Would he have won if not for impeachment?

[struggle4progress]

FEB. 5, 2021
By Jonathan Chait

The last time Democrats tried to impeach ... almost everybody agreed it had redounded to the benefit of its intended victim ...

But maybe ... he could have won the election if he hadn’t been impeached ...

... impeachment created a five-month-long national tutorial ... It even got large numbers of Republican officials to concede that his scheme to use his presidential authority to conscript Ukraine into his opposition research operations was bad ...

... so when Giuliani finally produced the October Surprise, the media had been well schooled. Reporters knew that Joe Biden had fired ineffectual Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin as part of an effort to clean the country up, rather than as a favor to his son. They knew Trump’s own cronies were engaged in the very scam (using their power to skim money out of the Ukrainian energy sector) they were accusing Biden of trying. The Treasury Department even felt compelled to identify Andrei Derkach, Giuliani’s partner, as an active Russian agent ...

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-would-have-beaten-biden-if-not-for-impeachment.html

[Demsrule86]

1. I am not convinced impeachment helped us.

[11 Bravo]

18. Nor am I. But I AM convinced that it needed to be done.

[phylny]

2. I think had he not totally screwed up our

country’s response to Covid, he’d still be in office. I’m sorry his response was so horrendous because of the lives lost and affected, but I’m glad he’s gone.

[Proud liberal 80]

9. I would say COVID was the reason he lost, too

But if it wasn’t COVID it would have been something else that he would have screwed up

[Hoyt]

3. Hate to think it, but if not for CV19, he would likely still be Prez.

[Sneederbunk]

13. " " " "

[Nay]

19. IMO, that is true. Without COVID, he would have easily won. nt

[Vogon_Glory]

4. I think it was the COVID virus

and the Trump administration’s miserable response to him that nailed him. I don’t think the good guys would have had the numbers to beat Donnie if he hadn’t made it such a putrid mess.

[FSogol]

7. Agreed. If he has a halfway decent approach to covid, he would have won. n/t

[peggysue2]

10. Ditto!

In fact, the political autopsy produced by Trump's pollster came to same conclusion. Not taking the pandemic seriously and screwing up the entire Covid response/nonresponse was Trump's Achille's heel.

As is with everything Trump-connected, Donnie did himself in through incompetence, vanity and raw ignorance.

Well done, Donald! Well done.

[Proud liberal 80]

5. If anything his impeachment made it closer

But I don’t think it really had a big impact either way

Edit - just read the article...ok I can see that Trump’s impeachment made the ‘October surprise’ not a big deal because everyone already knew about it

[malaise]

6. No

His abysmal indifference to Covid-19 is the main reason for the defeat. No one responsible for all these deaths wins reelection.

[wishstar]

8. Revelations coming from impeachment did help to immunize Joe from false attacks

Without the official government whistleblowers and fact checking by media surrounding impeachment, the matter would have remained secretive and Ukraine's President might have muddied the waters by going to CNN as Trump requested to smear Joe in order to obtain the military aid Trump was trying to withhold.

Giuliani's reputation was permanently harmed by his shenanigans in Ukraine and his collusion with Russian intelligence to come up with manufactured smears against the Bidens so that during final months of campaign the mainstream media ignored all the Hunter laptop stuff (which certainly involved Russian hacking and altering of contents of his laptop)

[crickets]

17. This more than any detriment to trump himself. Well said. nt

[Beakybird]

11. Despite the 7.5 million national advantage, Biden won by 50,000 votes in 3 states.

It's sad, but this was an electoral college squeaker. The impeachment probably contributed to Biden's win.

[LisaL]

12. I don't think so.

The main reason for his loss was his atrocious handling of covid.

[brooklynite]

14. Impeachment had nothing to do with it

Trump lost because of the health and economic angst caused by his performance on COVID. The marginal voters who shifted to him weren’t influenced by the Impeachment trial.

[TwilightZone]

15. There is little evidence that impeachment had any negative impact on Trump.

And it may have had a positive one. One of the only times in his presidency that he received a noticeable bump in the polls was during the process and shortly after acquittal.

Covid did him in.

[soothsayer]

16. Impeachment helped expose his quid pro quo nature

...which resurfaced all over the place in his attempts to steal the election. So it was helpful for that at least, and maybe even for shutting down any Hunter Biden nonsense before the election.

May have opened some eyes, though. Don’t know.

[bullimiami]

20. he would have won except for his being a sociopathic asshole and crapholing the covid response.

[dawg]

21. I don't think he was likely to win without some sort of extraordianry change.

Covid-19 could have been that change, but he bungled it.

I still believe that the Covid crisis, on the balance, helped Donald Trump more than it hurt him. Lots of people gave him credit for the two stimulus checks they received. And many people were "outraged" by the lockdowns and believed the lies that Democrats were trying to rob them of their "freedoms".

Trump never hit a 50% approval rating. Not once in his Presidency.

And the pandemic also helped to obscure the fact that the economy was already beinning to roll over before the crisis even hit. Trump's trade war was an abject failure. It hurt Americans more than it helped. Interst rates started collapsing in 2019 - never a good sign in terms of economic confidence.