Roll up, roll up. The greatest show on Earth is coming to a television set near you. It’s the kind of televisual must watch not seen since HBO ran the final episode of the Sopranos where Tony got clipped or maybe he didn’t. You decide.
Pretty much all news channels in the US are running live with impeachment hearings in the House. On Day One, ratings were through the roof.
My guess is, as with a lot of television programs where plot line, performance and production quality don’t quite match the publicity hype, viewers will reach between the couch cushions, grasp the remote and turn to something less tedious.
What is being examined is complex and convoluted. Suffice to say, most Americans would struggle to point to Russia on a map let alone Ukraine.
READ MORE: How Dems’ impeachment push hurts the US | Democrat gymnastics may help Trump re-election |
The thought that Trump may have bullied a minor nation state into a political conspiracy is the sort of thing many Americans believe a POTUS should be doing. And let’s face it, a quick glimpse into modern American political history shows that presidents various have been doing just that.
Did Trump use security funding as a weapon to force the Ukraine government to investigate Democrat candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter?
The funding was delayed but it was ultimately paid. The date the cheque was cut was two days after whistle blower one voiced his concerns. That could be coincidence, or it could be that the conspiracy jig was up.
None of it matters
But you know what? It doesn’t matter. None of it does. The circus may have come to DC and Julius Fucik’s (take care in pronunciation) Entry of the Gladiators might be playing long and loud at the moment (do-do-dodo-dodo-loot-do-dodo) with the media trumpeting the view that what is occurring is the definitive moment of the Trump presidency.
It isn’t. The definitive moment is a long way off, a year almost to the day and by then Trump’s impeachment will be a distant memory.
As far as we might prognosticate, impeachment will happen before Christmas.
All that is required is a simple majority and the Democrats control the House. It is as predictable as Trump cutting up rough on Twitter on every day the House conducts public hearings.
The next step, call it the trial phase in the Senate if you like, will run more or less along party lines, too, albeit with the GOP controlling the numbers in the Senate.
This means the virtual certainty that conviction and removal from office won’t happen.
Some Republican senators may vote for conviction, perhaps two or three, but nowhere near the 20 required to remove Trump from the White House.
What will happen in the Senate is actually more interesting. The grounds for impeachment will be flipped. The Trump defence will see Hunter Biden and his father, Joe, subpoenaed to the Senate.
Whistle blowers one and two may make an appearance there, too.
Bizarre theories will be explored and the Democrats who are in the ascendancy now will be in the minority then. It is the GOP’s chance to turn the tables and get some licks in.
Ultimately, eyes will glaze over. The thing about circuses is, after we’ve seen the high wire act and the clowns showering each other with bucket loads of confetti, the show gets a bit boring. In an election year, voters will be wanting more from their representatives than partisan bickering.
The real game is the presidential election. The unpalatable fact for the Democrats is they have to beat Trump at the ballot box.
In that respect I have some rather bad news for the long-suffering victims of white patriarchy. I don’t think they’re going to handle this well and may react badly. Other readers might be kind enough to tell me when to duck.
The ideal candidate to snatch the presidency from Trump is an old white bloke. Women and minorities may apply but are unlikely to beat the Orange One.
There are very sound, solid uncontroversial reasons for this. The Never Trumpers among registered GOP voters, while a small group in the scheme of things, might be encouraged to get out and vote Democrat in the first Tuesday in November 2020.
It is as axiomatic of US politics as it is elsewhere. If you lose the centre, you lose elections.
It is especially so with the Democrat vote likely to splinter to some degree with many Dem voters who support Elizabeth Warren for example staying home on election day in a huff after their chosen one was discarded in the primaries.
Trump’s approval rating undenied
For what it’s worth at this early stage, polling is showing Trump behind Biden in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin, Idaho, Virginia and Michigan, all within the polls’ margins of error. The POTUS leads all other Democrat candidates in those same states.
Other relevant polling shows Trump’s approval rating, rather than being in free fall with the impeachment circus in full swing, remaining resolutely in the low forties. That’s not high. Indeed, many media outlets gush that it is the lowest of any POTUS at this stage of their presidencies. While that is true, the point really is that Trump’s support at or around four in ten registered voters (and possibly higher when we consider that in 2016 Trump won more votes than he polled) is rock solid.
Polling showing support from voters for Trump’s conviction and removal from office was running at a tick over 50 per cent two weeks ago. Now, it is running at 47 per cent. These are early days in the process and a handful of points is not much of a shift, but it would seem to indicate the early onset of impeachment fatigue among Americans.
Why else would the Dems in the House want to have this done and dusted before Christmas? It is not just that they want to avoid a congressional crap shoot where evidence in hearings offer a range of unforeseen and uncontrollable controversies arising.
Biden has more to lose
In practical terms the Democrats need to gear up for their own primaries. Not just for the presidency. The last thing Democrat senators will want is being stuck in DC getting flogged by their counterparts when they have their own primaries to win or indeed lose if they are unable to hit the hustings.
Biden has more to lose than Trump in the impeachment process. He might be the Democrats great old white hope but there can be no certainty he will be there at the finish line next year or indeed at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee hands aloft on July 20 as the anointed candidate to take Trump on.
By that time the impeachment circus will have well and truly rolled out of town and the Democrats will face the inescapable truth that there is a presidential election to be won or lost and Donald Trump is in the box seat.
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