{"id":12037,"date":"2019-10-30T12:14:20","date_gmt":"2019-10-30T19:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=12037"},"modified":"2019-10-30T12:14:28","modified_gmt":"2019-10-30T19:14:28","slug":"anatomy-of-2020-weighing-issues-candidates-and-the-state-of-our-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/anatomy-of-2020-weighing-issues-candidates-and-the-state-of-our-union\/","title":{"rendered":"Anatomy of 2020: Weighing Issues, Candidates, and the State of Our Union"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the 20th century, no Congress brought impeachment proceedings against a first-term president facing a reelection. Both the Nixon and Clinton efforts were aimed at reelected presidents, perhaps on the theory that there was supposedly no other means of bringing them to account once they had been elected twice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In contrast, Trump faces reelection in about a year. The prevailing mood may soon be just to let the voters adjudicate his purported sins and for a year allow the Congress to get back to \u2014 or begin \u2014 governing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The makeup of the Senate matters. Nixon resigned before House impeachment because he feared that, if he were impeached, there might be enough Republican senators to give the Democratic majority a possible two-thirds vote in the Senate to convict him, given that the media hated his guts and the economy was souring and draining public support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bill Clinton knew that impeachment, facts aside, did not matter much, because the Republican Senate majority was never going to find the necessary votes to convict him, the media was on his side, and the economy was still robust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Trump\u2019s case, there is little likelihood that a Republican Senate majority will lose control of its membership to render a two-thirds majority guilty vote. The economy is strong, and impeachment will become unpopular when the public knows that it will not, and cannot, remove a president. The Democrats are more likely seeking a symbolic 51 percent conviction vote, and a year of \u201cthe walls are closing in\u201d anti-Trump chant in the press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2019\/10\/anatomies-of-the-2020-election\">Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review In the 20th century, no Congress brought impeachment proceedings against a first-term president facing a reelection. Both the Nixon and Clinton efforts were aimed at reelected presidents, perhaps on the theory that there was supposedly no other means of bringing them to account once they had been elected twice. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-389","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12796,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/an-impeachment-incitement\/","url_meta":{"origin":12037,"position":0},"title":"An Impeachment Incitement","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 21, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Donald Trump was impeached again on Wednesday, a week before leaving office in one of the great travesties of modern politics. Here are reasons why the exercise proved a farce. One, impeachment was never intended by the founders to become a serial effort to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12225,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/new-impeachment-rules-would-snare-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":12037,"position":1},"title":"New Impeachment Rules Would Snare Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 3, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Barack Obama\u2019s eight-year tenure was detrimental to the United States, but like most of his nonbelievers, I harbor no animosity for his person. Few critics that I know advocated that Obama be impeached, much less removed from office, before his reelection bid\u2014even amid his\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12020,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-strategies-of-targeting-trump\/","url_meta":{"origin":12037,"position":2},"title":"The Strategies of Targeting Trump","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 14, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness There is no logical Democratic explanation for impeaching Donald Trump. The various factions within the Democratic Party calling for impeachment are united only by their loathing of Donald Trump, the person, and his systematic repeal of the Obama progressive project. After failing with the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12055,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ten-reasons-why-impeachment-is-illegitimate\/","url_meta":{"origin":12037,"position":3},"title":"Ten Reasons Why Impeachment Is Illegitimate","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 13, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review There are at least ten reasons why the Democratic impeachment \u201cinquiry\u201d is a euphemism for an ongoing coup attempt. 1) Impeachment 24\/7.\u00a0The impeachment \u201cinquiry,\u201d supposedly prompted by the president\u2019s Ukrainian call, is simply the most recent in a long series of \u201ccoups\u201d that sought\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12116,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/impeachment-fallouts\/","url_meta":{"origin":12037,"position":4},"title":"Impeachment Fallouts","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 7, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Impeachment is shaping up as unpredictably explosive, but not in the way imagined. There are lots of things that we do know about the present impeachment of Donald Trump \u2014 and we know that there are even more areas that remain unknown. Quietly, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11939,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/will-2020-be-a-repeat-of-2004-for-democrats\/","url_meta":{"origin":12037,"position":5},"title":"Will 2020 Be a Repeat of 2004 for Democrats?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 10, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Democrats by 2004 had become obsessed with defeating incumbent President George W. Bush. Four years earlier, in the 2000 election, Bush had won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote. Democrats were still furious that Bush supposedly had been \u201cselected\u201d by the Supreme\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12037"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12037"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12038,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12037\/revisions\/12038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}