While progressive politicians and activists dream of the day that Donald Trump is no longer President of the United States, Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell has given the nation a wake-up call, stating bluntly that there is no way that the Senate will remove President Trump from office.
While there is some debate whether the Senate will have a quick trial or the lengthy one that President Donald Trump wants, the Senate Majority Leader’s statement makes it clear that supporters of President Trump have nothing to worry about.
Sen. McConnell’s statement comes even as the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee votes, along party lines, to impeach the president. The articles of impeachment are expected to be sent to the House so Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi can hold a formal impeachment vote before politicians head out for their Christmas vacation. If the vote passes the House, as is expected since Democrats control the chamber, the Senate would begin its trial in January once lawmakers come back from their holiday break.
Every single Senator is required to be in the chamber for the trial, which means that Democrat presidential candidates such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Sen. Cory Booker would need to drop their campaign activities to attend. Many of these same senators are active supporters of the impeachment process. Even so, the Democrats only have 47 votes in the Senate and would need twenty Republican senators to join sides with them in order to successfully remove the president from office.
It’s not hard to see why House Majority Leader Sen. McConnell is so certain that President Trump won’t be removed from office in the coming year. The impeachment show in the house has been a total sham. As soon as the hearings were made public, support for the process dropped among likely voters. Pollsters are registering an uptick in support for President Trump, warning the Democratic Party that swing-state voters who will decide the outcome of the 2020 election are turning away from them, drastically reducing their chances of winning back the White House.
Analysts aren’t the only ones realizing that impeachment proceedings are boosting President Trump’s base. “Moderate” Democrat representatives in the House know that they will likely lose their seats in the upcoming 2020 elections if they back impeachment, and rumors abound that dozens of them may vote against the final impeachment resolution. Many of these same representatives are already facing angry voters back home, and have publicly stated that they are taking time to consider their final position.
Progressive lawmakers thought that impeachment would be a walk in the park. Many of them truly believed that the general public would side with them. However, the proceedings have clearly backfired. The public knows that the Democrats have never gotten over the last presidential election, and have been looking for excuses to get rid of President Trump for the last few years. They can see that the proceedings are one-sided. Given these facts, it is not surprising that impeachment will be “dead on arrival” in the GOP-controlled Senate. It would also not be surprising if it leads to President Trump’s re-election and a GOP takeover of the House of Representatives in 2020.
