via pjmedia:
Democrats took a tremendous gamble by formally voting for an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump on Thursday. While polls suggest Americans support the inquiry, the general public is divided on whether or not Trump should be impeached and removed from office. Those in key swing states are more likely to oppose impeachment and removal, suggesting that the impeachment battle may help Trump’s reelection in 2020.
“We’ve known for a long time that everybody in California and New York want Trump to be impeached, they’ve wanted that since the day he came into office,” an anonymous Trump campaign official told The Hill. “But in these states where the election is really going to be fought, we’re seeing that voters oppose impeachment, and there’s an intensity to that opposition.”
Indeed, a New York Times/Siena College poll released Wednesday showed that voters in six key swing states oppose impeaching and removing President Trump, 52 percent to 44 percent.
Most voters in Arizona (52 percent to 45 percent), Florida (53 percent to 42 percent), Michigan (51 percent to 42 percent), North Carolina (53 percent to 43 percent), Pennsylvania (52 percent to 45 percent), and Wisconsin (51 percent to 45 percent) say they oppose Congress’s potential removal of Trump from office.
Most voters in those states also support the impeachment inquiry, however — though by smaller margins.
Other polling found that even the inquiry is unpopular in some swing states. Last week, a Marquette University Law School survey of Wisconsin found 49 percent of voters oppose the inquiry while 46 percent support it. Most voters (51 percent) also opposed removing Trump from office, while 44 percent supported it. Independents proved colder to impeachment and to the inquiry, with only 33 percent supporting Trump’s removal and 35 percent supporting the Congressional investigation.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned Democratic presidential candidates that appealing to just the party’s left-wing base could make it more difficult to defeat President Donald Trump in November 2020.
Speaking to a roundtable of Bloomberg News editors and reporters Friday, the California Democratic congresswoman expressed the need to “win the Electoral College” in order to win the election, meaning candidates should avoid issues — like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal — that could alienate moderate Democratic voters in must-win states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.
“What works in San Francisco does not necessarily work in Michigan,” Pelosi said. “What works in Michigan works in San Francisco — talking about workers’ rights and sharing prosperity.”
“Remember November,” she added. “You must win the Electoral College.”
While Bloomberg reported Pelosi’s caution not to back any particular candidate, the outlet also reported the House Speaker’s concern that Democrats like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are appealing to the party’s left-wing base, not the mainline voters Democrats must have to win the election.
“Bernie and Elizabeth own the left, right?” she said, commenting on the desire of most candidates to go as far left as possible. “Is anybody going to out-left them?”
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Democrats Launch Effort to Win 2020 Election… in Court. “Democrats have launched a multi-state effort in courts across the nation seeking to tinker with the rules of the 2020 election to help oust President Donald Trump from the White House. These lawsuits are the latest in a longstanding push to use the courts to alter election rules, all in the name of ‘civil rights.’ The lawsuits are funded by dark money sources, and not-so-dark money sources such as George Soros’ Open Society Institute.”
h/t SG