Pirate's Cove

Even while most of the Trump stories and opinion pieces are all about Orange Man Bad, one other by Marc Fisher, Jenna Portnoy, Tim Craig, and Scott Wilson dumps some cold water on the push (which will be ignored by the Trump Deranged)

Across a divided nation, skepticism about impeachment

They don’t ordinarily agree with each other. They watch different channels, hear different versions of the news and view neighbors across a gaping, painful political divide. But in swing districts across the country, the idea of impeaching the president has brought some Americans together: They’re wary of deploying the Constitution’s ultimate weapon — one that takes the decision about who is president out of voters’ hands.

Derek Tsao is a Republican in California who has grown tired of President Trump’s behavior. Curtis Johnson is a Democrat in Florida who could never quite fathom why his fellow Americans chose a man like Trump. Lisa Foulds is a lifelong Republican in suburban Virginia whose kids have pushed her toward the center, so much so that she voted for a Democrat for Congress last year.

hey all say the president may have crossed a line when he pressed his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate one of Trump’s main political rivals. And despite their political differences, they say the Democrats’ move this week to start impeachment proceedings against Trump is the wrong tactic at the wrong time.

Polls have shown that public opinion has shifted slightly in favor of impeachment, but many still see it as “an exercise in futility,” as Johnson put it.

The retired steelworker from Indiana, now living in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., said he’s eager for Democrats to find a candidate who can beat Trump next year, but he fears that impeaching the president will make Trump’s reelection more likely. “There’s not enough time before the election and nothing will come of it,” said Johnson, 71. “This is going to hurt the Democrats because everyone’s going to say, ‘You’re putting all your energy into this?’ ”

As you can see, the four writers went out and found Trump haters and some regular Dem voters, and it’s not going well for pro-impeachment.

Launching an investigation and potentially putting Trump on trial in the Senate strikes Foulds, a 50-year-old who still considers herself a Republican after voting for independent Gary Johnson in 2016, as “a waste of the taxpayers’ money.”

“For something as trivial as gaining dirt on somebody? It just seems petty,” she said. “I just think it has to be much more egregious.”

Democrats should remember that they worked to gain dirt, and any investigation could turn right back around on them. They won’t be able to keep their own actions on the down-low.

Voters across the partisan spectrum argued that next year’s election — not impeachment — is the best way to resolve the country’s struggle with a divisive, unpopular president who now stands accused of betraying the nation’s interests.

So, even those suffering from TDS aren’t interested in impeachment. And they understand that this will help Trump. This talk continues on and on throughout the piece. But, Democrats have already put all the scratchy, course sheets on the bed. It’s just needs a blanket. They can’t unmake it at this point. If they go forward

The modern history of impeachment demonstrates that a sitting president can indeed turn the tables on his accusers, said Frank O. Bowman III, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Law and author of “High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” a history of impeachment. Bowman said that Clinton effectively pressed his case in the news media, portraying his Republican opponents as bad guys who wanted to use his extramarital sexual affair to remove him from office.

“Clinton managed to flip the public narrative from his own bad behavior to the behavior of those who attacked him,” the historian said. “Trump doesn’t need Clinton to teach him anything about fighting dirty. Any attempt to impeach Trump is going to invite the nastiest kinds of backlash, first of all against Joe Biden.”

And if they simply drop the issue, or let it fade away, Trump will still hammer them with it. And it will cause many people who would have otherwise voted Democrat to not vote Democrat in 2020. They might not vote for Trump and Republicans, but, they won’t pull the trigger for Democrats.