News Notes: 2020 opinion The Republicans granted the Democrats a stay of execution
By Maya Shaffer
Recent polling shows that basically any of the likely contenders, especially Sanders, for the Democratic nomination would match up well head to head against Trump in the general election suggesting that the 2020 race is the Democrat’s to lose. Hear me out though, the Republicans just wiffed at their chance to break the Democrats in 2020 and beyond (though the Iowa debacle and the threat of Bloomberg buying the nomination threatens to do so anyway).
There was always a 0% chance that the republican-controlled Senate would actually remove Trump in the lead-up to the 2020 election. The Democrats leveraged this predetermined outcome for momentum in the 2020 election by accurately claiming that the Republicans would and did party over responsibility to the country- that was their talking point from early on. The evidence of the predetermined outcome, according to the Democrats, is that the Senate trial was rushed and that evidence and witness testimony was excluded.
What the Republicans should have done is, without signaling it beforehand, unanimously vote to allow documents and witnesses. Immediately the Republicans would have had a talking point that the Democrats had been smearing them with baseless lies while in actuality the Senate Republicans have always taken the impeachment trial very seriously and are ones actually above partisanship and interested in truth and justice.
The testimony from witnesses the Democrats wanted to present wouldn't hurt Trump or the Republicans- all it would have done is further prove what is already evident. Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate the Biden. Trump's base wouldn't care and it would have drawn out the trial. A longer trial would have made it more likely that the nation's interest in the matter would wane.
A large portion of Trump's team's talking points about the case were that what he did was perfect and not impeachable. The Democrats argue that it was for personal gain. What Trump's team should have done is attack the personal gain point by highlighting that Trump was an anti-corruption candidate who ran claiming he would drain the swamp. In this case he was pursuing an investigation into what appeared to be corruption at the highest levels of the previous administration. It was exactly what he was elected to do. After that the Republicans should have subpoenaed Hunter and Joe Biden.
Biden would have to explain Hunter taking a seat on the board of a foreign company he had no relevant experience in (other than his last name). The argument that Biden, who was the Obama administration's voice in Ukraine, didn't provide any benefit to the company that his son joined doesn't hold water because having Hunter publicly join the company alone would have sent a clear message to Ukrainian officials. That message alone must have been worth the reported $50,000 per month Burisma decided to pay Biden. The Biden family’s actions are indefensible. The Democrats would have hurt themselves defending Biden and the Republicans could have spent the run up to 2020 slamming Democrats for hypocritically ignoring corruption in their own party.
The Republican should have then subpoenaed all of Biden’s financial records. After years of calling for Trump to be transparent about his financial records it'd be almost impossible for the Democrats to argue that Biden's records should remain out of sight. Even if the digging found nothing it would put Biden and the Democrats in a no win scenario. The Democrats couldn't have even fought to end the case quickly without it appearing hypocritical- after all they were the ones who demanded a longer more in-depth trial and suggested anything shorter was a cover up.
Trump's messaging around this should've been that he was elected to drain the swamp but when he tried to do it the Democrats impeached him to protect their corrupt party elites. He should've then pointed to the money that ran through the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Initiative as well as taking a dig at Obama’s wealth gains after being in office including their newly purchased multi-million dollar mansion.
A longer trial would have kept senators Warren and Sanders from campaigning during the early Democratic primary elections while simultaneously crippling Joe Biden… the Democratic primary is already messy so this would drag out the campaign and hurt 3 of the then most likely DEM 2020 candidates while giving great optics and messaging to the Republicans and Trump. Three of the front-runners in the Democratic primary would be buried while Trump would be free to campaign and the trial would be more about Biden than about Trump. Every bit of this would play well with Trump's base who see him as a cagey fighter able to turn the tables on the Democrats.
Ideally for the Republicans this trial would sideline Sanders long enough and damage Biden enough to give candidates like Bloomberg Pete and Klobuchar and possibly others a chance to build their own bases sowing disunity. The Iowa mess and the DNC bending the rules for Bloomberg show that the party is already running towards opening party fault lines, but the best scenario for the Republicans would be to see the party elites coalesce around Bloomberg while the progressive base goes to Sanders… there is not an effective way to unite the anti-billionaire Sanders message with billionaire Bloomberg buying a nomination. The Democrats would be unlikely to be effective in 2020 and beyond.
At the end of the Senate trial the Senate would obviously choose not to remove Trump. The Republicans would claim that they took the trial very seriously, listened to all of the evidence, and came to the conclusion that Trump wasn't acting for personal gain but rather was rooting out corruption. The Trump administration would tout it as vindication & proof that Biden and the Democrats are corrupt- and would warp it into a campaign promise to step up his attacks on the corrupt Democrats.
Ultimately none of this would have hurt Trump while it would have wreaked havoc on the Democrats. It's bewildering to watch the Democrats place their head on the executioner's block only to be granted a stay of execution by Mitch McConnell.
