Appearing as a guest on the Friday, October 18, PoliticsNation show, MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry characterized the government shutdown as Republicans "effectively impeaching" President Obama as she fretted that the GOP will create "crisis after crisis" so that Obama "never will have an opportunity to actually enact a second policy agenda."
Host Al Sharpton complained about Republicans talking about thwarting President Obama's agenda:
They're trying to just in any way possible just act as though this is not a legitimate President. And I think that we're seeing that it's now become just naked and raw to the American public. They just don't want to accept this President as President.
Harris-Perry responded:
Well, I think because what they recognize, the effectiveness of what they are doing is they can, in fact, declare his second term a mistrial in the sense of moving us to governing by crisis. Crisis to crisis every three months, every four months. And then the President never will have an opportunity to actually enact a second policy agenda.
She continued:
So what we want to remember is sort of what were those first, that first term if we divide it into those first two years when the President had a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate. And we look at the policy activism of those two years. And that President with that Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, had the most effective, efficient, and important probably in post World War II history congressional session.
That 2010 midterm happens and ever since, we have gone to governing by crisis with the goal of whether they actually impeach the President or not, effectively impeaching him by making it impossible for him to do anything more than simply keep the lights on in Washington.
Sharpton chimed in:
And see that's the point, Congressman. All that we keep hearing, as Melissa just pointed out about impeachment, blocks us from getting to the legislation and the policies this President had wanted to pursue in his second term.