The cynical read on the impeachment of President Donald Trump is that it hasn’t changed anything: Here we are, weeks into the process and on the eve of a House floor vote, and there’s scant movement in public and elite opinion to show for it. Notwithstanding the mountain of new evidence uncovered by the House Intelligence Committee, the battle lines remain the same: Most Democratic House members will vote to impeach the president, while acquittal in the Senate is a foregone conclusion.
But maybe the most salient fact about impeachment is how little something else has changed. Impeachment is incredibly popular, especially given the polarized environment.
A Fox News poll released yesterday found that a full 50 percent of Americans support impeaching and removing Trump—one point up from October. The Fox poll has always been one of the worst for the president on impeachment, but FiveThirtyEight’s polling average finds plurality support for removal—47.7 percent for, 46.4 percent against as of this writing—a finding that tracks consistent, slim support. (The site finds even broader support for the impeachment proceedings themselves, at 52.3 to 41.9 percent.) RealClearPolitics’ average, which is noisier, shows a small plurality opposing removal at this moment, though it was the opposite yesterday. The Economist finds clear plurality support for impeachment as well.
It’s worth dwelling on this for a moment: Roughly half the country not only disapproves of Trump’s job as president, but believes he ought to be removed from office, a sanction that has never been applied before. And that support comes at a time of (mostly) peace, with the economy (mostly) strong. There’s more support for impeaching Trump now than there was at the equivalent stage in the Watergate scandal—right after articles of impeachment were approved by the House Judiciary Committee. Rather than face impeachment, Nixon resigned. (Nixon, however, had far lower approval ratings than Trump does now.)....
Trump’s most likely path to reelection has always been to repeat his 2016 feat of losing the popular vote but winning the Electoral College. That path remains open, but the past two months has made the chance that Trump could win a plurality or majority of the popular vote even smaller.
The matter is fairly simple: Impeachment is popular. The president is not.
Tuesday, December 17, 2019
"It'll be an electoral disaster" seems a tad unlikely to me
As David Graham writes at The Atlantic:
If you look at what we call by-elections here the swings against the Republicans have been enormous.
ReplyDeleteIf the economy slows as seems likely come the new year then things get interesting.
As for Impeachment the evidence is in and it is in an area that is fair dinkum unlike Clinton's.
Since it was an impeachment attempt for nothing at all, it follows that it will boost Trump since the people who aren't lunatics will see the crazy behaviour and will be unlikely to vote for a mainstream Democratic candidate. The lunatic fringe who believes in impeachment for nothing at all, rather than (lets say) for the Yemen crisis, were never going to vote for Trump at all. So there is no way that he's lost any votes in any of these matters. Actually he's been inoculated. So he gets to clamp down on free speech, steal Jerusalem and the Golan heights for Israel and have a racist foreign policy and all authentic past scandals tend to be forgotten about, because people get sick of the Democrats making things up, and the goose-stepping left buying into the Democrats making things up.
ReplyDeleteHopefully some permutation of Bernie, Tulsi and Andrew Yang can still beat Trump but Democratic party small hat anti-American behaviour is not helping in this matter. The small hat crazies are the only thing that keeps Trump supporters enthusiastic.
"As for Impeachment the evidence is in and it is in an area that is fair dinkum unlike Clinton's."
ReplyDeleteSo you must be the man they have been looking for. The man with the evidence. Lets have it then you senile old fool.