Impeachment served as an atomic bomb that left pretty much everyone involved permanently disfigured. But no one appears to have borne the brunt quite as badly as Joe Biden.
Ukraine, which no one thought about until the impeachment, is now Biden’s albatross.
If not for impeachment, we would never have once pondered what exactly it was that Biden’s middle-aged son Hunter Biden was doing in his lucrative role as a board member for Burisma Holdings. (He was apparently there as nothing more than a shield against accusations of corruption from the U.S. State Department while his father was vice president.)
If not for the impeachment, we all would have long forgotten that Joe Biden himself has admitted he was uneasy about his son’s involvement with the seedy energy company, even as he was supposedly tasked by President Barack Obama with weeding out corruption in Ukraine.
If not for the impeachment, Biden wouldn’t have had to declare in every interview and Democratic debate that his hands were clean and his son, with his history of drug abuse and family issues, had done nothing wrong. Just having to repeat his innocence over and over again made him look guilty.
And so now, look at Biden. When Democrats figure out how to deliver the inevitably tainted results of the Iowa caucuses, it looks like Biden will come in a distant fourth place, and he could very well end with a similar result in New Hampshire next week.
Back in late November, before the impeachment hearings began, Biden was polling nationally at the head of the crowded primary field at 31%, according to the RealClearPolitics average. As of Wednesday, his support has fallen by 4 points.
Let’s check in with President Trump, who was supposed to suffer from impeachment. His approval rating has effectively remained unchanged from November to now. It sits at an average of 45%, though if you go back to October, that’s actually up 3 points.
Sorry, Biden. You weren’t the one Democrats impeached, but you certainly suffered because of it.
