A new USA Today/Suffolk poll shows that a majority of registered U.S. voters disapprove of the way House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is handling her job duties.
Fully 51% of those surveyed either disapproved or strongly disapproved, while only 32% approved or approved strongly of her job performance. In contrast, the same poll found that almost 52% of those queried disapproved of President Donald Trump’s job performance, but nearly 44% had a favorable view of the way Trump is carrying out his duties.
In addition, 37% wanted to see the impeachment inquiry end, while only 36% favored voting to impeach Trump. These numbers are telling after a month or more of the impeachment process dominating news headlines and Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) selectively leaking witness testimony that seemed to hin attempt to damage Trump.
If Democrats can’t get the public to support impeachment, chances are that the entire episode will hurt them at the ballot box in 2020. Many of the 31 vulnerable seats that changed hands in favor of the Democrats in the 2018 midterms may be flipped back again to give the House back to Republicans if voters perceive that Democrats are acting in a highly partisan manner that is not in the best interests of their constituents.
Rumblings of discontent
Already, there have been complaints about Democrats neglecting important priorities like national security to focus on impeachment. Rather than letting the Judiciary Committee handle impeachment as happened with Nixon and Clinton, Pelosi has chosen to let the Intelligence Committee take the helm, a decision which could put national security in jeopardy.
Pelosi has also spoken out of both sides of her mouth concerning impeachment. Right up until she announced a formal impeachment inquiry, she decried a partisan impeachment effort at the same time that the far left wing of her party was pushing for it.
It doesn’t make Pelosi look like a strong leader when she bows to pressure from progressives in the mold of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN). She managed to get all but two Democrats in the House to support a resolution formalizing impeachment rules, but the rules themselves make it look like she and other Democrats have something to hide. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) pointed out that the exclusion of Republicans up to this point has led to the creation of “a fundamentally tainted record” that renders future proceedings utterly unfair to the president.
And even after the vote, Pelosi made it clear that nothing had really changed except that the proceedings would become a little more public in nature. This will not help her when Americans begin to see the blatant injustice of the way she and Schiff have been running things thus far.
Gingrich: Vote was “enormous defeat”
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who oversaw the impeachment of Bill Clinton, called the vote and the proceedings a failure for Pelosi in a Fox News op-ed. After contrasting the open, public and bipartisan way Republicans handled impeachment in 1998 with the current closed-door fiasco, Gingrich pointed out that not even one Republican voted in support of Pelosi’s resolution.
In 1998, 31 Democrats voted with Republicans for the impeachment inquiry. “The American people understand the difference between a fair and an unfair process,” Gingrich said, pointing to the USA Today/Suffolk poll numbers.
Given that Pelosi hasn’t been able to prove the case for impeachment over the last seven months, she should expect to fail when impeachment moves to the Senate and again when the Democrats ultimately lose seats in 2020, Gingrich opined.
“The vote on Halloween was a terrible defeat which is likely to haunt the House Democrats through the 2020 election,” Gingrich said.
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