It’s quite possible that President Trump wanted the Democrats to push impeachment. If so, they’ve fallen into his trap.
And their battlefield starting position is notably weak. Of all the areas where they could have gone after Trump, they seemed to have picked the weakest. The Ukraine thing will generate D.C. outrage, but little outrage or even understanding from the public.
There are multiple media ‘explainers’ about the impeachment process. The biggest thing that they all leave out is that it’s ultimately the public that passes judgment on impeachment.
The media can and will do its part to sway the public, but if the public doesn’t think there’s anything here, it will die.
And the first test is that the accusation has to be comprehensible. The Ukraine accusation is convoluted and confusing. Unlike the Russia accusation, which at least hurled a basic, if implausible, claim that Trump was a Russian agent, this is a tangled mess. That’s why multiple media pieces urge the Dems to focus on the call, rather than aid. When your case is tangled early on, that just makes a bigger mess.
The second test is that the public has to believe that this is truly wrong and requires removal from office.
The Clinton impeachment process ran into a wall because, rightly or wrongly, the public did not believe that lying about an affair merited impeachment.
Even if Republicans didn’t hold the Senate, the Dems will face the same problem.
Polls show the public already believes that their chief obsession is removing President Trump. The Dems needed a strong hand to overcome the natural skepticism resulting from that. Instead, they decided to play their weakest hand yet.
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