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Why
Does This Impeachment Not Feel Like a Defeat
for Trump?
By Jim
Geraghty
December 10, 2019 "Information
Clearing House"
- On paper, the speaker of
the House and chairmen of the relevant
committees announcing they will impeach the
president should feel like a historic moment
and a rarely equaled disgrace for the
presidency. This day should feel momentous,
grim, and solemn. In this presidency, it
feels like “Tuesday.”
On
paper, the impeachment hearings did
everything House Democrats wanted them to
do. While some of the key testimony was
second-hand, the witnesses painted an ugly
picture of the administration and president,
focused on farfetched tales of a lost server
and obsessed with the Bidens and not seeming
to give a fig about what the military aid
meant to Ukraine. The major television
networks covered the hearings live. The
objections of House Republicans were largely
ridiculed by the media. The GOP was unable
to introduce witnesses to interrupt the
Democrats’ narrative or divert attention to
the Bidens or other topics.
And yet the
polling is about where it was at the start
of October. As of this writing, in the
FiveThirtyEight aggregation,
47.1 percent support removing the president,
and 44 percent don’t support removal. That’s
not good for the White House, but that’s
nowhere near where Democrats wanted it to
be. There’s nothing resembling the
bipartisan consensus that Democrats had
previously called a prerequisite for moving
forward with the removal of a president. In
fact, impeachment could well be hurting
Democrats’ chances in key swing states.
A recent survey
found removal is opposed by 50.8 percent of
voters in Michigan, 52.2 percent of voters
in Pennsylvania, and 57.9 percent of voters
in Wisconsin. Whether or not you think the
hearings were persuasive, the evidence
suggests they didn’t persuade many people
who didn’t already support impeachment.
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The hearings
didn’t seem to change minds in the House of
Representatives, either. So far there is no
indication that any House Republican is
considering voting to impeach. There are
murmurs of frustration and discontent among
moderate House Democrats.
Most House Democrats will fall in line,
probably. But at the end of October, 232
House Democrats voted to start the inquiry.
The articles are unlikely to get that many
votes, in part because of the death of
Elijah Cummings and the resignation of Katie
Hill. The House currently has only 233
Democrats. The only drama in the upcoming
House vote will be if any Democrats join the
two who voted against starting the inquiry —
Collin Peterson of Minnesota and Jeff Van
Drew of New Jersey — or if either man
changes his mind.
Also, what happened to all of those charges
against Trump? For the past few weeks, we’ve
heard many Democrats insist that Trump’s
actions constituted bribery, extortion,
violation of campaign finance laws, and
witness intimidation. All of that got
dropped, and the articles of impeachment
cover the umbrella term “abuse of power” and
“obstruction of Congress.”
After all of this, there’s nothing referring
to Trump’s actions in the Mueller report.
Apparently the evidence of obstruction of
justice laid out by the special counsel just
didn’t warrant impeachment.
Finally, apparently President Trump is such
an anti-Constitutional menace that the
freedom and fairness of future elections
cannot be guaranteed unless he is removed .
. . and he is also the kind of man that
House Democrats can reach a deal with on
trade deals and family leave. Both of those
agreements are much bigger surprises than
the decision on the impeachment articles.
Impeachment is turning into a historic blip.
This article was originally published by
"NR"
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