Remember When Trump Got Impeached? That Was Less Than A Year Ago.
Trump is the first president to run for reelection after being impeached, which is why it’s all the more surprising that his impeachment — which happened less than a year ago! — has barely come up during this year’s presidential campaign.
Of course, a lot has happened since last winter, when Trump’s impeachment hearings and trial were taking place — namely, a global pandemic. But even shortly after it happened, it was clear that the impeachment process hadn’t had a big impact on the way Americans thought about Trump. We know that because we tracked the same group of Americans through Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel between November 2019 and February 2020, interviewing them every couple of weeks to find out how their views on impeachment were changing.
What we found was that basically no one budged from their partisan camps. Democrats became more convinced of Trump’s guilt as the hearings and trial unwound, and Republicans became more convinced of his innocence. But Democrats in particular ended the process more concerned that Trump’s reelection chances would actually be helped by his impeachment.
That doesn’t seem to have panned out — at least, in the sense that Trump hasn’t been able to use his impeachment to fire up his base, or criticize the Democrats. More than anything, it’s a reminder of just how much has happened in this long, crazy year, and how much the pandemic has shifted the political context of the 2020 race.