Concha: Keeping Impeachment Narrative Alive Good for Dems, Media
Impeachment used to be something not exactly embraced by a sitting president or the party he represents.
Now, it’s all the rage…
As is almost always the case, when it doubt simply follow the money. In this midterm election year, as you may have heard, Democrats are in real jeopardy of losing the Senate, putting the GOP in control of two of three chambers: The Washington Post has Republican chances of taking the Senate at 82 percent. Nate Silver—who is respected on both sides of the aisle in this regard more than anyone—still projects in favor of the GOP, albeit slightly. Same goes for the New York Times, who has Republican chances at 54 percent.
With the president’s approval numbers at 41.6 percent (via RealClearPolitics, which averages seven major polls) and disapproval at a whopping 55.1 percent, Democrats in tight races don’t have any coattails of a popular Commander-in-Chief to jump on. The crisis at the border–which the President polls more poorly on than any other issue (AP has disapproval at 68 percent, for example)–isn’t helping either, nor are higher premiums and deductibles now hitting home for many of those under the Affordable Care Act. That’s not to say things are all bad, of course, as Mr. Obama and the party did get some good news on the economy this week in terms of GDP (four percent in Q2) growth. Job creation has been steady this year as well (200K-plus six straight months). Problem is…whatever improvements on these fronts the administration touts aren’t reflected by the public sentiment, as the RCP average for the president on the economy are worse than his overall number (39.8 approve/54.7 disapprove).
So with these kinds of headwinds, how does a Democratic senate candidate or incumbent looking to hold on raise the necessary funds to help get his message out? A threat of impeachment by Republicans, of course. Never mind the fact that the party has repeatedly denounced the outlandish idea broached by former Alaska Governor and VP candidate Sarah Palin… that simply doesn’t matter. Just refer to what Senior White House Advisor Dan Pfeiffer told This Week on Sunday morning:
I said was it would be foolish to discount the possibility that this Republican Congress would at some point in time would consider impeachment.
What a hilarious thing to say considering (as host George Stephanopoulos pointed out) that the House Majority Leader has completely ruled out any possibility of doing so. Remember, John Boehner was in Congress during President Bill Clinton‘s impeachment and saw what it did for the his approval ratings when leaving office. Here’s something to chew on in terms of what impeachment can do for one’s polling numbers: Mr. Clinton had a 65 percent approval rating upon leaving office in 2001 (as the country was falling into a recession, no less). It even reached 73 percent in 1999 as impeachment proceedings reached its peak. The punchline? Only 39 percent considered him “honest and trustworthy.” Regardless, the overall 65 number was the highest approval for any departing president since World War 2. Yup, Republicans want nothing more than to turn an unpopular (except on the fundraising front) Barack Obama into the next Bill Clinton to haunt them for decades to come, and especially in 2016.
Back to 2014, desperate times call for desperate measures, and no one looked more desperate to keep a debunked narrative alive more than Mr. Pfeiffer did on ABC Sunday morning.
But as long as the money keeps filling Democratic coffers—and that’s absolutely been the case since Mrs. Palin made the ill-advised charge a few weeks ago—rest assured the narrative will live on as most of the media continues to also milk it for all it can in the name of theatre as well.
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Follow Joe Concha on Twitter @JoeConchaTV
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
