I Wonder

I wonder if the members of Congress have considered the following:

• Trump’s approval rating is actually going up.
• Congress’s overall approval rating is half Trump’s.
• “Own Congressman” approval rating is a bit higher than Trump’s but it hasn’t been sampled in a year.
• Most people didn’t vote for Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, or Nancy Pelosi. They don’t have to. They’ve all been elected from “safe” districts.

Perversely, the impeachment vote by a Congress so despised may actually convince people that Trump is doing something right.

Update

Apparently, I’m not the only one thinking along these lines. Consider this quote from Michael Bloomberg’s campaign manager as cited by Jonathan Capehart in his Washington Post column:

Kevin Sheekey always speaks with a sense of urgency. Usually, he does so as a happy warrior in pursuit of the goals of his boss, former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg. But now Sheekey’s the campaign manager of Bloomberg’s 2020 quest for the Democratic nomination for president, and there is the sound of genuine fear in his voice.

In the worlds of politics and political journalism, Sheekey is like Cher, widely known by one name and just as famous. He is part of the small and tight coterie of advisers who have guided Bloomberg since before he ran for mayor in 2001. Full disclosure: I worked on that campaign as a policy adviser after being approached to do so by Sheekey. So, when I tell you there was something different about his tone, trust me.

Before the mics were even set up for the interview in a small office at Bloomberg campaign headquarters on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Sheekey told me, “President Trump is already winning and Democrats don’t even realize it.” When I asked him to elaborate once we were recording, Sheekey didn’t hold back.

“As we’ve seen the polls in the swing states, I’m incredibly nervous. I am nervous that Donald Trump is poised to win again,” Sheekey told me in the latest episode of “Cape Up.” “And quite frankly, there’s no question in my mind that Brad Parscale, who is Donald Trump’s campaign manager, shows up for work in the morning and thinks he has a winning hand, and that he’s playing a winning hand.”

I seem to be in the minority in believing that, however much the House Democrats hate Trump, the House impeachment inquiry hasn’t actually been about Trump but mostly about Nancy Pelosi attempting to keep her caucus together and, coincidentally, keep her job even as she recognized that the impeachment inquiry and inevitable subsequent impeachment vote was not in her strategic interest. She may end up mollifying the democratic socialist wing of her caucus at the expense of defeat in the fall of 2020.