Thiessen: Testimony good for Trump

That was a huge risk. The Washington Post reports that Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee conducted focus groups in key battlegrounds that showed “the public’s impression of the new House majority is bound up in its battles with Trump, not in its policy agenda” and the party’s preoccupation with investigations was “overshadowing the party’s agenda, threatening its grip on the House in 2020.” Rep. Charlie Crist, D-Fla., a DCCC vice chairman, warned that “it seems like there is a preoccupation with what’s happening as it relates to the White House, and so everything else sort of gets drowned out.”

Impeachment obsession

Democrats took the House in 2018 by focusing on kitchen-table issues like health care and prescription drug prices to flip districts Trump won in 2016. But the impeachment obsession is threatening vulnerable freshman Democrats in those Trump districts. Rep. Ben McAdams, D-Utah, who won in a Trump district, complained that “I’m spending zero hours per week, zero minutes per week on investigations and impeachment, and I’m spending a lot of time on the issues that my district sent me here to work on. … But it doesn’t break through.”

Many of McAdams’s colleagues were unmoved by such entreaties. While pushing for Mueller to testify might overshadow their policy work, they calculated that it would also provide sound bites that would be politically devastating for the president. Their bet did not pay off. Mueller sounded fragile and confused, and gave Democrats no new ammunition to use against Trump. To the contrary, when he was asked by Rep. Douglas A. Collins, R.-Ga., “At any time in the investigation, was your investigation curtailed or stopped or hindered?” Mueller replied “no.” It’s hard to make a case for obstruction when the special counsel says he was not obstructed.

Democrats’ impeachment drive was never going to work. Even if they did pass articles of impeachment, the Senate is not going to convict him. The only way they’re going to get Trump out of office is by beating him in the 2020 election. But instead of focusing on things they need to do to defeat Trump at the ballot box, they’re focused on impeachment. Not only is that not winning back those Obama-Trump voters, it is pushing them away, because it is perceived as an effort to invalidate their votes.

So, the Mueller debacle was a gift to Pelosi. She gave her Democrats a shot at making their case for impeachment, and it blew up in their faces. Yet despite the obvious failure of the Mueller hearings, some pro-impeachment Democrats are undeterred. Politico reports that in a closed-door meeting after Mueller left Capitol Hill, House judiciary committee chairman Jerry Nadler, D.-N.Y., pushed to launch impeachment proceedings. Talk about a tin ear.

Pelosi understands that if Democrats run in 2020 on impeachment and socialism they could lose not just the White House, but their House majority as well. The question is: Does her caucus now finally get it — or will they continue their suicidal impeachment drive?