Trump set for acquittal with Dems second-guessing plan

Bloomberg

President Donald Trump’s inevitable acquittal in the Senate’s impeachment trial on Wednesday has some House Democrats fretting that they should have delivered a more complete case to argue for his removal.
Trump is emerging from the two-week Senate trial looking as strong as ever, barely wounded by the relentless details of his efforts to force Ukraine to investigate one of his main political rivals. Instead, the Republican base appears reinvigorated, sending Trump to a record 49% approval rating in the latest Gallup poll.
Democrats watched while the president entered the very chamber where his impeachment had taken place and triumphantly declared: “the State of our Union is stronger than ever before!”
Chief Justice John Roberts was scheduled to take his place in the Senate chamber one last time to preside over a 4 pm vote on the two articles of impeachment. Most Senate Republicans have already declared they will vote to acquit, and only a handful said they disapproved of Trump’s actions regarding Ukraine.
House Democrats are left grappling with what they could have done differently and what the trial’s conclusion will
mean for their party in the 2020 elections.
On the one hand, by wrapping up impeachment just as primary voting begins, Democrats can turn their attention back to a broader agenda. But some Democrats who represent swing districts could also pay a price for supporting impeachment, rather than focussing on issues like healthcare that got them elected.
“I’m hopeful we are going to stay in the majority,” said Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, acknowledging concerns that Republicans could use impeachment to take back the House.
Multiple House Democrats, who asked not to be named to speak more candidly, questioned the strategy of focussing impeachment articles on the
allegations that Trump used US foreign policy regarding Ukraine for his own political benefit. Some are also concerned that the swift investigation and hearings to impeach Trump by the end of 2019 gave Republicans an easy way to dismiss the process as illegitimate.
“There’s going to be a lot of second-guessing about this by colleagues and by historians,” said Representative Dan Kildee, also of Michigan and a member of the House Democratic vote-counting team.

‘Impeached Forever’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew when she announced the impeachment inquiry in September that the Republican-led Senate would almost certainly not reach the two-thirds majority needed to actually remove Trump from office. But Democrats hoped the inquiry and trial would expose what they saw as Trump’s unacceptable conduct to a bigger audience.
“We had a strong case of impeachment of the president of the United States,” Pelosi told reporters last week. “No matter what the senators have the courage or not to do, he will be impeached forever.”