Democrats’ own goal on Donald Trump

As political miscalculations go, the US Democrats have surpassed themselves in their impeachment pursuit of Donald Trump. The rejection by even key moderate Republican senators of the Democrats’ attempts to introduce new witnesses — notably former national security adviser John Bolton — at Mr Trump’s Senate “trial” leaves little doubt about the extent to which House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues overreached. The result is that with Republicans firmly in control of the Senate — and no prospect of the two-thirds super majority required for conviction under Article 1 of the constitution — Mr Trump appears set for the swift acquittal he was seeking, possibly by Thursday (AEDT). This is no surprise. Mr Trump’s controversial phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky may have been “reckless and dumb”. But it was never the “high crime or misdemeanour” required for impeachment and the short-circuiting of the term of a democratically elected president.

Veteran Republican senator Lamar Alexander, regarded by Democrats as one of their best hopes to cross the floor, dealt a death blow to their expectations when he said that while Democrats had demonstrated the President’s actions were “inappropriate”, they had not proved them impeachable offences. “The question then is not whether the President did it, but whether the Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did,” he said. Voters should make the decision on November 3. Given Mr Bolton’s pivotal role as former national security adviser, he could still pose a danger to Mr Trump. Whatever emerges, however, will be for voters to judge.

Ms Pelosi and her colleagues ignored such counsel before they started the ill-judged impeachment attempt. Impeachment in some form, however dubious, was on the cards from the day Mr Trump entered the White House in 2017 and a Washington newspaper headline declared: “The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.”

Whether the Democrats regret their ill-fated gambit is unclear. But the process has had a powerful impact on the Republican Party. It has closed ranks behind the President in a way likely to help him in November. Scott Reed, who oversees political activity for the powerful US Chamber of Commerce, noted that the impeachment process has “has welded Mr Trump and his congressional party together … Trump’s success at governing has driven the Republican Party to him … wage growth is the real magic”. The process does not appear to have dented the President’s standing among his grassroots supporters.

While Democrats remain in disarray over a candidate to take on Mr Trump, Republicans are more united than they were four years ago. Most polls show Mr Trump largely where he was before impeachment, in the mid to high 40s, and a reasonable chance to beat Democrat frontrunner Joe Biden.