Wednesday’s impeachment of President Donald Trump was one of the strangest political events in memory: A historic rebuke to a president delivered with just days remaining in his term, with seemingly little at stake—and a Senate away on recess, in no rush to take a vote on whether to convict.
Notably, 10 Republicans joined the vote, making it the most bipartisan vote in the slim history of impeachments. But how much will any of this really matter? Does it stand any chance of bringing Americans together in rejecting Trump’s instigation of the Capitol riot—or will the rushed process just make an already stubborn partisan divide worse? To put it in context, Politico Magazine reached out to a group of impeachment experts and political insiders for some insight on what’s really at stake. We asked them two questions: How will this impeachment affect the next four years in politics? And what about impeachment itself, a strange Constitutional weapon once almost unthinkable, and now used twice in just over a year?