09/30/2019
A headline on Sunday’s New York Times declares “Democrats Say 2020 Message Isn’t ‘Impeach!’” and the story then discusses how that legal struggle may complicate the Dem messaging. The candidates may hope that the impeachment process won’t overshadow all their swell ideas for the country (like free healthcare for all illegal aliens) but we know the press will go full tilt crazy over impeachment theater.
Democrat 2020 candidates may come to regret their enthusiasm for taking Trump out in a non-election manner so close to the actual voting event. They seem not to have confidence in winning without disrupting the system with their scam: As early impeachment enthusiast Rep. Al Green remarked, “I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach the president, he will get reelected.”
It doesn’t help that several 2020 Dems also want to impeach Justice Kavanaugh, among them Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro, Bernie Sanders and Beto.
You might get the impression that Democrats are incapable of losing graciously, and “impeach” has become their new favorite strategy of dealing with the opposition. Integrity in elections — trusting governance to those darn unpredictable voters — is just too chancy for today’s Dems. Also, Hillary Clinton’s continuing complaints about the election she lost nearly three years ago reinforce the public perception of Democrats as Poor Losers, which they certainly are.
On Tuesday, Speaker Pelosi announced the House would hold an impeachment inquiry — but the legislators would not vote on formal impeachment proceedings.
Here’s The New York Times article explaining how Democrat candidates would “promote a clear and exciting agenda” rather than concentrate on impeaching Trump — good luck with that!
Democrats’ 2020 Campaign Message: Not Impeachment, They Insist, New York Times, September 28, 2019
After the 2016 election, Democratic leaders reached an all but unanimous conclusion: To defeat President Trump in 2020, they would have to do more than condemn his offensive behavior and far-right ideology, as Hillary Clinton had done. They would need, above all, to promote a clear and exciting agenda of their own.
They took that lesson to heart in the midterm elections and afterward, capturing the House of Representatives with a focus on health care and then attempting to impress the electorate by passing legislation on matters like campaign finance reform and the minimum wage. As Democratic presidential contenders pushed campaigns built on big ideas, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi resisted a chorus of calls for impeachment, even from some of her party’s leading 2020 candidates.
Yet 13 months before the next election, Democratic leaders are now steering into a protracted, head-on clash with Mr. Trump. By seeking the Ukrainian government’s help in tarring former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Trump left them no choice, they say, but to pursue an impeachment inquiry that could consume the country’s attention for months.
Ms. Pelosi has indicated she aims to move the process along with haste, in part to avoid an election-year conflagration, but the exact course of the inquiry is impossible to foresee.
All 19 Democratic presidential candidates now support the impeachment inquiry, and many Democrats are optimistic that voters will as well, because Mr. Trump is so unpopular and the allegations against him are grave and easily grasped. For now, Republicans are the party on the defensive, flummoxed by the cascading disclosures about Mr. Trump that have threatened to upend his re-election campaign.
But there is also a general recognition, at every level of the Democratic Party, that impeachment could complicate their candidates’ efforts to explain their policy ideas to the country and persuade voters they have a vision beyond ousting Mr. Trump. The party has been disappointed too many times, its leaders say, by betting that Mr. Trump’s violations of political and cultural norms would bring about his downfall.
On Friday evening, Ms. Pelosi declared at a conference of New Jersey Democrats in Atlantic City that she would not allow the 2020 election to become a campaign about impeachment. Insisting the inquiry “has nothing to do with the election,” she said the campaign would be fought on other terms.
“That’s about facts and the Constitution,” Ms. Pelosi said of the impeachment process. “The election is about all of the issues and policies that we have a difference of opinion with the Republicans on, and they are very drastic — and they have nothing to do with impeachment.” (Continues)
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