Impeachment has become such an important topic on the right that competing theories are emerging. One line of magical thinking holds that a House Democratic majority and Donald Trump's eventual impeachment by it (potentially doomed in the Senate) would be a boon for Republicans and Trump in 2020.
“If they take the House, he wins big,” Barry Bennett, former senior adviser to the Trump campaign, told Politico. “The market always overcorrects.”
The other "big idea" being pushed by former Trump campaign aide Steve Bannon is a midterm campaign to "Save Trump" from impeachment by a Democratic majority. In other words, if Democrats win the House this fall, all will be lost.
What both of those conflicting strategies have in common is an obsession with impeachment, something Democrats have taken pains not to talk about. It's like Republicans are desperately groping around trying to find a way to spin Trump's moral, ethical, and perhaps criminal corruption to Trump's advantage. It actually assumes Trump's liability as a starting point and works either backward or forward from that assumption. That in and of itself is striking.
Bannon's "Save Trump" schtick seems more of an effort to get back in Trump's good graces after parting ways with Breitbart and losing favor with the billionaire benefactors he found in the Mercer family. The New York Times writes:
But Mr. Bannon, who insists that approaching congressional races as one-offs is a waste of time, is planning a messaging push on cable television, the op-ed pages of newspapers and local conservative radio shows. His premise is that more of Mr. Trump will be a good thing.
“More than any other midterm, this is a referendum on his style and on his content, and you cannot run from that; you have to embrace it,” Mr. Bannon said in an interview.
It may be true that it's impossible to escape Trump's grating ubiquitousness, but it's hard to see how injecting more of it into swing districts where he's already a liability is a winning strategy. Of course, Bannon helped deliver an Alabama senate seat to Democrat Doug Jones when he went all in for serial sexual predator Roy Moore. So hey, more power to him.
But the theory that a House Democratic majority is a huge win for Trump seems equally as desperate. Politico writes:
The idea gaining currency on the right is that Trump can be Bill Clinton, not Richard Nixon. It depends on a delicate political calculation — that a Republican-held Senate would never follow a Democratic House and vote to remove Trump, and that voters tired of the long-running Russia scandal will, as they did in the late 1990s with Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky scandal, want to move on. [...]
In interviews, more than a dozen Republican politicians, activists and consultants — including some current and former Trump campaign aides with direct lines to the president — said they are increasingly convinced a Democratic House victory in the midterms and subsequent impeachment push would backfire and ultimately help the president in 2020.
It's one of those specious arguments that sounds plausible in theory but falls apart on further inspection. First off, anyone conducting actual oversight over this administration will be such a bulwark to Trump's presidency that it will drive Trump batty (and by “batty” I mean, battier). He has no idea how to function in that environment, and his rage overload will surely put a potential GOP-led Senate in a terrible bind. Imagine, for instance, a Republican Senate blocking House Democratic efforts to do very popular things like improve health coverage and save the ACA. That will not play well to the public as Republicans work to hang on to their Senate majority in 2020, should they manage to retain it this fall.
In addition, nothing about the Trump/Clinton inquiries are particularly comparable. Trump does not have Clinton's political savvy or ability to stay focused in the midst of an ongoing investigation, and he proves that every day. Also, the investigation into Clinton spanned more than four years, starting out with an inquiry into real estate investments and ending on his affair with a White House intern.
While we don't know exactly how long special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe will last, it has been moving at a break-neck pace with plenty of results to show by any comparison to other special counsel inquiries. And it has stayed on point—dealing with the Trump campaign, its potential ties to Russia, and obstruction of justice.
Finally, Clinton's approvals heading into the impeachment proceedings were above 60 percent—quite popular as presidents go. Following the effort, his approvals soared to over 70 percent. Trump, as delusional as he is, probably can't even in is wildest dreams imagine a day when his approvals would hit 70 percent.
All that said, it's still not a sure thing House Democrats would try to impeach Trump with a Republican-held Senate standing in the way. Their entire “Trump wins” with a Democratic House scenario depends on impeachment and falls apart without one. To be honest, it's almost impossible to game out what will happen because so much depends on the outcome of Mueller's probe and how convincing his case is depending on the findings.
But comparing Donald Trump to Bill Clinton is ludicrous. If that's the trajectory they're betting on to save Trump’s presidency, they have basically conceded the preceding battle and skipped straight to throwing the Hail Mary pass.