Monica Showalter:
Like week-old meat left in a hot car, the stench of defeat is starting to overpower the swag pens and stifled giggles in the Democrats’ impeachment project.
Axios has fresh news about how bad it is:
Officials in both parties tell me that — barring surprise new information — President Trump is on a glide path to swift acquittal at his Senate impeachment trial, despite a blizzard of evidence bolstering Democrats’ accusations.
- Why it matters: Trump has a decent chance of avoiding witnesses and of losing zero Republican votes on conviction.
- Think about that: When the news broke, did anyone think every single Republican in the House and Senate would have his back? Bill Clinton pined for such unity.
A source close to House Democrats sounded morose after Trump’s defense team made its opening arguments yesterday: “I think our team feels like we did everything possible and are going to lose anyway.”
- “It feels like maybe we’ll still get a witness, but more likely not, and even if we do it won’t matter,” the source added.
- “The GOP gamble is always that most voters don’t care about process … Up to us to make them pay for this.”
The whole thing, from Axios big Mike Allen, king of the swamp, in a column that almost always can find a silver lining for the Democrats otherwise, (and didn’t this time), can be read here…
…It wasn’t just public sentiment shifting decisively in favor of Trump on impeachment, as this RealClearPolitics poll of polls showed.
It wasn’t just Trump’s string of hardcore victories — over Iran, with our top trading partners in China and between the three amigos, as well on the Mexican border where illegal border crossings fell a staggering 90%. And don’t forget Brexit with an awesome U.S.-U.K. trade treaty in the wings.
It wasn’t just the lack of public interest in House impeachment manager Adam Schiff’s long, long, long speeches that kept even the Senate visitor galleries empty.
It wasn’t even a new poll out showing Trump’s public approval soaring to the highest level of his entire presidency…
…Nobody wants to be stubbornly identified with a losing cause, especially one as badly managed and executed, without even a cause, as this one. Reality now is sinking in to the Democrats that the public is repelled by this specter and rallying to President Trump, and they’d better extricate themselves from this before they are swept away in November.
This, by the way, is far from where it ends for them. As time goes on and the public rejects the Democratic impeachment obsession to a growing extent (and all signs point to this as the trend), more Democrats will flee like ‘rats from the sinking ship, and join the no-impeach side. It might just start to look like the burning Hindenburg for them.
Falling dirigible, sure, but maybe more like an avalanche, actually, in the best case scenario, leaving the impeachment fanatics all by their lonesome, and even better, maybe thrown out even from their safe seats themselves, come November. For Republicans, it’s time for hot pursuit…”