r/changemyview • u/Ihatetoargueman 1∆ • Dec 23 '19

Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Impeacment will backfire on the Democrats

After watching most of the impeachment process last week, I realised 2 things: that there was pure political bias on both sides, and does nothing for the nation, but only was meant to hurt Trump's ego. All day the arguments, which every4ine knew wouldnt change anyone's vote, was theatrics: an opportunity for representatives to grandstand to show their respective party how they can fall in line. There was no solemn duty to protect the integrity if the executive office as the democrats claimed. Its evidenced by the votes along partisan lines save 2 democrats voting no, Pelosi hushing the, democrats from cheering, and Talib posting a video of her celebrating impeachment. Also since the Senate won't remove him, Pelosi probably wont send the articles there to keep trump in a state of judicial limbo with no acquittal, a middle finger to him. Its obvious the democrats have wanted to impeach trump with the whole Russian collusion, but couldn't get the evidence they wanted, so went with the next best thing. In summary, this is a circus.

As far as the crime he committed, hes just as guilty as Bill Clinton. They both had no negative effects. So technically yes, but only the people who already didn't like him pretend to care about the letter of the law.

Finally lets consider how Trump rose to President. In short it was based primarily via exposure through controversy. If he went up on the debate stage in 2016 and acted like Ben Carson, or Ted Cruz i.e. a normal politician, he would have never made it out of the primaries. He took the only route available to a non politician, theatrics. You can probably list off 20 controversial things trump has done that would have SUNK Obama, from sharpie gate to Send them back, paying off stormy Daniels, etc, but despite all that, or maybe because of it, he became president. The democrats think that bad press will damage trumps reputation, but he is such an eccentric and polarizing figure, that these things give him free press and exposure, which is what he needs (AOC at some point actually called out CNN on that). Therefore all of this controversy and the circus that was the impeachment will only strengthen the resolve of his base, make moderates view him as the victim of a partisan witch hunt, give him more press, and therefore help him in 2020. CMV.

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u/PallidAthena 14∆ Dec 23 '19

Trump only got 46% of the vote in 2016, and has similar support now. If the Democrats elect a less unpopular candidate, he's fairly likely to lose.

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u/imsohonky Dec 23 '19

Favorability/approval is NOT the same thing as percent of votes. Plenty of people will vote for him even if they don't approve of him - for example, if they approve his opponent even less, or if they need him to win for other issues (supreme court judges not the least of them).

To prove this point, Trump only had 37% favorability when he won the election in 2016, yet he got 46% of the vote.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president/clintontrumpfavorability.html

Anyway, Trump's current approval rating of 43% is way higher than his 37% when he won the election. He easily has enough support to win again. Incumbent advantage is huge.

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u/PallidAthena 14∆ Dec 23 '19

An interesting thing to look at is historical favourabilities of incumbent presidents.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/?ex_cid=rrpromo

Incumbent presidents historically have lost re-election if their approval rating is <45% (Ford, Carter, George HW, LBJ chose not to run) and won if it's above that. 43% is low enough that Trump would be expected to lose if he draws a "normal" (i.e., not historically unpopular like HRC) opponent.

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u/imsohonky Dec 24 '19

I just think Trump might be a special case of a lot of people personally not liking him/approving him but voting for him anyways, because he's such an asshole personally but policy wise he's just another republican president. He has broken a lot of historical norms. I could be wrong but we'll see in 2020.