Trump impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., speaks at trial of Donald Trump in U.S. Senate
Last May, when U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was still reticent to impeach Donald Trump, she explained that Trump was “self-impeaching.” What Pelosi likely meant was that Trump was digging his own political grave, hurting his chances for reelection in 2020. Pelosi’s prediction seems to be coming true now, as the latest polls indicate that the top six Trump challengers for the general election — Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Bloomberg, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg — all beat Trump in head to head match-ups. This latest good news for Democrats comes as Trump has been impeached (“for life,” as Nancy Pelosi brilliantly said), and is now undergoing a trial for removal in the U.S. Senate.
Likewise, the Democrats seem to be making inroads regarding the Trump Senate impeachment trial. A new poll indicates that a majority of Americans want Trump to be convicted by the Senate and removed from office. An even larger majority believes that the Democratic House Managers should be able to submit new evidence in the trial, perhaps recognizing that Trump and his henchmen blocked so much evidence from the House impeachment hearings in the first place. And nearly three-quarters of adults surveyed said that the Republicans should allow witnesses at the trial, again apparently acknowledging that the Republicans are attempting to hold a fake cover-up trial that would make a North Korean dictator blush.
All of this lights the way for what the Democrats likely will do going forward. First, just about everyone has known from the beginning that the Republican-controlled Senate was never going to vote to remove Trump. However, the House Democrats are on solid footing that impeaching Trump was the right thing under the Constitution regardless of what the Senate would do later. Second, the Democrats in the House and Senate have presented and are still presenting as much evidence as possible of Trump’s crimes and other impeachable offenses. Third, every action by the Republicans to stifle the impeachment and trial — ignoring subpoenas, blocking witnesses from testifying, suppressing evidence, etc. — only reinforces the narrative that Trump and the Republicans are engaged in a cover-up. As Speaker Pelosi indicated recently when she stated that “dismissing is a cover-up,” we can be sure that Democrats will continue to feed this narrative. Fourth, investigative reporters can follow up on the matters the Democrats have raised, and witnesses can come forward to the press all by themselves. That happened recently, for example, with the bombshell MSNBC interview of Lev Parnas.
With nearly 10 months to go before the elections, the voters should have plenty to think about by then.
Photo by Ninian Reed, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/keVGgW
