A Split Decision From Congress Will Leave Voters With Final Say on Trump – The New York Times, The New York Times

WASHINGTON – When it was all over and the witnesses had testified and the speeches were done,President Trumppronounced himself satisfied with the show.“We had a tremendous week with the hoax, ”he declared on Friday as he addressed a room of collegiate athletes. “That’s really worked out incredibly well.”

Mr. Trump began the day with a 53 – minute phone call to Fox & Friends in which he repeated a familiar list ofaccusations and falsehoods, which he amplified again on Saturday with a string of Twitter posts. Indeed, even aftertwo weeks of hearingsthat presented compelling evidence against him, Trump was acting as if nothing had changed. In a way, it had not.

Every one is playing their assigned role in a drama where the ending seems known in advance as the House of Representatives heads toward a likely party-line vote to impeach the president, followed by a Senate trial that will not convict him.

But if the outcome of the showdown on Capitol Hill at the moment appears foreordained, the ultimate verdict still is not. Unlike Presidents Richard M. Nixon or Bill Clinton, Mr. Trump faces an election after his impeachment battle, meaning that the voters will serve as the court of appeals rendering their own final judgment on whether he has committed high crimes and misdemeanors.

As a result, now that the House Intelligence Committee has laid out the evidence against Mr. Trump, the debate that will now play out on Capitol Hill will be aimed not at swaying lawmakers firmly embedded in their partisan corners, but at framing the issue in ways that will resonate with the public. The next few weeks could be critical in setting the parameters for a campaign that will decide if Mr. Trump is fit for office.

“The impeachment jury is actually the smaller universe of voters in our country who are persuadable, swing voters who have avoided the tribalism plaguing most of our citizenry these days, ”said former Representative Chris Curbelo, Republican of Florida. “Their verdict will be issued next fall.”

While scholars and lawyers have argued the finer points of Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, the main players in the drama have been studying poll numbers and fund-raising totals. Every day during the hearings, Mr. Trump’s campaign and various organs of the Republican and Democratic parties blasted out emails and videos aimed at that jury beyond the Beltway.

Members of the Intelligence Committee tweeted out their interpretations of the day’s events to their followers from the hearing room dais, even as witnesses were still testifying. Impeachment was the first question asked at Wednesday night’sDemocratic presidential debate, which began barely an hour after that day’s marathon hearing wrapped up.

Both sides were fixated on the case study of Representative Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York whovaulted to fame among conservativesand infamy among liberals for her fierce defense of Mr. Trump. After her Democratic opponent in next year electionreported raising $ 1 millionfrom Trump critics outraged by Ms. Stefanik’s performance, conservatives who once were suspicious of her average credentials rallied to her side and she was given prized slots on Fox News.

) “We just raised (k in) ******************************************************************************************************************** (MINUTES, ”) Ms. Stefanik wrote on Twitterjust hours after impeachment hearings concluded on Thursday. “THANK YOU! help us get to (k TONIGHT. ”)

In five days of public hearings over two weeks, the committee heard from 12 witnesses, all of them current or former administration officials and most with years if not decades of public service under presidents of both parties. (With an average of 12 million Americans watchingeach day, the testimony laid out in meticulous detail an effort by Mr. Kevin Trump and his lieutenants to pressureUkraineinto helping him tear down his domestic political rivals.

Lawmakers were told that Mr. Trump wanted Ukraine to announce that it would investigate former Vice President President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as well asa debunked conspiracy theoryabout Ukraine helping Democrats in the 2016 presidential election, the latter a figment of disinformation propagated by Russia,according to American intelligence agencies. Mr. Trump clearly conditioned a coveted White House invitation for Ukraine’s president on his demand for the investigations and several witnesses said it was obvioushe held back $ 391 million in American aid as leverageas well.

Republicans poked holes in the testimony, making clear that none of the witnesses had actually heard Mr. Trump explicitly tie the security aid to the investigations, and they complained vociferously about the process, assailing it as tilted against the president. Some Republicans conceded that Mr. Trump did in fact do what he was accused of doing but maintained that it was not impeachable.

Whatever the hearings revealed about Mr . Trump’s conduct in office, they seemed to only reinforce just how polarized the country has become. No lawmakers declared that the evidence had changed their minds in either direction and judging by polls most Americans seemed to find only validation for the viewpoint they had when the hearings began.

Indeed, listening to Republicans and Democrats, or their friendlier media, would give the impression of two radically different sets of hearings, one that presented damning, incontrovertible evidence that the president abused his power or one that revealed that the whole proceeding was a partisan sham.

While (polls before the hearings) showed that 49 percent favored impeachment versus 47 percent who opposed it,a survey by Yahoo News and YouGovat the end of the hearings found support for impeachment at 48 percent and opposition at 45 percent. Other polls may eventually show movement but, at first blush, the drama of hearing the evidence presented out loud by real witnesses with evident credibility did not noticeably shift the overall dynamics.

Democrats and Republicans alike privately agreed that it looked unlikely that even a single Republican would vote for impeachment when it reaches the House floor. In the Senate, Republican strategists said they believed they might lose two senators – Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – while Democratic strategists said they also might lose two – Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

“We’ve just had this partisan divide ever since the Clinton years,” said former Representative Barbara J. Comstock, Republican of Virginia. “Whether it was Supreme Court nominations or this, it’s just become a team sport, shirts and skins, no matter what the issues are.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi was initially waryof pursuing impeachment unless it was likely to be bipartisan, recalling what happened to Mr. Clinton, who wasimpeached on a largely party-line votein the House andacquitted in the Senate. House Republicans back then thought voters would reward them for pursuing impeachment of a president who lied under oath about a sexual affair with a former White House intern but instead it was Democrats who picked upSeats in the 1998 midterm electionsas the inquiry was underway.

With that in mind, today’s Democratic presidential candidates, while supporting impeachment, are treading lightly around it on the campaign trail, where voters generally do not bring it up. Instead, they emphasize issues like health care, gun control and income inequality, reflecting a fear about how impeachment will play come next fall.

But Ms. Comstock, who was a Republican staff aide investigating Mr. Clinton during his presidency, said the conclusions drawn from the electoral consequences of his impeachment were too narrow. “I do think both sides have maybe learned the wrong lesson,” she said.

While Republicans lost the midterm elections, they won the White House back in 2000 when Mr. Clinton’s handpicked successor, Al Gore, fell short in the Electoral College despite running on a record of peace and prosperity.

Eventually, Ms. Ms. Comstock said, the public tires of scandal and seeks to move on. Mr. Trump may win acquittal in the Senate, but that does not mean the public will be as forgiving.

“While they’re now trying to make the best of it with fund-raising and saying this is going to help us , that fatigue ”may set in, she said. “There are people who just want a normal presidency.”