All Those Witnesses (Yet the Public Still Opposes Impeachment)

Democrats on Capitol Hill have taken over Washington and the national airwaves for over a month at this point, straining with every fiber of their being to prove that President Donald Trump deserves to be impeached from office. And yet here we are, after all of those witnesses, all of those arrogant speeches by Adam Schiff, and all of those hours of favorable commentary from the left-wing intelligentsia, and what are the Democrats left with? What have they accomplished here on the eve of a full House impeachment vote?

According to two new polls, the answer is: A whole lot of nothing.

“American voters signal they are slightly more inclined not to impeach than to impeach,” Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said this week.

According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, which was released on Tuesday, Americans oppose impeaching Donald Trump by a margin of 51-45 percent. If Democrats can say anything positive about this number, it’s that it is mostly unchanged from November. In other words, they didn’t do anything to make public opinion worse. But that’s pretty faint praise for a party that is about to go forward with the very thing that a majority of Americans oppose. Extremely faint, since Democrats are doing everything they can to position themselves as the party of the people in 2020.

Unfortunately for them, Quinnipiac is no outlier.

According to a national poll released the next day by Monmouth University, Americans oppose impeachment by a margin of 50-45. When you take the margin of error into account, these numbers are essentially identical to the Quinnipiac poll, proving conclusively that Democrats have done absolutely nothing to persuade the American public of Trump’s unfitness for office.

“Opinion on impeachment has been rock steady since news of the Ukraine call first broke. Any small shifts we are seeing now are likely to be statistical noise,” Patrick Murray, Monmouth University Polling Institute director, said.

Here’s what actually makes this worse, if you’re a Democrat. In both polls, Trump is doing no better than 43% when it comes to his overall job approval rating. That makes him a prime target in next year’s election. Why would Nancy Pelosi think this is a good time to overreach, give Trump an inevitable victory in the Senate, and alienate voters who switch between parties?

Impeachment has turned into an astounding political blunder, and while we’re not complaining, it is certainly one for the history books. Wow.