Should President Be Removed By Impeachment Or Election? UPDATED

[UPDATE Dec 3, 2019 1pm (Seattle):  The Permanent Select Committee On Intelligence's "TRUMP-UKRAINE IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY REPORT"  was released shortly after I posted this.]

Suppose you hired your CEO on a four year contract and the contract is up in 13 months.  But there's evidence of all sorts of abuses and crimes, both before and after you hired him.  And his personal style is nasty and arrogant, his policies even if they have some positive intent ignore the horrendous side effects they're causing, and your brand is deteriorating rapidly.  And he attacks anyone who raises any questions about his actions.

He does have some rabid supporters who ignore all the evidence and repeat your CEO's spurious allegations.

You're on the Board of Directors.  What do you do?  

There are few corporate boards that would wait until the contract ended to fire the CEO.  There's way too much damage he could still do before the contract expires.  The only way a Board of Directors would keep him on is if the board members were somehow dependent on the CEO for their future livelihoods and/or reputation.

That's the position Congress is now in.  There is a big difference though:  The board hired the CEO.  In Trump's case, he was elected by the shareholders, so to speak.

And using the 2020 election as cover, the Trump supporters are arguing that the timing is so close the Congress shouldn't "undo the 2016 election."  (Recognize that this implies that there is valid reason to impeach, but that it's just better to let the voters decide.)

There is a certain logic to that argument.

Elections are the will of the people and it's better that the people change the president than the congress.

But there are flaws here too:

1. Questions about the legitimacy of the 2016 election.
1.  Trump actually lost the popular vote in 2016 by nearly 3 million people.  While Trump argues that he 'won a landslide in the electoral college' that's not the measure that most Americans use to determine the voice of the people.  It's seen as a technical device, not the actual will of the people. And there is no doubt in any honest person's mind, that if the positions had been reversed (Trump won the popular vote and Clinton the electoral college) Trump's supporters would have been screaming about the election being stolen.  
2. We know now that the election was influenced by Russian interference.  We know clearly that Russians used Facebook to spread outrageous falsehoods in favor of Trump and against Clinton.  Without that campaign Trump likely wouldn't have won the electoral college.
3. We know that there was voter suppression by Republicans in 2016 and it's being used for 2020.  Various states purged valid voters from the voter registration lists.  Polls in black neighborhoods were in short supply in a number of states making it harder for people to vote.  Photo id cards were required to vote in some states.  
4. These problems combined helped Trump win the election.  And there's no guarantee that they won't be used again in 2020.  In fact there is strong evidence they are already happening.  Plus there is also the concern about tampering with voting machines.  We know of attacks on voting machines, but we don't know whether there was actually any successful operations to change the voting outcomes.  Without paper ballots as backup, such hacks will be hard to overcome without resorting to complete new elections. 
2. The Constitution gives Congress the power to remove the president when he's abusing the office and there is no question that that's happening.  
1. It's Congress' job to remove a bad president.  McConnell's made up rule about waiting for the election to put in a new Supreme Court justice in the last year of Obama's presidency was simply politics.  We know that if there is a vacancy before the next president is elected, that McConnell will scrap that rule, even if there are only two weeks left before the president leaves.  

So the argument about the elections is not nearly as strong as Republicans claim.  Plus there's a giant counterargument.

The damage Trump can do between now and January 20, 2020 (when he leaves office) is enormous.  Some examples:

1. There's clear evidence that many of Trump's actions benefit Putin and Russia to the detriment of the United States and the free world. (All his attempts to break up Western alliances from NATO to the EU to the Climate Agreement, to trying to lift sanctions on Russia.  
2. There's clear evidence that Trump is using the presidency to enrich his own companies and those of his children. 
3. There's evidence that Trump's business ties to countries like Turkey, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and others are influencing foreign policy with those nations
4. Trump is dismantling regulations that protect the environment and public lands and public health
5. Trump has interfered with the integrity of the Justice Department
6. Trump has encourage public hate groups in the US 
7. Trump has unnecessarily treated would-be asylum seekers cruelly and in violation of international law
8. Given massive tax breaks to the very wealthy increasing the levels of inequity in the US and increasing the long term debt of the US 

If Trump were impeached by January 2020, it would cut a year off the time Trump had to inflict further damage on the US and the world.

In my mind, impeachment is the only proper action to take here to reestablish the standards of government the US has attempted to follow over the last 200 years as well has to minimize further damage to the US and the world.  Doing the right thing is usually a better long term choice than playing with lots of possible scenarios that give one future advantages.

That said, if Trump is impeached, Pence would become president.  There is no guarantee that Pence wouldn't carry out many of Trump's terrible polices.  And he's likely to give Trump and his family members absolute pardons for any crimes they have committed or will commit.  And Trump's supporters would punish in the primaries any Republicans Senators who didn't support Trump.  Leading possibly to much weaker Republican candidates in the general election.

So, taking a very long term perspective, Democrats might be best served by forwarding the impeachment to the Senate and letting the Senate acquit Trump.  (Well, they don't have much power over what the Senate does.  Unless public opinion is fired up by future revelations. it's unlikely the Senate will vote to convict.

The amount of abuse that has already come out and that is likely to still come out, will convince the US voters to not only throw out Trump, but to give the Democrats a majority in the US Senate, as a response to the Republican Senate NOT doing its duty to convict Trump.

But this all assumes they can overcome Republican voter suppression, Russian interference in the elections, and the Constitutional skewing of power in the Senate that gives small (often rural) states very disproportionate power in the Senate.  Because of this Democrats in the Senate represent far more people than Republicans, but the Republicans have the majority  From the Guardian:

"Among the most eye-catching was a statistic showing Democrats led Republicans by more than 12 million votes in Senate races, and yet still suffered losses on the night and failed to win a majority of seats in the chamber. 

Constitutional experts said the discrepancy between votes cast and seats won was the result of misplaced ire that ignored the Senate electoral process. 

Because each state gets two senators, irrespective of population, states such as Wyoming have as many seats as California, despite the latter having more than 60 times the population. The smaller states also tend to be the more rural, and rural areas traditionally favor Republicans."

And GovTrack further notes that because of rules changes that used to require supermajorities for  approving appointments (as a way to protect the minority in the Senate) the percent of votes needed to approve has gotten lower and lower and

"we might see nominations confirmed by a coalition of states representing less than half of the country’s population."

But I think a fired up electorate can overcome some of these problems.  There are still many disillusioned people who do not vote.  Trump's administration has been the best example of why not voting is a terrible  idea.