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"The matter is fairly simple: Impeachment is popular. The president is not."
The Big Untold Story of Impeachment? It’s Incredibly Popular.https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/impeachment-incredibly-popular/603661/
For roughly the entire Trump presidency, a small majority of Americans has disapproved of Trump, while a substantial minority has approved of his tenure. Yet despite this disapproval, most members of that majority did not support removing the president.
That changed in late September, as the Ukraine scandal metastasized and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched an impeachment inquiry. Suddenly, most of the disapprovers backed removal. In other words, the inquiry may not have changed many minds about Trump, but it did change minds about the appropriate remedy for his conduct in office. And while Trump and his allies deserve credit for muddying the waters in the weeks since, and for preventing large numbers of defections among his supporters, there haven’t been any substantial defections from those who support impeachment, either.
. . .
The intensity of anti-Trump feeling could remain influential long after the Senate trial ends, because once a voter decides that she not only dislikes the president but feels he ought to be removed from office, it’s tougher to imagine that future events, from a booming economy to a trade deal, will persuade her to change her mind and support him.
This may be why, despite Trump’s repeated insistence that impeachment is good for him, he is not mad, and actually he finds this funny, he is apoplectic about the process. The president has a keen intuitive grasp of politics and understands the challenge facing him. While it may be true, as his campaign says, that impeachment has motivated his base to support him more strongly, it has also motivated his opposition—and that opposition remains significantly larger.
Trump’s most likely path to reelection has always been to repeat his 2016 feat of losing the popular vote but winning the Electoral College. That path remains open, but the past two months has made the chance that Trump could win a plurality or majority of the popular vote even smaller.
The matter is fairly simple: Impeachment is popular. The president is not.
That changed in late September, as the Ukraine scandal metastasized and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched an impeachment inquiry. Suddenly, most of the disapprovers backed removal. In other words, the inquiry may not have changed many minds about Trump, but it did change minds about the appropriate remedy for his conduct in office. And while Trump and his allies deserve credit for muddying the waters in the weeks since, and for preventing large numbers of defections among his supporters, there haven’t been any substantial defections from those who support impeachment, either.
. . .
The intensity of anti-Trump feeling could remain influential long after the Senate trial ends, because once a voter decides that she not only dislikes the president but feels he ought to be removed from office, it’s tougher to imagine that future events, from a booming economy to a trade deal, will persuade her to change her mind and support him.
This may be why, despite Trump’s repeated insistence that impeachment is good for him, he is not mad, and actually he finds this funny, he is apoplectic about the process. The president has a keen intuitive grasp of politics and understands the challenge facing him. While it may be true, as his campaign says, that impeachment has motivated his base to support him more strongly, it has also motivated his opposition—and that opposition remains significantly larger.
Trump’s most likely path to reelection has always been to repeat his 2016 feat of losing the popular vote but winning the Electoral College. That path remains open, but the past two months has made the chance that Trump could win a plurality or majority of the popular vote even smaller.
The matter is fairly simple: Impeachment is popular. The president is not.
