Democrats face quandary on Trump impeachment

Bloomberg

Democrats uniformly called for the public release of Robert Mueller’s report, but that unity will be tested as they weigh whether the special counsel’s findings should be used to pursue an impeachment of President Donald Trump.
It’s a quandary for party leaders. There’s a hunger for impeachment among many Democratic voters who believe it is merited regardless of the contents of the Mueller report. But the effort could backfire as polls show the wider US public isn’t sold on the idea.
Top Democrats have mostly avoided discussing the merits of impeachment until Mueller finishes his work. Now that he’s done, and with Attorney General William Barr saying he’ll deliver the principal findings of the investigation to Congress as soon as Sunday, they can no longer cite the probe to sidestep the question.
The completion of the probe presents a defining moment that could shape Democrats’ prospects heading into the 2020 election.
Over the nearly two-year investigation, Democrats have watched anger towards Trump grow among their core voters amid a barrage of controversies. Many of those voters believe
the Democratic-led House has a duty to impeach him and would be disappointed if it refused.
On the campaign trail, presidential contenders sought to calm the impeachment clamour.
“We want to make sure that we carefully guard and jealously hold these institutions of our democracy and employ this mechanism of impeachment as an absolute last resort,” Beto O’Rourke said in Charleston, South Carolina. “Ultimately, I believe this will be decided at the ballot box in 2020.”
With Trump and his allies gearing up to declare vindication if the report offers anything less than ironclad evidence of a crime, Democrats are haunted by fears that a partisan pursuit of impeachment will drive wavering voters back into the arms of a besieged president whose job approval rating has been stuck in negative territory.
“It may well be the case that the only appropriate response is impeachment, but to me, the most decisive way up to put an end to Trump is for him to be defeated massively at the ballot box,” South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who’s seeking party’s 2020 nomination, said in Greenville, South Carolina.

Little Support
Just 36 percent of Americans say Trump should be impeached and removed from office, while 59 percent say they disagree, according to a CNN poll taken March 14-17.
That’s down since early December — just before Democrats took control of the House — when the same poll showed 43 percent support impeachment and 50 percent oppose it. Support for the cause among Democrats fell to 68 percent from 80 percent in the same time period, while support among college graduates dropped to 35 percent from 50 percent.