Impeachment Will Hurt Trump’s Re-Election Chances

Jonathan Chait: “Most voters are locked in to one of the parties. The swing vote tends to be low-information voters with a hazy grasp of the issues. Impeachment is a signal to those voters that Trump has done something seriously wrong. It’s not a magic trick that works against every president — there needs to be misconduct people can easily understand, and which the news media covers as a serious scandal. This easily qualifies.”

“If Trump has any political strengths, it is that he is a low-information voter himself, and grasps how the political narrative plays out in snippets of cable-news chyrons drifting across screens in bars and airports. Trump has confided to allies that impeachment ‘looks bad on his résumé.'”

“Because his victory surprised so many people, Trump has a way of psyching out his opponents sometimes. There’s no real political magic here. Having the news dominated by a scandal even many Republicans can’t defend, with a constant drip of damning new details, is extremely unhelpful for the president.”