The cable news chatterers are chatting about this Fox News poll, released yesterday, showing that half of all registered voters—exactly 50%—think Trump should be impeached and removed from office. Some say this is bad news for Trump, others say: "Who cares?" I'm afraid I'm with the second group, though not for the reasons touted by chatting representatives of "Who cares."
Well, they are on point, sort of, when they say that impeachment doesn't poll well in The Swing States. I don't know if that's true, but what's true for sure is that no one in the Congress represents "all registered voters." If those in the "this-is-bad-news-for-Trump" camp think public opinion is going to move congressional opinion, they are wrong, wrong, wrong. Members of the House represent 435 distinct districts. Because of the rural-metropolitan divide, augmented by gerrymandering, there are, according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, 235 districts that at least "lean" Republican, compared to only 192 that at least "lean" Democratic. (Eight are rated "even.") After the "blue wave" of the 2018 midterms, there are 235 Democrats in the House, which means, basically, that there are no Republicans left representing competitive districts. If you are a Republican with a seat in the House of Representatives, you represent a Trump district. What do you care if half of all registered voters think he should be Paul Manafort's roommate? (This is funny because Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, is in prison, as is his former lawyer and "fixer," Michael Cohen; I believe that Michael Flynn, his first National Security Advisor, is still awaiting sentencing.)
Let's see, 235 divided by 435 is about 0.54, so according to Cook 54% of House districts are more Republican than the country as a whole. In the other congressional body, the Senate, wherein Trump will be tried unless Mitch McConnell can devise a work-around, the members represent states, which skew even more crazily toward the Republicans. The "Exhibit A" of the brief in defense of this proposition is the result of the 2016 presidential election, in which Trump carried 30 of the 50 states despite losing the national popular vote by more than 2% (or, in terms of raw votes, by about 2.9 million). So, as of November 2016, at least 60% of the states were more Republican than the country as a whole. That's the macro view. Keeping it local, one might observe that the state I live in, Minnesota, shares a border with three others—North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa—that between them have less than 2% of the country's population, but 6% of the seats in the US Senate, and 17.6% of the Senate votes needed to acquit Trump. The six Republicans representing these states have fewer than 5 million constituents, while the two Democratic senators from California have 40 million.
One of the chatterers says that half of all voters favoring impeachment and removal augurs ill for Trump's reelection. Possibly he has not heard of the electoral college? Trump does not need half of all voters. He does not even need half of the 2-party vote. He needs half of the 2-party vote in 28 states. Wyoming is one. North Dakota is about 4 or 5. Iowa makes 20-something. Almost there.
Did you know that the electoral college is a work of genius, because it forces presidential candidates to "broaden their appeal"? LOL!
Interesting. Some argue there should be no impeachment because it goes against the will of the voters - but it really doesn't because president Trump lost the popular vote in 2016. We also learned from that election that we can't trust the polls.
Posted by: Steve Fiebiger | December 16, 2019 at 06:52 PM