He's already as unpopular as Nixon was 6 months into the Watergate hearings
by digby
It's driving me nuts that we have to keep making this point, but we do. Here's historian Kevin Kruse doing it succinctly on twitter:
House Democrats are worried about possible political blowback from an impeachment inquiry into a president whose crimes have already been laid out in detail by others and who currently has a pathetic 38% approval.
For comparison, Nixon had just been re-elected in a landslide and stood at 65% approval when Democrats launched the Senate Watergate inquiry in February 1973.
The full airing of evidence and testimony against Nixon quickly eroded his support, bringing it to 39% in July 1973.
It's idiotic to think that Trump is currently too strong to launch formal impeachment proceedings or, short of that, a committee to air the evidence and testimony against him.
It's even more idiotic to assume that once that process begins, it'll somehow drive his numbers *up*
This fear that Trump is some kind of wizard who will be able to parlay impeachment into a big victory is irrational. Yes, Clinton was popular when he was impeached. But he started out with a nearly 60% approval rating!!! And the impeachment charges were over a consensual, if inappropriate, sexual affair!!!
This president's crimes are real and they are serious. They involve him breaking the law to cover up for his campaign's welcome acceptance of Russian sabotage of his rival's campaign. The only reason that welcoming acceptance isn't explicitly illegal is because nobody in their right mind ever thought a candidate for president of the United States would ever do such a thing.
The details in the report are shocking and they need to be seen coming from the mouths of the Trump intimates who testified about them in order for the country to understand just how outrageous his behavior really was.
If Democrats believe what's in the report they shouldn't be afraid of impeachment hearings. The Starr report and the Clinton impeachment served to show the American people that the Republicans were a bunch of obsessives who'd been investigating for 6 years and came up with zilch until Monica Lewinsky.
The Mueller Report is not the Starr Report. It's serious and the president's actions are blatantly criminal. The Dems should have nothing to fear about making that clear to the American people ... unless, of course, they believe Americans are so self-centered that they literally don't care about their country or its future. It sometimes sounds as if that's what they think. And I think it's wrong.
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