Impeachment gives Democrats the jitters
New congresswomen fear their careers could be cut short as Trump’s support is shored up by proceedings against him.
Blanketed in snow and with the Christmas fair in full swing, Morristown is looking festive. Beneath the jolly facade, however, the New Jersey town is mired in scandal: the mayor’s wife has allegedly been pocketing political bribes.
Mary Dougherty is charged with accepting $10,000 in dirty cash during her unsuccessful bid to become a local government official. Four other public officials in the area face similar accusations.
Luckily for Dougherty, the residents of this affluent suburban corner of the Garden State, 30 miles from Manhattan, are much more concerned with the president’s predicament. Last Thursday, the day after Donald Trump became the third American president to be impeached, it seemed that the most divisive woman in Morristown was Mikie Sherrill, the first-term congresswoman for New Jersey’s 11th district.
“She’s a traitor and, if fair’s fair, she’ll lose her seat,” said one Christmas shopper.
Others felt differently. “I think Mikie is going to be a party leader. Her background is incredible, and she appeals to a big cross-section of people,” said Debbie Leon, 58, adding that it would be “very unfair if she were punished for supporting the impeachment”.
Punishment is exactly the fate that Sherrill faces. In the 2018 mid-term elections, the former US navy helicopter pilot was part of the so-called “blue wave” of Democrats sweeping into power and winning back control of the House. She flipped a district that had been Republican for more than 30 years.
Now her career is on thin ice. She is among the dozens of Democrats who voted to impeach Trump last Wednesday despite representing Republican-leaning districts. With Elissa Slotkin, a first-term Michigan congresswoman, and five other new Democrat lawmakers with national service backgrounds, Sherrill called for an impeachment inquiry in a Washington Post opinion piece in September.
It is widely believed that the article helped to convince Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, to launch the impeachment proceedings, which more radical Democrats had been hankering after for months.
Today, Slotkin and Sherrill and their fellow Democrats in swing districts have been catapulted into the heart of the explosive impeachment fight, which centres on Trump putting pressure on Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of his Democratic rival Joe Biden.
Are these vulnerable Democrats brave crusaders or short-sighted martyrs? And might their controversial impeachment votes have cost the Democrats a House majority next year?
One congressional Democrat in Trump territory in New Jersey was not willing to take the risk. After Jeff Van Drew voted against impeachment, he swiftly switched sides, and on Thursday Trump personally welcomed the congressman to the Republican party.
For Slotkin, a former CIA analyst, backing impeachment was a matter of principle, not political hedge-betting. “Whether I’m elected or not, I have to be able to look at myself in the mirror in the morning,” she told The Sunday Times. “This was always going to be a tough race, and if I don’t win - and I hope that I do - I’ll walk out with my head held high that I did what I thought was right.”
Besides, she has faith in her voters: “I believe that they prefer people with integrity as their elected representative rather than people who’ll do whatever they need to do to win.”
Sherrill, 47, also stuck to her guns. “My military service taught me to put our country - not politics - first, and my time as a federal prosecutor taught me about the importance of the rule of law and of justice,” she said before the historic vote.
For some, her defence fell on deaf ears. “I had high hopes for this coward. I thought she ran on a platform of being independent and open-minded. But she has just proved she is no different than the rest of the swamp,” one local fumed after Sherrill’s recent town hall meeting in Whippany, New Jersey.
Trump is using what he calls the “sham” impeachment to play to his base. “The president operates a grievance machine, and this feeds into that. In American politics there is a frequent striving for victimhood, and the president always likes to portray himself as a victim,” said Kyle Kondik, of the Centre for Politics at the University of Virginia.
“Do-nothing Democrats” has become a familiar jibe for the president as he seeks to persuade voters that his opponents have been preoccupied with a politically motivated witch-hunt rather than focusing, for example, on improving healthcare and increasing employment.
“While we’re creating jobs and fighting for Michigan, the radical left in Congress is consumed with envy and hatred and rage,” he told a campaign rally in Battle Creek, Michigan, on Wednesday as he was being impeached in Washington.
Moderate Democrats such as Slotkin are being targeted with aggressive advertising campaigns. Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire Democratic 2020 presidential hopeful, has pledged dollars 10m to try to protect them.
Slotkin, however, pooh-poohed these adverts as ineffective with voters. “There are about dollars 1.5m of attack ads between TV and Facebook running against me,” the 43-year-old said. “Those ads frankly are part and parcel of what Michiganders cannot stand about politics right now. The vitriol, the polarisation.”
In these circumstances, how does Slotkin fancy her chances? “We won’t know until 2020 whether this is the end of my very short political career,” she said. “But because I was in the national security world I’m comfortable making hard decisions that aren’t popular when I know the security of the country is at stake.”
With Trump’s approval ratings remaining stubbornly high, could impeachment be an early Christmas present for the president?
“Impeachment was the absolutely worst thing the Democrats could throw at Trump - and, having thrown it, they have nothing left in their quiver to threaten him with,” wrote Jack Shafer in Politico, an online magazine.
But Slotkin dismissed talk of Christmas coming early for Trump. “It may in certain areas give the president a bump, but I just can’t make my decisions based on that type of cynical political analysis. I have to do what I think is right, come what may politically.”
Proceedings ground to an unexpected halt last week when Pelosi refused to send the articles of impeachment on to the Republican-controlled Senate, where a trial is the next step. With Republican senators accused of behaving like a jury in cahoots with the defendant, the Speaker is demanding assurances that the trial will be fair and thorough.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, argued that Democrats were “too afraid to even transmit their shoddy work product to the Senate”.
Now, with Washington closed for the holidays, this unsatisfying limbo, as both sides spar over the nitty-gritty, will probably last into the new year. For the Democrats in conservative districts, this tactical stalling could ratchet up the pain. “Democrats in vulnerable districts want this over yesterday (Saturday),” said Kondik.
Democratic senators in the 2020 presidential race, including the frontrunners Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, could be snared up in the impeachment trial as the first caucuses start in Iowa on February 3.
“We can’t take 18 months to get this done. We need to be really, really efficient about the process and move as fast as we possibly can,” said Slotkin.
Back in Morristown, there’s scant sympathy for Sherrill. “I don’t know that it definitely will, but I pray this decision costs her,” said Dolores Peterson, 77.
In the Morristown Diner, hopes were high that Trump would become the first impeached president in history to win re-election. “Trump will win again, and the circus impeachment will make it a landslide,” said Ukrainian-born Olga Taran, 64.
“This is all sour grapes for the Democrats. It’s going to backfire, and they know it,” added Jim Baisley, 46, a computer consultant. “Trump is confident this hasn’t hurt him, and that confidence trickles down.”
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