Ginger Gibson and Simon Lewis -
The crowded field of Democratic presidential candidates were nearly unanimous in praising House Democrats’ decision to begin an impeachment inquiry into Republican President Donald Trump over accusations he sought foreign help to smear a political rival. Now comes the hard part.
With impeachment set to overshadow the Democratic presidential primary race, how will candidates draw attention to their key policy issues, ranging from universal healthcare to income inequality? After months of resisting pressure from fellow Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the launch of a formal impeachment effort on Tuesday, accusing Trump of seeking foreign help to damage Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden ahead of the November 2020 election. Trump had pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a July 25 phone call to investigate Biden and his son Hunter, who had worked for a company drilling for gas in Ukraine. The impeachment inquiry ensures a partisan fight in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail in the coming months.
Kurt Meyer, Democratic party chairman for three rural Iowa counties north of Des Moines, the state’s most populous city, said he expects the impeachment proceedings to energise the Democratic base. “If a highly motivated person drags her mother and her husband and her second cousin twice removed to the polls, then it makes a difference,” Meyer said.
But in a sign the probe could energise Trump’s base as well, his re-election campaign raised a quarter of a million dollars in just 15 minutes on Tuesday in the immediate aftermath of Pelosi’s announcement about the probe. Trump was quick to portray himself as the victim of partisan Democratic attacks, while his campaign sent repeated fundraising appeals to his supporters on Tuesday pegged to the impeachment launch.
There is also a risk that any substantive policy discussions among the 19 Democrats running for the party’s nomination to take on Trump in the 2020 election will be drowned out in the growing battle between allies and foes of Trump, several Democratic strategists and experts said. “Trump has been the elephant in the room, but the democratic debates so far have been really policy centred. I think impeachment now takes centre stage,” said Erin O’Brien, associate professor of political science at University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Doug Heye, a Republican strategist who worked with congressional leaders, said Republican messaging just got simpler, if less positive. “For Democrats running for president, breaking through on healthcare or the economy just got a lot tougher,” he said. — Reuters
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