Sweet fancy moses. Imagining losing a credibility contest, decisively, to Michael Cohen, a man who’s headed to prison soon for lying under oath.
It’s like getting blown out at home by the Jets.
I kinda want to call this the second good poll of the day for Trump thanks to the 59 percent who oppose impeachment, but there are three problems. One: As noted yesterday, the House isn’t going to impeach him. They’re taking their case to voters next November. Trump’s political problem isn’t impeachment, it’s the investigations Democrats are launching to gather oppo research on him for 2020.
Two: Although there’s a majority against impeachment right now, there’s also a majority in favor of having Dems dig around for impeachment material. Fully 58 percent want Congress to investigate Cohen’s claims of illegal and unethical activity by Trump. For the moment, at least, Jerrold Nadler and his colleagues have the people’s support.
Three: C’mon. Are these results really cause for celebration?
A plurality thinks Trump committed crimes in the past two years and a near supermajority thinks he committed crimes before that. The question most voters will be asking themselves next fall: Is a strong economy worth reelecting a likely criminal?
By a 50/35 margin, Americans say they believe Cohen over Trump when forced to choose. The clear takeaway from this poll, I think, is that although Cohen’s testimony didn’t supercharge the public’s desire for impeachment, it did add to the already considerable doubts about Trump’s credibility:
If Cohen could singlehandedly knock a few remaining points off of Trump’s trustworthiness, it’s reasonable to expect that the Democrats’ Nadler-led inquisition into Trump’s past might knock off a few more. Can a man be reelected even in a great economy when fewer than 30 percent of the public trusts him? We might find out.
A note of caution for the Dems, though:
Nearly a quarter of their own party think they risk getting sidetracked from more important business by their Trump oppo research project. Whether that feeling lingers or passes probably depends on whether the investigations turn up anything juicy, but the GOP will hammer the message in House races next year that Democrats who got elected promising health-care reform have spent most of their time sniffing around for Trump dirt and amusing themselves with shiny objects like the Green New Deal. This data suggests that that message might have some traction.
In fact, we don’t need to wait for next year to hear that message. Your exit quotation:
President Trump on Democratic calls for a criminal investigation related to security clearance procedures. "Instead of doing infrastructure, instead of doing health care, instead of doing so many things that they should be doing, they want to play games." pic.twitter.com/jU4i8lIoWE
— CSPAN (@cspan) March 5, 2019