good things that seem impossible right now can look less so when time passes. A year ago, the conventional wisdom was that Democrats had no path to a Senate majority; now they are favored. A year from now, Donald Trump will probably still be president. But even that is not set in stone.
In addition to your excellent points, I would add that if it happens, it will probably happen fast. The House investigation into Nixon's role of Watergate may have begun in October 1973, and formal hearings began in May 1974, but only in late July, with the Supreme Court forcing Nixon to release the Watergate tapes, was there a sufficient Republican swing against Nixon that led him to resign rather than be impeached and convicted.