Impeachment Collateral Damage?

Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced tonight that the House will open an impeachment inquiry focused on President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. All of the Democratic Presidential candidates in Congress immediately voiced support for the approach with the exception of Representative Tulsi Gabbard who reiterated her opposition to the move, citing her concern that it would be extremely divisive for the nation. Speaker Pelosi is usually quite politically savvy so perhaps she knows something that we don’t about the underlying facts. However, we think it is quite premature to launch such an inquiry, particularly when the President has pledged to release a full transcript of his conversation with his Ukranian counterpart. The facts of the conversation and the rest of the supporting evidence will ultimately be made clear for all. We think it politically unwise to launch the inquiry before the contents of the conversation have been shared with the public. If it proves to be another dead end and a fairly harmless conversation (which we suspect since Trump seems intent on getting it in the public), then Pelosi will have built up hopes among Progressives only to have them dashed just as she did with the Mueller Report. She will also energize the Republican base and defy Independent voters who according to polls largely oppose impeachment, even though there is almost no hope that Democrats could get an impeachment conviction of 2/3 of the Senate. In short, absent something really bad coming out, we believe this process could easily back fire on Democrats. That said, there is already one clear loser and that is Joe Biden. The Ukraine story reintroduces the narrative of Hunter Biden using his father’s influence as VP to enrich himself in Ukraine and China and Joe Biden threatening the prosecutor to stop investigating his son’s employer. Who knows how much truth there is to the narrative, but it comes at a difficult time for Biden when he is already slipping in the polls against an ascendant Senator Elizabeth Warren. We don’t know how the story will play out for Trump, but for now we think that Biden is collateral damage … and that gives a big opening to Elizabeth Warren to consolidate support.