The upcoming 2020 election is looking a lot like the 2016 election in one very important aspect: many, many players. The GOP, at one point, had 19 potential or confirmed candidates for the presidency in 2016. Obviously the way it played out was that Donald Trump won and then became the 45th president of the United States. In 2020, we’ll have a similar scenario from the Democrats. At the time of this writing there are 24 candidates currently running for president on the left. We’ll of course need to cull that down a bit through the debates and other public media, but if history tells us anything this is a good thing to have so many choices. We’ll really be able to get the correct person for the job.
One of the leading candidates for the nomination is Beto O’Rourke. After nearly defeating Ted Cruze in Texas for his senate seat, Beto has become a media darling with his hard lined stance on President Trump and the GOP. I think it bears repeating that Beto, a Democrat, almost unseated Ted Cruz, a GOP golden boy, in Texas. If that doesn’t speak volumes on Beto’s track record then I’m not quite sure what does.
Beto, as I mentioned, has been very outspoken on President Trump and the below video is proof positive of this. When questioned if Pres. Trump committed crimes that can be prosecuted, Beto responded in kind and pulled no punches.
"He did," Beto O'Rourke says when asked if Pres. Trump committed crimes that can be prosecuted.
"I think that's clear from what we have learned from the Mueller report, but I think those crimes might extend beyond what we've seen in the Mueller report" https://t.co/5F8Y5mHv0t pic.twitter.com/32EwDDjtWW
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) June 9, 2019
To be clear, Beto O’Rourke is calling for the prosecution of President Trump once he leaves office. That is as bold a statement as any we’ve heard thus far from anyone on the Democrat side.
This is coming hot on the heels of a new poll stating that the majority of Americans are NOT in favor of impeachment proceedings against President Trump. The poll was conducted by Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll and included 1295 registered voters between May 29th and 30th, 2019. According to the polls criteria:
Results were weighted for age within gender, region, race/ethnicity, marital status, household size, income, employment, education, political party, and political ideology where necessary to align them with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.
You can read the full poll by clicking right here.
Now this poll is very curious indeed. Mainly because 1295 people is not an accurate subsection of the population. Surveys and polls are all well and good, but remember what happened in 2016? Literally every poll said that Hillary Clinton would win the presidency. Some said narrowly and some said in a landslide. Most media outlets reported that Hillary would win and a few even said that Trump had a 1% chance of winning. Clearly all those polls and surveys were wrong, so take this newest one with a large grain of salt. Political polls are not at scientific as a medical clinical trial and people’s opinions change on the daily, which is evidenced by page 4 on Trump’s approval rating. That has varied widely from 41% to 49% over the last 15-16 months (survey criteria time frame). So given that single statistic, wouldn’t it be easy to surmise that page 23, should Trump be impeached, is even more of an outlier. That page varies even MORE widely than the approval rating as more and more evidence comes out.
Personally, I don’t believe Trump should be impeached. If that happens, then no true justice will come of any of this. President Trump needs to be in court and the single best way to do that is to vote him out in 2020 and then open a full-scale criminal investigation into his actions. Not only with Russia, but everything he’s done before and during his presidency. When a sitting president openly calls for a boycott of a major company, something needs to be done to stop that toxic behavior.
But getting back to O’Rourke, his stance on Trump mimics some of the thoughts in this poll on page 23 when evidence comes out. Notice that the population wants to see Trump impeached when something big happens, but then peters out back to normal. That’s because more and more people are hyper aware of what is going on during those times. Beto is trying to make sure that everyone knows, and continues to know, that Trump needs to be brought to justice in some way. He’s working to elevate those outlier data points to be the normal. Because they should be.
I disagree with Beto on impeachment, but I do agree that justice needs to be served here. And he is right that if we do not do something now, or later, our democracy is in jeopardy. Mainly because no matter who is in office in the future, the precedent will be set that this behavior won’t be punished. That is truly unacceptable.
