REVIEW - Trump, Dems Escalate Public Relations War Over Impeachment 1 Year Ahead Of Elections

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 03rd November, 2019) One year ahead of the 2020 US presidential election President Donald Trump and his political opponents have intensified their public relations war over impeachment knowing that the issue will ultimately be settled within the mind of American voters.

Monday marks exactly one year before US voters head to the polls to cast ballots in the presidential election. However, the presidency is not the only position at stake, hundreds of congressional seats will also be up for grabs and voters will likely weigh how each politician voted on impeachment.

Meanwhile, the Democratic race for president is already underway with the first Primary elections slated for February. Former vice president Joe Biden is currently the frontrunner and has been the target of Trump attacks which are at the center of the impeachment controversy.

Members of the Democratic Party since the 2016 presidential election have tried to undermine Trump's legitimacy including with accusations of colluding with Russia.

However, in April, after a two-year probe, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office concluded that there was no collusion between Trump and Russia.

Moreover, House committees have launched several separate probes into Trump's finances and tax records, yet no offenses have been uncovered apparently significant enough to warrant impeachment.

In the wake of these failed efforts Democrats have seized upon a whistleblower complaint that accused the president of abusing power by threatening to freeze military aid to Ukraine if Kiev failed to probe Biden and his son Hunter's dealings with a Ukrainian gas company. The Bidens, for their part, have denied all of Trump's allegations of corruption.

Trump has admitted that during a phone call this summer he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to look into Joe Biden's role in the firing of a prosecutor who had been pursuing a corruption case against the firm tied to Hunter Biden.

Trump denied that there was any quid pro quo and promptly released the transcript of the call. The president has repeatedly lambasted the impeachment inquiry as another round of "witch hunt garbage" aimed at discrediting him before the 2020 vote.

The US constitution gives sole power of impeachment to the 435-seat House of Representatives, which is currently controlled by Democrats. The process is triggered when the House judiciary committee draws up articles of impeachment, which are analogous to a criminal indictment.

However, the 100-member Senate, where Trump's Republicans have a majority, has sole power to try and remove the president once impeached.

A major part of the problem is that the US constitution does not clearly detail the process for impeaching a president. Meanwhile, several legal scholars have said impeachment is more of a political process than a legal one. The final battle ends up taking place in the court of public opinion rather than a legal court because politicians will vote based on their constituents' preferences.

For example, then-President Bill Clinton after being impeached by the House was acquitted by the Democratic-controlled Senate in a vote in February of 1999. In 1974, then-US President Richard Nixon decided to resign because he knew he lost the support of Congress and would be convicted and removed.

In September, based on the whistleblower complaint over the Trump-Ukraine affair, House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry - a process which the White House excoriated for lack of transparency and not being authorized by a full House vote.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats struck back last week by holding such a full vote on a resolution outlining the impeachment procedures. The vote was split along strict party lines. Only two Democrats voted against the motion with 232 supporting it and all Republican members of the House voted against it.

The timing of the vote is significant, some former legal officials and experts have argued, given that the Democratic primaries begin in just a few months.

"The timeframe for voting in the House on actual impeachment charges would seem to coincide with the first Democratic caucus/primaries," former FBI legal counsel and special agent Coleen Rowley told Sputnik. "It remains to be seen if Trump can mount any kind of effective defense in the House. So far I have not seen very much but perhaps that was due to the secrecy-leaks mode that Democrats enjoyed."

Democratic aides have said that the resolution passed by the House will ramp up the "public-facing phase" of the impeachment process.

Rowley said that this phase of the process could lead to even more public support for impeachment.

Former National Lawyers Guild head Professor Marjorie Cohn, who is also emeritus professor of law at the Thomas Jefferson school of Law, San Diego, California said that the dynamic of the legal process would increasingly tilt against Trump.

"As witnesses continue to corroborate Trump's wrongdoing, the case for impeachment will grow even stronger," Cohn told Sputnik.

Former Republican aide Jim Jatras said that the House could finally decide to try and oust Trump before the end of this year.

"I'd expect the Democrats to vote articles of impeachment before the end of the year and the Senate trial to take place in late January or early February. As of now I'd assess chances of impeachment at over 95 percent, with chances of Trump's removal at 40 percent and growing," Jatras told Sputnik.

If Trump were to be removed from office, he would be succeeded by Vice President Mike Pence. There has been no apparent move or revelation to threaten or undermine Pence or tie him closely in with Trump so far in the impeachment process.

However, if Pence were to be implicated in the Ukraine controversy or forced to resign the next in succession to the presidency would be Pelosi.

Trump's popularity has taken a hit from the publicity over impeachment despite the fact the US unemployment rate is at a 50-year low.

At least six major polls within the past week reveal that trump's disapproval rating ranging from 54 to as high as 59 percent.

Jatras said these figures are not quite yet at levels that would stampede Republican senators and Congress members to abandon Trump but they are moving in that direction.

"The goal would be to get support for Trump's removal up to about 60 percent, with the expectation that at that point [Republican] Senators will start looking for a way out that 'preserves the party' and their own interests under a Pence, under the model that removed Nixon," Jatras explained.

Rowley observed that the fierce hostility by the US mainstream media to Trump was having a slow but consistent "drip-drip" effect on turning the American public more in favor of the impeachment process, a trend that was likely to accelerate in the coming months.

"I think most Americans do get caught up in the drama of the impeachment hearings - especially since it's so constantly promoted by all corporate media," Rowley added.

This, of course, plays into the hands of the Democrats and Trump's other enemies, she concluded.