Well, do ya, punks?
by Tom Sullivan
The pending impeachment of Donald Trump raises anxiety levels to 11 on the left side of the philosophical aisle. But let’s take a moment to share those feelings with the wrong side. What Republicans need to ask themselves is who besides Trump cultists will still vote for them by November 2020.
The recent Fox News poll found support for Trump’s impeachment and removal has ticked up a point since October. FiveThirtyEight‘s polling average this morning shows 47.1 percent for impeachment and 46.6 percent against. Fox polling tends to reflect poorly on the president. But other polls, The Atlantic’s David Graham reports, also lean slightly towards impeachment. It is worth adding that those polls measure people, not necessarily states where it’s winner-take-all on electoral votes.
Graham asks readers to consider that roughly half the country not only supports impeaching Trump but removing him from office. “And that support comes at a time of (mostly) peace, with the economy (mostly) strong,” Graham explains. “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.” Half the country supports enforcing an unprecedented sanction against Trump.
A clear plurality of Americans want Donald Trump to be impeached, but the Senate is biased toward rural Republican-leaning voters, so impeachment falls short in a majority of states.
My analyses of 18,000+ respondents to YouGov's polling using MRP ⬇️⬇️⬇️ https://t.co/dXLGa2lXq8 pic.twitter.com/Nh4AV6n7se— G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) December 16, 2019
Graham continues:
Thus the paradox of impeachment politics: Supporting impeachment is anathema for Republicans. Supporting impeachment seems to be hurting vulnerable Democratic politicians, at least marginally. But support for impeachment remains remarkably strong, and also, Trump’s approval remains as stable as ever.
Even though Trump almost certainly won’t be removed, the breadth of support for impeachment, especially when compared with his approval ratings, could have important repercussions in the 2020 election. For roughly the entire Trump presidency, a small majority of Americans has disapproved of Trump, while a substantial minority has approved of his tenure. Yet despite this disapproval, most members of that majority did not support removing the president.
That has changed since the Ukraine scandal broke open in September, despite House Judiciary Republicans throwing a jumbo pack of smoke bombs to obscure the facts. More damaging evidence may yet surface before the prospective Senate trial (since it seems certain the House will pass articles this week). For now, it appears most Republicans “have abdicated their responsibility” on impeachment.
On the Democratic side, New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew opposes impeachment and announced plans over the weekend to switch parties. Running as a DCCC-selected moderate in 2018 allowed Van Drew to win flip a Republican district. Voting against impeachment will gain him nothing except a primary challenge he is unlikely to survive. Nor will his change of parties (assuming he joins Republicans) earn him anything more than side-eye from the G.O.P. His staff is already abandoning ship. As Graham reports, Van Drew “endorsed Senator Cory Booker for president, voted with Pelosi on most issues, and has been a Democratic elected official for decades.” Trump’s Republican base will not vote for a warmed-over Democrat.
Graham continues:
The intensity of anti-Trump feeling could remain influential long after the Senate trial ends, because once a voter decides that she not only dislikes the president but feels he ought to be removed from office, it’s tougher to imagine that future events, from a booming economy to a trade deal, will persuade her to change her mind and support him.
This may be why, despite Trump’s repeated insistence that impeachment is good for him, he is not mad, and actually he finds this funny, he is apoplectic about the process. The president has a keen intuitive grasp of politics and understands the challenge facing him. While it may be true, as his campaign says, that impeachment has motivated his base to support him more strongly, it has also motivated his opposition—and that opposition remains significantly larger.
The future of the republic is at stake and Republicans are failing to meet the challenge.
“The party of the rule of law is dead, writes Jonathan Capehart at the New York Times. He cites a recent interview with Democrat Stacey Abrams of Georgia who believes Republicans have nothing left but a thirst for power:
“They had a moment basically between George W. Bush and today to change course, they knew it, they couldn’t do it,” Abrams said, referring to a brief window in 2013, following Barack Obama’s reelection, when senior Republicans recognized that broadening their appeal was a matter of political longevity. “And now they are left with holding on to power through manipulation, theft and immorality, and that immorality is the acceptance of things they know to be wrong.”
If he is not patient zero, Sen. Lindsey Graham is the most visible carrier of the rot. He will do anything, make any obeisance, any debasement of principle, to hold onto his position. “Lindsey Graham has no other definition to his life,” Abrams said.
Slowly, ever slowly, that reality is seeping into the minds of moderates and suburban Republicans — perhaps even red-hats, too — that obsequiousness is not a good look for kings-in-waiting, nor is complicity in putting party over country and monarchy over democracy. Trump and his party have made a sick joke of the founders’ vision. Trump has not unmasked them, he has simply revealed them. How will 2020 voters respond?
Republicans in both houses of Congress and in the several states soon face the infamous Dirty Harry question: Do you feel lucky?
Well, do ya, punks?
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