… Previous impeachment efforts show that public opinion, however entrenched it may seem, does move as Americans tune into the debate in Washington. When Republicans impeached President Clinton, public opinion started out divided. But by the time the House voted to impeach, in December 1998, Americans had reached a verdict: […] Read more »
Impeachment Is Important — But Don’t Expect It to Matter Much in 2020
… Congressional elections expert Gary Jacobson of UC San Diego concluded at the time that “the results of the 1998 elections are in no way extraordinary. . . . [they] are about what we would expect if no one had ever heard of Monica Lewinsky.” If Clinton’s impeachment didn’t really […] Read more »
The Risks of Impeachment Are Overblown
For months, the biggest hurdle for Democrats pushing the House to open impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump was the party leadership’s concern that such a process would politically endanger the members at the far edge of their majority, especially the 31 representing districts that voted for the president in 2016. […] Read more »
The Contract With America’s legacy
… The takeaways from the 1994 GOP victory about what works and what doesn’t in campaign politics are important. But it’s what Republicans did with the victory that matters more as we reflect on the contract’s 25th anniversary. For Republicans after the election, the contract gave them the means to […] Read more »
Impeachment Has Never Been Very Popular, But That Hasn’t Stopped Congress Before
The topic of impeachment is back and hotter than ever in Washington. But is it back by popular demand? Will the issue simmer into the fall, or will the heat dissipate in the days ahead? More Democrats than ever — a majority — now favor opening formal proceedings to remove […] Read more »
Why it’s back to the future in the Democratic presidential race
The wine track and the beer track are back. The leading candidates in the 2020 Democratic presidential race are assembling coalitions of support through the early primary polling that are reminiscent of the patterns that repeatedly shaped the struggles for the party’s nomination in the last decades of the 20th […] Read more »