Impeachment continues to lose ground in the polls, but we mustn’t fall for the argumentum ad populum fallacy. The fact that impeachment is increasingly unpopular does not imply that it is wrong, bad, or unmerited.

That is, unless it does. Because if impeachment is just a cynical stunt designed to change the polls ahead of 2020, then the public’s opinion of impeachment really is all that matters. In that case, ad populum is no longer a fallacy. And I’m afraid that’s just what this partisan impeachment is. As with the Republican effort against President Bill Clinton so long ago, there was a political calculation to weaken a sitting president and his party.