The onetime pollster of former President Bill Clinton – now a leading Democratic political consultant – blasted House Democrats last week for forcing their efforts forward to impeach President Donald Trump.

Doug Schoen called top Democrats’ decision to push on with the impeachment inquiry a missed opportunity for his party … a huge mistake.

“We Democrats are losing a huge opportunity because on issues like gun violence prevention, climate change, health care, we have an advantage,” Schoen said during an appearance on Fox News’ Deep Dive show. “We won the midterm elections in 2018 because of the utilization, in part, of those issues.”

Enough is enough

He claimed that other progressive ideals should have been highlighted first and foremost – blaming Democrats’ focus on their unpopular impeachment proceedings and empty promises as burying their 2020 election hopes.

“To not take advantage of what people care about – which is real-world, day-to-day problems of our quality of life – and instead just keep focusing on impeachment [is ridiculous],” Schoen argued. “If I were recommending to the Democrats what to do, I’d say vote for censure, get it and move on. It’s hard for me to see that impeachment is anything but a very problematic issue for the party.”

Others on the left have pointed out Democrats’ potentially fatal error in putting all of their eggs in one basket by honing in on impeachment above all other issues.

“Earlier this month, New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew spoke out against the impeachment process and the way his fellow House Democrats were conducting themselves,” The Western Journal recounted, noting when he told Fox’s Maria Bartimoro’s Insiders that all of the proceedings are “more like something you would see in Europe or third-world nations.”

Besides Van Drew, only Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) voted to end the formalized impeachment inquiry in the October resolution.

“Despite their protestations, the House Intelligence Committee – chaired by California Rep. Adam Schiff – has continued to lead the impeachment charge, holding a series of hearings in recent weeks,” the Journal’s Bradley Evans explained. “On Monday, Schiff announced in a letter to his Democratic colleagues that the committees conducting the inquiry will be releasing a report ‘summarizing the evidence’ shortly after Congress returns from its Thanksgiving recess, according to CNBC.”

No threat

Trump made it known following the second week of impeachment proceedings that he is not worried about Democrats ramping up their impeachment efforts, emphasizing how he doubts that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will ever reach the stage of a vote.

"No, I don’t expect it," the president told Fox and Friends in an interview, according to Fox News. "I think it’s very hard for them to impeach you when they have absolutely nothing."

The point was also made by the GOP that through an impeachment trial, the White House and Senate Republicans would have the chance to debunk and ridicule House Democrats’ allegations – or take the offensive by making their case against former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, over their alleged corrupt Ukrainian business dealings.

One loyal ally of Trump, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), noted how Democrats are only hurting themselves – not the president – by pushing forward.

“There's a growing school of thought that rather than give Senate Republicans or the White House an opportunity on a level playing field on a large stage, Democrats would be better off just saying, ‘we're going to look out for the country, not drag the country through this, we've made our point,’ and have a vote of censure-ship,’” Cramer contended, according to The Hill.

Another GOP leader, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made a guarantee to Americans that the president will be acquitted of Democrats’ impeachment charges.

“It’s inconceivable to me there would be 67 votes to remove the president from office,” McConnell impressed, according to The Hill.

Republican strategist Josh Holmes – McConnell’s former chief of staff – said Democrats’ impeachment production presented before the nation is flagging – and that their time on center stage is running out.

“Holmes … pointed to polling showing that public sentiment appears to be turning against impeachment and noted that Pelosi initially resisted calls by liberal colleagues to begin impeachment proceedings earlier in Trump’s tenure, but [he] said it would be very difficult to stop short of a final impeachment vote now that the House has spent so much time and energy on its investigation,” The Hill’s Alexander Bolton explained. “Anything short of a vote to impeachment would be seen as an embarrassing failure, he said. “

The political expert said a number of monkey wrenches thrown into Democrats’ plans to oust Trump have stalled their plans and dashed their hopes of impeachment.

“This is not going as planned,” Holmes insisted. “I honestly think that Pelosi may have been skeptical about the political merits of this strategy from the beginning. She basically held the liberals off in her caucus for a year plus. I can’t imagine she’s totally surprised by it.”

The strategist called Democrats’ impeachment inquiry nothing less than a horse and pony show – and suggested that Pelosi could lose her post because of it.

“That being said, if you’re going to basically set aside the entire work of the American people to turn the House of Representatives into a circus over an impeachment hearing, anything less than driving that to a conclusion in the House has to put her speakership at risk,” Holmes asserted.

Much of the blame for Democrats’ problems is primarily being put on Pelosi.

“Holmes said Pelosi faces a real risk that more Democrats wind up voting against articles of impeachment than there are Republicans who vote for it,” Bolton noted. “Not a single Republican voted for the resolution formally setting out the rules for the impeachment inquiry while two Democrats voted against it.”

It was stressed that the biggest risk would be Democrats’ inability to bring the impeachment process to a final vote.

“The idea that she couldn’t even bring it to a vote,” Holmes impressed. “I think it’s hard to express how bad that would be for her.”