Abraham Lincoln closed the Gettysburg Address on a hopeful note, promising a “new birth of freedom” so that “government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
Today, as the Democrats push their partisan impeachment forward in the Senate chamber, the sentiments expressed so eloquently by a beleaguered president in the midst of the Civil War are worth remembering. It’s worth remembering that a government of the people must, by definition, be formed by the people.
Impeachment, as the framers saw it, was a constitutional necessity to protect the country from presidential corruption, but it was also meant to be a rare avenue for Congress to embark on, and in only the most dire of circumstances, because impeachment is, de facto, the overturning of a national election.
These same Founding Fathers also understood that there is an alternative to impeachment, and it’s called an election. Thomas Jefferson said, “Should things go wrong at any time, the people will set them to rights by the peaceable exercise of their elective rights.”
At the core, do Democrats even understand what people really want? Over the past two months, there has been plenty of polling on whether voters favor the impeachment of the president and want him removed from office. The numbers have moved modestly up and down, pro and con, depending on the week, the sample and how the question was asked.
But the problem Democrats face may be worse than the standard polling questions seem to suggest. The Oct. 31-Nov. 2 Winning the Issues survey looked into the issue of impeachment through a slightly different lens. In most polls, people are given only two options: favor or oppose impeachment, with some surveys including “removal from office.” Winning the Issues gave them an option that we hoped would give us some insight into how people value their right to vote and what impact impeachment would have on that vote.
We asked people which statement came closest to their views:
“Voters – not Congress – should decide whether President Trump should be removed or reelected in next year’s election.”
“Congress should impeach President Trump and remove him from office.”
Our findings in early November didn’t represent good news for Democrats – by a 49% to 39% margin, respondents supported letting the voters decide. But our latest Dec. 28-30 survey ought to give Democrats serious pause. By a larger margin than we saw last fall, voters believed the election should decide Trump’s future – 55% to 35%.
Despite high viewership of the House impeachment hearings and Democrats’ almost total control of the political narrative, this 10-point shift from November shows that voters believe they should be the ones to decide, not partisan politicians.
Suburban women, one of the most crucial voter groups this fall, favored letting voters decide 51% to 35%, something that should concern Democratic leaders. People who had an unfavorable view of both parties, about 20% of the country, were the most disposed to letting voters decide, 60% to 28%.
These numbers don’t mean the electorate’s concerns over the impeachment allegations have disappeared. But with the election just over nine months away, Democrats’ argument for it is steadily losing standing with voters at exactly the wrong time for them.
The impeachment effort will only be successful if they win the argument that continuing the Trump presidency is so detrimental to the country that people are willing to give up their vote. During Watergate, “the people” eventually came to that conclusion. In the Clinton impeachment, they did not.
Nancy Pelosi and her impeachment caucus have spent months wrapping themselves in the Constitution and portraying themselves as protectors of democracy always “for the people.” Unless something dramatic happens during the Senate trial to change their minds, “the people” would rather Democrats left the decision to them.
CQ-Roll Call