A House vote to impeach President Trump could put a critical faction of moderate Democrats at risk in 2020.
Two weeks of public impeachment hearings have failed to ramp up support for ejecting Trump, polls show, and it has raised questions about the political risks of voting to impeach him.
“I’ll have to see,” Rep. Donna Shalala, who represents a Miami swing district, told the Washington Examiner. “Whether it will shift their minds one way or the other, I don’t know that.”
Just two Democrats voted against the ongoing impeachment proceeding when the House took up the measure on Oct. 31. More could defect on a vote to send articles of impeachment to the Senate, however, now that polling shows a slight decline in support, particularly among key independent voters.
A survey published by Emerson Polling found independent voters opposed to impeachment, 49% to 34%. The numbers represent a reversal from an October poll that found independents backing impeachment, 48% to 39%.
Overall voter support for impeachment also flipped, Emerson found, and more voters, 45%, oppose impeachment compared to 43% who support it.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken at about the same time found “no significant change” in public support for impeachment. The poll found 46% of Americans in support of impeachment and 41% opposed to it.
The stagnant poll numbers have left House Democrats at a crossroads with the impeachment proceedings.
Now that two weeks of public hearings have failed to shift public opinion, Democrats must decide whether to move ahead with articles of impeachment in the coming weeks.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of California, who has led the investigation, announced in a memo to fellow Democrats on Monday that he is drafting a report to forward to the House Judiciary Committee, which is the panel tasked with drafting impeachment articles.
But Schiff’s memo did not commit to supporting impeachment.
“The evidence of wrongdoing and misconduct by the President that we have gathered to date is clear and hardly in dispute,” he wrote to lawmakers. “What is left to us now is to decide whether this behavior is compatible with the office of the presidency and whether the constitutional process of impeachment is warranted.”
House Republicans have remained unified in rejecting allegations by Democrats that Trump used his office to secure Ukraine’s help investigating Vice President Joe Biden, a top political rival. Democrats view Trump’s actions as election interference and say it aligns with their belief that the president also colluded with Russians to win in 2016.
Not even moderate Republicans will publicly support the allegations against Trump, which means Democrats will need to provide all 216 votes that would be needed to pass articles of impeachment and send them to the Senate.
Democrats control 233 seats. Independent Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, a Trump foe and former Republican, is likely to vote for impeachment. Democrats could lose 18 votes and still pass impeachment articles.
While Pelosi said she is confident Democrats will hold onto the House majority in 2020, moderate Democrats will be battling in competitive races in dozens of districts, including many that support Trump, oppose impeachment, and want Congress to focus on healthcare, infrastructure, and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a critical trade deal with Canada and Mexico that is languishing in the House.
Democrats are already grappling with holding a politically risky vote on articles of impeachment that are all but certain to be dismissed by the GOP-led House.
Moderate Democrats must also reckon with poll numbers that show Trump’s popularity has not declined since the impeachment push began in the House and remains at about 44%.
A vote for impeachment, for some House Democrats, is a vote against a president who is popular with their constituents.
“The impeachment issue has had remarkably little impact on the president’s job and favorability ratings,” Ron Faucheux, nonpartisan political analyst and publisher of the Lunchtime Politics newsletter, told the Washington Examiner.
Republican-affiliated political groups have seized on the flat impeachment poll numbers and are ramping up attacks on vulnerable House Democratic incumbents.
American Action Network is spending $7 million on television and internet advertising in opposition to impeaching Trump. The group is spending most of the money targeting vulnerable House Democrats from 20 swing districts.
“Their partisan impeachment is a politically motivated charade,” the ad proclaims. It goes on to tell viewers to urge their representative to vote against impeachment and instead tackle important legislative priorities, such as healthcare, trade, and border security.
University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato told the Washington Examiner that no matter what Democrats decide to do next, impeachment could be a distant memory by the time the November 2020 elections take place.
“The march of events occurs at lightning speed in the Trump era,” Sabato said. “A whole year of intense activity will pass before the voting. Impeachment will be baked into both party bases but won’t change much of anything. Even in the swing districts, impeachment is just a piece of a much larger mosaic.”
