Published: 25 March 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
IT IS RARE to find one of the 435 members of the US House of Representatives making the rounds on the talk shows that are a popular fixture of late-night American television. But Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin is no ordinary congressman. Since facing the nation as the lead prosecutor of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, Raskin has become a bit of a celebrity.
Thus, it was no surprise to find Raskin appearing recently on Seth Meyers NBC’s Late Night. Like many interviews conducted during the Covid-19 lockdown, Raskin sat with his bookshelf behind him. Over his left shoulder, prominently in view, was the sky-blue cover of Daniel Gordis’ Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn, the Middle East being one of many areas where Raskin seeks what he calls “the moral centre”.
As he told the Guardian in a 2018 interview: “It’s not my ambition to be in the political centre, which blows around with the wind. It’s my ambition to be in the moral centre and that’s why I call myself a progressive because I think our job is to find what’s right, the best that we can, and then bring the political centre to us - that’s what makes politics interesting and meaningful.”
Never shy about his political values, even in his first campaign for Congress in 2015 Raskin declared that he was running “because America needs effective progressive leadership to renew the momentum of popular democracy in America”.
At its core, Raskin’s progressivism entails a radical commitment to democracy, whether in his own country or the Middle-East. He strongly condemned the Netanyahu government for barring Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering Israel, telling National Public Radio that “strong democracies are not afraid of dissent and are not afraid of dialogue,” adding that his colleagues have “a right to disagree with Benjamin Netanyahu and his policies. They've got a right to support BDS, which I don't support.”
Raskin was horrified by the normalisation of anti-Semitism under Trump, referring to Trump’s final campaign ad which warned of “special interests” while displaying images of George Soros, Janet Yellen, and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein
Raskin brings a unique brand of realpolitik to the Israel-Palestine conflict. “If we can’t make peace between [the liberal Jewish advocacy group] J Street and [the more conservative] AIPAC,” he told the Times of Israel, “what are our hopes of making peace between Israel and the Palestinians?” Raskin has travelled to Israel under the auspices of both organisations.
Raskin is a firm supporter of the two-state solution and is a co-sponsor of House Resolution 326 which affirms that “only a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can ensure Israel's survival as a secure Jewish and democratic state and fulfil the legitimate aspirations for a Palestinian state.”
He questioned the Trump Administration’s endorsement of further annexations, wondering if Israel ultimately “would be a democratic state, or would it be something that would be an illiberal regime, based on principles that are not found in a modern constitutional ?”
Trump’s fearmongering, authoritarian politics are far indeed from Raskin’s moral centre. Raskin was among the nearly 70 congressional Democrats who declined to attend Trump’s 2017 inauguration, explaining, “I cannot stomach his relentless trafficking in bigotry, misogyny and fear”.
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Raskin, who organises trips to Washington’s Holocaust Museum for new members of Congress, was horrified by the normalisation of anti-Semitism under Trump, offering as an example Trump’s final campaign ad which warned of “special interests” while displaying images of George Soros, then Federal Reserve head Janet Yellen, and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, all of whom are Jewish.
As he told the Times of Israel, “that ad came as close to being anti-Semitic propaganda as anything seen in mainstream American politics in many decades. It trafficked in the basest anti-Semitic stereotypes.”
In his Guardian interview, Raskin’s moral centre is unabashedly progressive. He is a co-sponsor of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ Green New Deal legislation and has called climate change a “civilisational crisis”. He is also a co-sponsor of California Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal’s Medicare for All Act. His campaign for Congress was pro-union and pro-choice. He is a champion of gun reform, campaign finance reform, and of the constitution.
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But it is the constitution, the subject of his lifetime of legal scholarship at American University’s Washington College of Law, that stirs Raskin’s greatest passion. He told Seth Meyers that he “will not forgive for a long time” the Republican Senators who shirked their constitutional responsibility to fairly consider the evidence for Trump’s conviction.
It was Raskin who, after the January 6 insurrection, first told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that it was essential that Trump be impeached to draw a clear line over what was constitutionally acceptable behaviour.
Indeed, it was Raskin who, after the January 6 insurrection, first told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that it was essential that Trump be impeached to draw a clear line over what was constitutionally acceptable behaviour.
History may come to count Jamie Raskin among the notable champions of American democracy. As Abraham Lincoln mourned the death of his son Willie at the height of the Civil War, Raskin undertook his historic and arduous work as impeachment manager while grieving the loss of his son, Tommy, who committed suicide on December 31, 2020.
The 25-year-old had long struggled with depression. Tommy was a student at Harvard Law School and already, as his father told Seth Meyers, “a great champion of the rule of law as an instrument of justice and of democracy.”
Just hours before the January 6 storming of Congress, Raskin and his wife, Sarah Bloom Raskin, published a profoundly moving statement that beautifully detailed the bright intellect, radiant personality and deep commitments of their son. Striking, within this long eulogy, is a phrase the Raskins describe as a trademark Tommy line, “forgive me, but it’s hard to be a human.”
These words convey a sense of humility, shared by father and son, that the moral centre is a contingent place, one we struggle to find, and that moving the political centre toward this moral centre is a daunting but essential task.
When Jamie Raskin prosecuted Donald Trump’s second impeachment, we did not see a man wracked with grief. Rather, we saw a person of strong conviction, focussed intellect, and a passion for justice working tirelessly for the democracy he loves.
“I just kept thinking, I’m not going to lose my son on the last day of 2020,” he told Meyers, “and lose my country in 2021.” For the moment, the country stands secure, even as it stumbles about in search of an uncertain moral centre.
Photo: House impeachment manager Jamie Raskin speaks during the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump in Washington, February 10 (AP)
