Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Sunday, September 29, 2019

Public Opinion

We are starting to see our first polls on impeachment. Remember that most Americans don't follow politics that closely and even fewer have much idea how either impeachment works or how what Trump did was illegal.  Generally speaking, we can expect that support for impeachment will grow in proportion to how well Democrats explain those two processes. Campaign finance law is fairly arcane, which is why the "treason" line is working better, even if it's not exactly accurate.

We also know that opposition to impeachment is unlikely to drop much below 35%.  That's roughly been Trump's floor, and it's unlikely to drop below that.  Even Nixon never dropped below about 25%.

Impeachment may appeal politically to members of the Democratic Party's base, but the real audience has to be that mushy 20% in the middle of the electorate.  Combined with a message about Trump's corruption, it has to be about those broader trends leading up to the election.  Unfortunately, we are already seeing the GOP playbook, which is to equate Hunter Biden's actions with the myriad crimes of this administration.  It's unlikely the media will perform any better on this "Both Side" issue than they did in 2016.  I hope they do.  The legitimacy of our Republic rests on them doing so.

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