Democrats preparing to undermine Trump victory in 2020

“The argument, ‘Why don’t you just wait?’, amounts to this: Why don’t you just let him cheat in one more election?” Schiff told reporters.

“Why not let him have foreign help one more time?” added the California Democrat, who led the intelligence panel’s investigation into whether Trump improperly leveraged U.S. military aid to pressure Ukraine into digging up political dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden, a top-tier 2020 Democratic White House candidate.

Democrats have not been shy about using the word “cheat” in reference to Trump’s 2016 campaign, which former special counsel Robert Mueller’s federal Russia inquiry found was boosted in part by Russian meddling. Though Mueller’s 22-month investigation failed to uncover evidence Trump’s team welcomed the foreign assistance, some prominent Democrats make it seem otherwise. South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, often laments on the campaign trail that Trump should never have been allowed to come “within cheating distance of the Oval Office.”

That approach, though, has limited political returns, critics contend. Conservative radio host and author Ben Shapiro said Democrats have hamstrung themselves should Trump be impeached by the House, acquitted by the Senate, and then secure a second term. Democrats will have already deployed the most powerful oversight tool at their disposal, to limited effect.

“Democrats continue to make the case that if Trump isn’t impeached, he’ll steal the election of 2020. How isn’t that a statement of deep concern over their 2020 candidates?” Shapiro tweeted Monday.

This is the first time an impeached president could be reelected. Both former presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, two of the three other commanders in chief to be threatened with the forcible removal from office, were term-limited when they faced the prospect of impeachment. No term limits existed when President Andrew Johnson was impeached by the House in 1868, after three years in office. Yet Johnson failed to clinch his party’s nomination in 1868 after he escaped a Senate conviction.

Trump is unlikely to share Johnson’s fate with an average approval rating at 44%, along with an 80-plus percentage point advantage over his Republican primary challenges in many polls, according to RealClearPolitics data. Other public opinion research shows the 2020 race to be close between Trump and top candidates in the Democratic field, including Biden, Buttigieg, Vermont. Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Schiff’s push to move impeachment articles against Trump immediately is understandable, said Democratic Virginia state Del. Mark Keam. Particularly because it’s clear Senate Republicans won’t vote to convict and remove the president.

But Keam said he’s concerned a “constitutional crisis” is looming in which a president acquitted of impeachment charges would take unilateral executive action even more aggressively than Trump already has.

“We’re entering somewhat unchartered territory in our 240-year history,” Keam told the Washington Examiner. “If the president were to be reelected in 2020 and he comes back to Washington, he’s going to have four years where he’s not only going to ignore the House and Senate, regardless of who’s in charge, but he might feel even more emboldened to do what he thinks he has to do because he would have won an election notwithstanding the fact that he was impeached.”

Veteran conservative activist Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, said he did not foresee an unchecked Trump White House.

“If the Democrats still hold the House in 2021, I don’t think you can rule out more attempts to impeach the president,” Reed told the Washington Examiner.