House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has refused to hold a formal impeachment inquiry vote on the floor of the U.S. House, but we still have a good idea of which Democrats have boarded the impeachment train so far.
There are 235 Democrats in the House and all but 9 of them have publicly expressed support for either an impeachment inquiry or outright impeachment. Some of those who have noted their support for one or the other are in districts won by Trump in 2016 but by Democrats in 2018.
It is some of those districts Vice President Mike Pence will be visiting this week as part of a Trump campaign blitz to remind voters (and the vulnerable Democratic House members) that political disagreements should be settled at the ballot box, not by way of impeachment.
Politico reports:
Each of the districts on Pence’s itinerary were won by Trump in 2016, making them potent targets for Republicans. The vice president will travel Wednesday to the southwest Iowa district of Rep. Cindy Axne, and Thursday he’s slated to visit the suburban Twin Cities district of another freshman Democrat, Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig. The vice president is then scheduled to barnstorm an array of battleground districts, including those held by Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin and Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger.
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But Republicans are eager to get in sync, saying the impeachment push has given them a powerful argument to use against Democrats. At each stop, Pence is expected to paint Democrats as being more focused on destroying the president than on solving the problems of their constituents.
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Democrats, Republicans point out, successfully prosecuted a similar case during the House GOP-led impeachment of Bill Clinton. Republicans suffered in that year’s midterm election, losing five congressional seats.
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Roughly two dozen of the 31 House Democrats who hail from districts Trump won in 2016 have expressed support for the impeachment inquiry.
In at least one instance, Pence’s visit will be part of a two-pronged approach, appearing in Minneapolis on the same day Trump plans a speech in the Twin Cities:
Vice President Mike Pence is reportedly visiting the Twin Cities on Thursday, the same day President Donald Trump will hold a downtown Minneapolis rally.
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In 2016, Trump carried Craig’s Second Congressional District by just over 1%. That same year, Craig lost the congressional race to Republican Jason Lewis by a similar margin. In 2018, Craig beat Lewis in a rematch by more than 5 percentage points.
In addition to the growing calls from Democrats to impeach Trump, there’s also wild talk about how should Pence himself should be thrown into the impeachment mix, which if successful would leave us with House Speaker Pelosi as president.
With that in mind, Pence shouldn’t have much trouble making a convincing argument that Democratic efforts to date on impeachment look more like coup attempts than legitimate inquiries into so-called “impeachable offenses.”
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— Based in North Carolina, Sister Toldjah is a former liberal and a 15+ year veteran of blogging with an emphasis on media bias, social issues, and the culture wars. Read her Red State archives here. Connect with her on Twitter. –
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