Above all, Democrats see electoral advantages for President Joe Biden if Donald Trump is impeached.
If an indictment doesn’t cost Trump the GOP primary, it would hover over his general election campaign.
It would remind voters of his baggage and overshadow the House GOP investigation into Biden, they say.
President Joe Biden would enter uncharted waters in 2024 when he ends up running for re-election against the first indicted former president.
But Democrats mostly see the most benefit for Biden, despite Donald Trump bragging about potential indictments over an alleged hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels will help his electoral prospects.
If an indictment doesn’t cost Trump the GOP primary, it will hover over his general campaign and serve as a reminder of his chaotic presidential administration, Democrats say. And it would overshadow the investigation by House Republicans into Biden and his family.
Trump, who has been impeached twice, is fighting even among some Republicans the perception that he “has a lot of baggage and is a loser,” said Josh Schwerin, a former spokesman for the Democratic and Hillary Clinton campaign committees.
“It just adds to that baggage and reminds people how scandal-ridden he is and puts the obviously very real legal threat on top of the political scandal,” he told Insider.
Here are some takeaways on what an indictment would mean for Biden.
The Republicans could nominate a weak opponent
Trump’s most ardent supporters would likely stand with him if he were impeached, and it’s actually possible other Republican primary voters would also join the ranks.
Democratic pollster and adviser Brad Bannon said an impeachment against Trump would rouse support from Republicans who live in a “bizarre world” and see them as an example of an “oppressive government beating up its guy.”
That’s good for Biden, he said, because he’d rather run against Trump than Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to run.
“Anything that’s good for Trump in a Republican primary is good for Biden,” Bannon said. “I just think DeSantis is a bigger threat to Biden than Trump.”
However, it is still early. And it’s unclear if Trump is the weaker opponent, or if he can even garner enough support from GOP primary voters to become the nominee.
Trump’s support has waned among Republicans, and “disaffected Republican primary voters who are tired of seeing Trump and his preferred candidates lose will not like it,” Schwerin said.
A positive split screen for Biden
Part of Biden’s pitch to voters in 2020 was that he would shield them from agita over the Trump administration’s chaos.
A Trump indictment in the Stormy Daniels case would sharpen the contrast “between some kind of normal, boring politics that people can ignore and the chaos and crisis-to-crisis politics of the Trump years,” said Matt Lehrich, a former spokesman of the Obama White House who founded Be Clear Communications.
Even if he’s accused Georgia over possible interference in the 2020 electionIt also highlights the “big lie” he won, which was consistently an unpopular message, Lehrich said.
“It would remind anyone of something very disliked about them,” Lehrich said.
An even messier GOP primary
An impeachment against Trump would likely deepen the gulf in the GOP primary between hardcore MAGA believers and establishment Republicans who want to walk away from Trump and fear he will hurt their election chances.
Republicans in the Senate have already told insiders that they have no problem with an ugly GOP primary because it will help them find the best candidate.
Democrats say they also welcome an awkward Republican primary, especially when Biden is expected to run without significant opposition.
“The messier the Republicans are, the better we look in comparison,” Schwerin said.
Which house GOP investigation?
If Trump is impeached, that event will likely dominate news for the foreseeable future — not Hunter Biden’s laptop.
This is bad news for them GOP-led House committees investigating Biden’s son, his businesses and the incumbent president. At the very least, the GOP oversight agenda would attract less attention in the short term.
Schwerin said voters would see the investigation as a political tool used by the GOP to distract from their own problems.
“I think it’s all going to be noise,” Schwerin said. “There’s a lot of exaggeration and it’s becoming more evident as Republican scandals mount.”
The downside: Breaking through “noise” might be difficult
It’s possible that impeachment against Trump would make Americans so fed up with the entire political system that “they say ‘fuck it,'” Bannon said.
“Such an environment could harm an incumbent president when Americans just throw up their hands and say, ‘The whole system is corrupt, we have to change something,'” he said.
But people have been frustrated for years, Schwerin noted. The bigger difficulty might be breaking through Trump’s headlines to talk about his political agenda.
It would likely take some creative thinking from Biden’s communications team because Trump’s problems “are just going to suck a lot of oxygen into the room,” Lehrich said.
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Source : news.yahoo.com