Posted on 09/29/2019 5:36:33 PM PDT by robowombat
The Memo: Will impeachment create an even more polarized nation?
BY NIALL STANAGE - 09/29/19 05:43 PM EDT
Buttigieg takes shot at Trump: 'I am very nervous about how the US is going to look at the UN General Assembly'
The Memo: Will impeachment create an even more polarized nation? A highly polarized nation is about to face a new test: impeachment.
In almost three years since President Trump was elected, the nation has seen its schisms grow deeper and more jagged. It’s a change that has been propelled mainly by the president’s words and actions but also by the fervor of his critics.
Now, the question is whether there is any possibility of impeachment inquiries revealing new information so damning that it transcends partisan allegiances and creates the beginnings of consensus — or whether the battle lines will be drawn more boldly.
Some political insiders respond to the suggestion that impeachment could cause a worsening of polarization with a sardonic question of their own: How much worse could it get?
“Will it make it much worse? I doubt it,” said GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak. “The country is very divided now. Opinions on impeachment will break down along the same lines as opinions of Trump do. Only if the numbers are different will it make a measurable difference.”
Trump critics would argue that it is superfluous to fret about the polarizing effects of impeachment proceedings. Nothing, they say, could be more polarizing than the president’s behavior, which has included telling nonwhite congresswomen to “go back” to where they came from as well as frequent volleys of name-calling against the media, his political opponents and even some former members of his administration.
Other experts say there is a possibility, however slight, of impeachment blurring the nation’s partisan lines. The defense of Trump by elected Republicans regarding the most recent revelations — the president was shown to have pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate 2020 Democratic front-runner Joe Biden — has not been as vigorous as during some earlier controversies.
On Friday night, The Washington Post and The New York Times reported more damaging stories for Trump. The former reported he had told Russian officials during a 2017 Oval Office meeting that he was not concerned about the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election; the latter asserted that the White House had restricted access to reconstructed transcripts of phone calls Trump had with Russian President Vladimir Putin and members of the Saudi royal family.
Could Republicans finally reach some kind of breaking point with Trump? Maybe.
“If the impeachment process is done properly, which I believe it will be, I do not see it increasing polarization at all,” said Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University and the author of a 2017 book making the case for Trump’s impeachment. “In fact, it might slightly decrease polarization because some of Trump’s supporters might come to feel it is just not worth standing up for him anymore.”
Any signs of that kind of movement are slight for the moment. Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) on Friday became the first GOP member of Congress to support an impeachment inquiry over the Ukraine revelations — though he made clear he was backing the process, not the actual act of impeaching the president.
Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.) was still a member of the Republican Party when he said in the aftermath of former special counsel Robert Mueller's report that the president had “engaged in impeachable conduct.” Amash subsequently left the GOP in protest of Trump’s conduct, however.
There has been a notable uptick in support for impeachment in at least one poll conducted since the Ukrainian revelations emerged.
An NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist survey conducted on Sept. 25 found 49 percent of adults nationwide in favor of the start of an impeachment inquiry into Trump, while 46 percent were against it. Even at the height of the storm over the Mueller report, a significant majority of Americans were against impeachment proceedings, according to numerous polls.
The White House and elected GOP officials will be keeping a close eye on Trump’s approval ratings among Republican voters. For all the controversies that have dogged him, the president has maintained rock-solid approval numbers with GOP supporters throughout his tenure. Unless that changes, he seems safe from any danger of being convicted in the Senate, where Republicans hold the majority.
When it comes to partisan division, Boston University professor Tobe Berkovitz suggested it would only get worse if Trump were ultimately removed from office, in which case, the professor said, “You would hear from his supporters that this was a coup d’état in America.”
But short of that denouement, Berkovitz expected the GOP line to hold.
“Even if it is proved conclusively that Trump did something that fit the requirements of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,’ how many Trump supporters are going to get peeled away from him?” he asked. “He is going to say it isn’t proof and it isn’t evidence.”
On the flip side, do Democrats risk getting blamed by voters for injecting another rancorous note into the nation’s politics via impeachment?
It’s one possibility. But the bigger, related danger is that the drama of impeachment will take the focus away from the “kitchen table” issues that helped Democrats win back the House in the 2018 midterms.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had remained skeptical of impeachment even after the Mueller report’s release for precisely this reason, before changing her mind in light of the Ukraine revelations.
Grant Reeher, a Syracuse University professor of political science, said, “One of the risks for Democrats in 2020 — especially at the presidential level — is that the impeachment process will suck up all the oxygen that otherwise might have been available to make the affirmative case for election. The negative case has already been made, but the Democrats have struggled at times to advance the affirmative case, and indeed one could argue that this was a problem for [Hillary] Clinton in 2016.”
Reeher added, “The president loves to distract, and this is the distraction to end all distractions.”
But for now, the partisan fever is rising, almost by the hour.
On Friday, Trump described his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “perfect.”
A few hours later, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called on him to resign.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage, primarily focused on Donald Trump’s presidency.
Liberals will hate America more.
Americans will love liberty more.
That’s all.
In a sane country, this "controversy" would be over in a week. But the Lamestream Media has tripled down on misreporting what is going on. And even my Fox News Junkie mother seems to have never heard of Crowdstrike before I told her about it tonight. Yet Crowdstrike is the very entity that the President directly asked for Ukrainian help in investigating.
If the Senate GOP punks out on the Donald, a Republican won't win the White House for the next 20 years.
Especially once Barr gets off his slow roll ass and indicts some people.
The left is going to go bonkers.
This is why the soviet union was able to go so long...they controlled the media.
Why do you think gun control and a modern sporting rifle ban are in the dems cross hairs.
In this case I think the polls will be honestly done because the people paying for them (Dems) really want to know. Pelosi agreed to perform her little part but there is no official impeachment process going on and may never be, depending on how scared some Dems feel.
Everyone is willing to play along until they feel some pain.
This is not a serious question.
All this polarization and the eligible voter turnout hasn’t cracked 65% in 100 years. I wonder if it will go up this election. I thought 2016 was pretty polarizing and would have a massive turnout and it didn’t happen.
Freegards
If they pull off this dirty coup and remove an elected President, it will be a signal for the Red States to start secession plans. This is because if they get back full power, which this is all about, they will stack the courts, ensure election day registration, legalize all illegals, ruin the economy and abolish the Electoral College ad probably take Senate seats from places like Wyoming and the Dakotas. Don’t think I am kidding. I would love to be rid of NY City, SFO, LA, Denver, Chicago and Miami and many of the liberal suburbs that surround them.
No gun ban, no communist take over.
There’s a revolution brewing. Keep it up Democrats and you’ll feel the wrath of the voters.
You know for a fact that Barr is going to indict people?
If they pull off this dirty coup and remove an elected President, it will be a signal for the Red States to start secession plans.
Yes, and we are back to 1861. The South believed it faced an existential crisis if it remained in the Union. (Whether one agrees with that analysis or not, it is how those states saw it.) Red State America will truly be facing such a crisis if DJT is pushed out. Events could move faster than most think, as happened in Dec 1860 to Feb 1861.
If the Nation were ANY more polarized, there will lead flying.
Because it's Trump's fault for pissing off the crazies. It's his fault for winning a legit election and doing what he was elected to do.
Because the clear efforts of Obama for eight years to divide this country had nothing to do with the current state of affairs.
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“Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats can’t put down the Impeachment match. They know they couldn’t beat him in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, and they’re increasingly aware of the fact that they won’t win against him in 2020, and Impeachment is the only tool they have to get....
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....Election, and negate the votes of millions of Evangelicals in the process. They know the only Impeachable offense that President Trump has committed was beating Hillary Clinton in 2016. That’s the unpardonable sin for which the Democrats will never forgive him.....
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....If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.” Pastor Robert Jeffress,
@FoxNews
The nation is not polarized, it’s the loon bat liberals that have a problem. Like saying a family is “polarized” because the kids won’t eat their beans. The left has the mental issue. This next election, they will have eve less to say.
This country is done as a 50-state entity. Either it undergoes a separation or it will implode as a whole. It will never unite again.
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