Donald Trump cruised into the White House without even showing his tax returns. Now he is not only going to get the kind of scrutiny anyone running for his office should have received before getting nominated. He will have few secrets left after the Democratic majority in the House is through with him.
There is no chance -- none -- public backlash will rein in the Democrats on this. However much support the president has in Arkansas and his other hot spots, he is already in a prove-your-innocence situation with most voters, according to a shock I received Tuesday.
I have read a lot of polls throughout a lot of years in my job. The most stunning poll I have ever read came out this week from the reputable Quinnipiac University.
"President Donald Trump committed crimes before he became president, American voters say 64-24 percent in a Quinnipiac University National Poll released today," Tuesday's news release said. Here is the link: https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2603
Even one in three Republicans say Trump committed crimes before his inauguration, the poll goes on to say. I figured younger voters were skewing these lopsided results. They are not. Results by age were broken out. Among voters older than 65 years who were polled, 62 percent believe Trump committed crimes compared to 22 percent who say he did not.
This all comes the week after the president's once-loyal fixer, Michael Cohen, testified. Cohen accused the president of a variety of financial crimes. The president responded by calling Cohen a liar, which is undeniably true. Cohen is going to federal prison for lying under oath.
"American voters believe Cohen more than Trump 50-35 percent," the Quinnipiac poll said.
"Michael Cohen, a known liar headed to the big house, has more credibility than the leader of the free world," Tim Malloy, assistant director of the poll, was quoted in the statement.
The closest thing to good news for Trump in the poll is that the American public is not ready for Congress to go into impeachment proceedings. The public wants to learn more first -- but strongly supports learning more. Asked if Congress should do more to investigate Cohen's claims about unethical and illegal behavior by Trump, voters support finding out more, 58 to 35 percent. Note that the percentage of people who want to know more is significantly lower than the number of people who believe Trump has committed crimes.
At least no one I know of is asking to see the president's birth certificate.
On top of all this, the president will likely face defeat in the GOP-controlled Senate next week on his emergency declaration to divert money to build a wall on the Mexican border. He has only 31 percent support for his declaration, according to not one but two back-to-back Quinnipiac polls on that subject.
Consider some practical ramifications of a large majority of the nation's voters being predisposed to believe the president of the United States is a crook.
The taint on the president will make it hard to dispel allegations that are not true. As I wrote last week, Cohen's testimony was a hard knock against the idea the president himself actively colluded with the Russian government to win the election. Few seemed to either notice or care.
As mentioned, claims congressional Democrats are on a "fishing expedition" are not going to stick outside of the Republican Party faithful and Trump's base. Worse, repeating that line puts the GOP in the position of looking like would-be protectors of a wanted man.
If voters believe the only way to hold a crook in the White House accountable is to re-elect a Democratic majority in the House, then they will re-elect a Democratic majority. Hollering "socialist" and making whipping girls out of overzealous freshmen congresswomen does rouse the GOP base, but Trump's mere existence whips up the Democratic base even more.
As I have said before, the Democrats owe their House majority to college-educated white suburbanites who reliably vote Republican when the GOP is led by somebody those voters do not loathe. Keep that in mind when hearing both wide-eyed socialists and still-loyal Republicans talking with excitement and yearning about the "socialist wave" in the Democratic Party. Wait for the first Democratic presidential primaries -- not caucuses -- to see if such a wave is real.
Commentary on 03/09/2019