Op-Ed: Independents may not like Biden, but they abhor Trump
By D.W. Llewellyn
Wednesday, February 9, 2020
President Trump is now a week into his term. And he is in the final week of the House impeachment trial. But it’s not going well for the president. And the main reason why is that his fellow Republicans are being a tad too polite about impeachment.
We have been here before. We saw it play out in November 2018, in what was the closest thing to a bipartisan impeachment in U.S. history — until, that is, the Supreme Court decided Merrick Garland, who was nominated over two months before Trump won. The Republicans in the Senate who voted against him were not trying to help Trump politically. They were trying to help their party. And the president got a one-sentence acquittal. As he said at the time, and as he remains today, “I don’t care if it was a 25-25 or even a 51-49. That doesn’t matter.”
So this week, the president will have to do battle with his fellow Republicans. And the stakes may be higher than they have ever been in this impeachment trial. At the end of his first term, he is now the least popular politician in the world — higher than Putin, higher than Saudi Arabia, higher than Kim Jong Un, lower than even former Republican President George W. Bush. He is the most unpopular president in history. And it’s possible that he is in the process of losing his base of support among the party faithful.
The Democrats are doing what they can to drive a wedge between Trump and his Republican base — at least politically. There is, of course, the issue of Ukraine. The issue of the Bidens. The issue of Ukraine and the corruption that occurred surrounding it. And the issue of Ukraine and the Democrats’ impeachment efforts as well.
But the president also gets another issue. And that is Trump’s alleged crimes and crimes of obstruction. His alleged attempt to obstruct justice by trying to place his own personal political interests above the interests of the nation. By trying to hide things.
