Whatever they may think about Nancy Pelosi’s decision to impeach President Donald Trump, it’s clear from recent polling that Democrat voters have no expectation that Trump will actually be removed from the White House.
According to a new Rasmussen Reports national survey, only 24% of all U.S. voters think that Trump will be convicted in his upcoming Senate trial and therefore removed from office. Only 12% are so delusional as to believe that it is “very likely” that this turn of events will transpire. We assume this tiny population includes people who have no idea what’s going on and readers of Common Dreams, to the extent the two groups are separate on a Venn diagram. 73% told Rasmussen that Trump is unlikely to be removed from the presidency, and 47% went further, saying it was “not at all likely.”
What’s interesting is that even within the Democratic Party’s base, there is little hope that Trump is going anywhere. 60% of Democrat voters say that Trump’s removal from office is unlikely. Granted, that’s nothing compared to Republicans (81%) or the unaffiliated (78%), but you have to account for extreme cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome, one of the symptoms of which is a belief in the absurd.
And, of course, “absurd” is the only way to describe anyone who actually believes that the Senate will convict President Trump of the impeachment articles voted on (but not yet sent over) by the House of Representatives. Indeed, although the usual suspects – Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – have grumbled about Mitch McConnell’s public remarks about impeachment, there is not yet any sign that even a single Republican will vote for Trump’s removal. Since a three-fourths majority of the Senate is needed for a conviction, we’d say President Trump has almost nothing to worry about.
It isn’t just the voters who are aware of this impending acquittal; Pelosi herself knows exactly what is going to happen. That’s why she’s playing this unconstitutional game with the voted-upon articles, holding them back until she can “get a fair trial.” That’s not how impeachment works, no matter how many of Pelosi’s sycophants in the media praise her for her “masterful” manipulation of the law. We remain in agreement with Professor Noah Feldman – until Pelosi brings impeachment to the bar of the Senate, Trump hasn’t actually been impeached at all.
But whether Pelosi ever actually gets the guts to send over the articles or not, this fiasco will remain the most partisan, unhinged, evidence-free impeachment in U.S. history. And unless we’re wildly mistaken, we’re pretty sure that November’s results will also show it to be one of the worst political blunders of all time.
Judging by the results above, it seems that most Democrat voters agree with us.
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