Democrats may have blown themselves out of the water

They have impeached Trump but have failed to turn public opinion against him. This may yet turn out to be their Pearl Harbor.

Protesters hold up letters reading "impeach" in front of the US Capitol building during the "People's Rally for Impeachment" on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Picture: AFP

When Republican Mike Kelly told the US House of Representatives that Donald Trump’s impeachment was a day of infamy like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, some Democrats smiled at the overblown comparison.

But there is a part of Kelly’s analogy that might ring true and would wipe the smile off Democrats’ faces. After its initial victory at Pearl Harbor in 1941, Japan went on to lose the war.

Could it also be that after their political victory in impeaching Trump, the Democrats now will go on to lose next year’s election? After one of the most dramatic weeks of Trump’s presidency, all sides of politics are trying to gauge the likely fallout from the third presidential impeachment in US history.

Trump describes impeachment as a “a political suicide march for the Democratic Party”.

He is convinced it will galvanise his support base and possibly even enlarge it, delivering him a second term in the White House.

In the afterglow of the impeachment vote, Democrats also seemed pleased with themselves.

Even as the result of the vote was read out in the house on Thursday (AEDT), Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi had to make a “shush” sign to Democrats to stop them cheering out loud on what she had previously claimed was a “sad and solemn” occasion.

The day after the vote she said many Americans had “a spring in their step” over impeachment.

“We’ve been hearing from people all over the country,” Pel­osi said. “Seems like people have a spring in their step because the President was held accountable for his reckless behaviour.”

New opinion polls in the weeks ahead will give an early indication of whether this historic but highly partisan impeachment vote has jolted public opinion one way or the other.

In the months leading up to the vote, public opinion remained almost unchanged despite a blizzard of claims, counterclaims and public impeachment hearings over the Ukraine controversy.

But Trump’s impeachment takes him into uncharted territory politically.

The other two impeached presidents, Bill Clinton (1998) and Andrew Johnson (1868), were impeached in their second terms and neither went on to fight another election.

Trump will be the first impeached US president to stand for re-election and face the judgment of voters at the ballot box.

Trump also has handled his impeachment very differently. Clinton and Johnson kept their distance from their impeachment trials, avoiding comment wherever possible.

By contrast, Trump has placed himself on the impeachment frontline every day, firing a barrage of angry tweets and accusations about Democrats and the allegations against him.

Even at the moment when the house was impeaching him, Trump was telling his supporters in a rally in Michigan: “After three years of sinister witch-hunts, hoaxes, scams, tonight house Democrats are trying to nullify the ballots of tens of millions of patriotic Americans.”

The other key difference between the Trump and Clinton impeachments is that US politics is more deeply divided today than it was 21 years ago during the Clinton trial.

For example, nowhere in the endless line of short speeches during the impeachment debate did a Democrat ask the sensible question of whether Trump’s actions merited impeachment.

Similarly, no Republican chose to express any misgivings about the President’s behaviour.

Trump also has been masterful in keeping Republicans onside during the process. He is the first president to be impeached without losing a single vote from his own party.

“Never in the history of our country has an impeachment been partisan — never,” Republican house minority whip Steve Scalise said. “That’s a stain on Pelosi’s record.”

Pelosi retorted that the Republican-inspired impeachment of Clinton was no less partisan.

“It’s so pathetic. After they impeach somebody for having a personal indiscretion and lying about it to protect his family, they’re calling this partisan? That’s so ridiculous,” Pelosi said, referring to Clinton.

Clinton’s impeachment by Republicans backfired on the party because at the end of the day most Americans did not believe that lying under oath about sex was an impeachable offence.

Republicans lost seats at the 1998 mid-term elections and Clinton left office with a 73 per cent approval rating, one of the highest of any president.

While Trump has never enjoyed an approval rating over 50 per cent, it works to his favour that half of all voters do not think that he committed any impeachable offence in the Ukraine controversy.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey released this week found Americans split 48 per cent to 48 per cent on whether to remove Trump from office. Some 90 per cent of Republicans oppose impeaching Trump and removing him from office, while 83 per cent of Democrats favour it.

This is primarily a failure for Democrats who had hoped that the evidence presented against the President in the impeachment hearings would change public opinion in favour of it.

If impeachment is not changing the minds of voters now, it is hard to see how it will resonate 10 months from now when the election is held.

But the polls so far also show the backlash against Democrats that Trump has predicted has not yet come to pass.

“It’s remarkable that even in the era of President Trump, that even a story of this magnitude is unable to shift the fulcrum of American politics,” Bill McInturff, who conducted the poll, told The Wall Street Journal.

He says he believes that the fallout from impeachment, if any, may be largely forgotten by the time of the presidential election in November.

“So much is going to happen — and at the pace with which we have political debate, it might seem ancient,’’ he says.

But there are some encouraging signs for Trump on impeachment. Although the national polls have stayed steady, in the key battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida, opposition to impeachment is higher than it is nationally. If impeachment delivers an electoral boost to Trump in these key states, it may well deliver him the election.

There are also signs that impeachment has fired up Trump’s support base, even if it is not reflected in the polls. According to Axios, since impeachment proceedings began 600,000 new donors have contributed to the Republican National Committee.

There is also a small possibility the upcoming Senate trial will change public opinion.

Pelosi is delaying sending the articles of impeachment to the Republican-controlled Senate to try to leverage a more favourable trial process for Democrats.

Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has said he doesn’t want new witnesses to testify at the trial because Republicans already have the numbers to acquit the President and don’t need to take such risks.

Without new witnesses there will be no new evidence, robbing Democrats of their opportunity to use the trial to shift public opinion on impeachment.

But it also robs Trump of his desire to highlight what he calls the unfairness of the impeachment. The President has said previously that he wants high-profile witnesses such as former vice-president Joe Biden and son Hunter to give evidence at a Senate trial, but McConnell’s view has reportedly led Trump to rethink the issue.

No one knows what impact Trump’s impeachment will have on next year’s election. But it is the Democrats who took the greater risk in initiating it. They have impeached Trump but have failed to turn public opinion against him as they had hoped. It is early days, but impeachment may yet turn out to be their Pearl Harbor.

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia.