Democratic voters are cooling to the idea of impeachment.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., must be thrilled.
Support for impeaching the president has declined by an impressive 12 points among self-described Democratic voters since December, according to a new CNN/SSRS survey, down from 80 percent to 68 percent.
“Among independents and Republicans, support for impeachment has fallen 3 points over the same time,” CNN reports.
Why the sharp drop among Democrats, especially as we near the eventual release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation? There are a few theories.
First, it’s fatigue. Democrats and their allies in the press have been beating the impeachment drum pretty much non-stop since Trump was inaugurated back in January 2017. You can play the same tune for only so long before people ask you to change the station.
This idea is supported by the CNN survey’s crosstabs, which show support for impeachment was consistently higher under former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush than it was under Bill Clinton, who was actually impeached. One takeaway is that impeachment is popular only when it’s an occasionally discussed abstract idea — a fantasy for those out of power. When impeachment becomes a reality or, at the very least, the topic of months-long news coverage and political debate, it’s a lot less appealing.
The second explanation is that Democrats have lowered their expectations for the Mueller report, accepting the possibility that the investigation provides no grounds for impeaching the president.
A third theory comes via Hot Air’s Allahpundit, who suggests Pelosi herself bears responsibility for the decline in impeachment popularity.
“Nancy Pelosi finally went on record to say she’s opposed to impeachment and was backed up by the likes of Adam Schiff,” he writes. “Democrats with college degrees are exactly the sort of demographic you’d expect to follow pronouncements from Democratic leaders in Congress and, sure enough, here they are rapidly cooling to the idea now that Pelosi’s signaled her disapproval. Irony of ironies, Trump’s nemesis killed impeachment fever on the left!”
He adds, “Well, maybe not killed. Wounded, let’s say. Slightly wounded. Superficially wounded.”
I’m not sure I buy it. Pelosi has been throwing cold water on this idea since even before Democrats won back the House last year. It almost became a running joke, the number of times reporters would ask her about impeachment and she’d scream a little on the inside before saying something to the effect of, “Not happening.” It’s possible she has helped drive the numbers down, but perhaps not so much as Allahpundit suggests.
It could also be all of the above — a mixture of lowered expectations, fatigue, and party leaders saying “nope” may have finally convinced a sizeable chunk of the Democratic base to ease up on their enthusiasm for impeaching the president.
Again, this is all subject to change following the release of the Mueller report. For now, though, it looks like the issue is becoming an increasingly unpopular one with the opposition party.
