Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) says that 90 percent of incoming calls to her office favor impeaching the president. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) says she supports the resolution to impeach offered by her fellow freshman congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). Representative Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) has filed articles of impeachment. Billionaire hedge-fund manager Tom Steyer’s campaign Need to Impeach has already collected eight million signatures.
But when pollsters asked the common folk — the voters themselves — their interest in the issue is approximately No. 12 on their Top Ten list of concerns. The latest polling results from Rasmussen and Washington Post/ABC News were nearly identical: Barely a third of registered or likely voters favor trying to impeach the president for various “high crimes and misdemeanors,” while nearly 60 percent think it would be both a waste of time and politically dangerous. And that sliver of support for impeaching President Trump continues to melt away like an ice cube in Atlanta in July.
Topics in town halls across the land range from climate change to minimum-wage laws, from drug prices to immigration. Precious little is heard from audiences about impeaching the president over revelations from the Mueller report. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) found himself disagreeing with attendees who warned him that efforts to impeach the president would not only fail in the Senate but would likely reelect the president for a second term in 2020. Following a town hall held by Representative Katie Porter (D-Calif.) she said impeachment is “not a top half-dozen [issue]. It may be down at the No. 12 spot.” Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Fla.) was blunt: Not only are most Americans unfamiliar with the contents of the 448-page Mueller report but “they don’t care, and this is the truth.”
The mouthpiece for the liberal establishment, the New York Times, warned about leaping in before looking: “From a pragmatic political perspective, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was right not to leap into impeachment hearings. As compelling as the Mueller report is on the topic of obstruction [said the Times], the House is not going to impeach the president at a time when only 37 percent of voters favor such an action.”
Pelosi herself is urging caution: “Impeachment is one of the most divisive paths that we could go down in our country. If the path of fact-finding takes us there [then] we have no choice. But we’re not there yet.” Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is perhaps the most savvy concerning the political risks involved:
If all Congress is talking about is impeaching Trump and Trump, Trump, Trump, and Mueller, Mueller, Mueller, and we’re not talking about healthcare, we’re not talking about raising the minimum wage to a living wage, we’re not talking about combating climate change, we’re not talking about sexism and racism and homophobia … what I worry about is that works to Trump’s advantage.
No doubt Sanders remembers the Republican debacle that followed the Clinton impeachment hearings in 1998. Republicans were counting on gaining seats in the House in the November midterms, yet they lost five. And Clinton enjoyed the highest popularity of his presidency.
Representative Sherman, one of the five members of the House who has filed articles of impeachment, is a realist: “You cannot remove a president without a two-thirds vote in the Senate. You can’t get a two-thirds vote in the Senate without changing public opinion. And you can’t change public opinion without getting all the facts in front of the American people.”
But Sherman has at least two problems: The American people aren’t interested; and relying on the kept media to provide those who may still be interested with the “facts” is a losing proposition. The media has long since lost whatever shreds of credibility it had once Trump was inaugurated.
Unless the Democrat Party leadership loses its mind and caves in to demands from its far-left element, impeachment of President Donald Trump over the Mueller report is a dead issue.
Image: BenThomasPhoto via iStock / Getty Images Plus
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American, writing primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
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