Impeachment talk has perils for both parties

The recent convictions of President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen have pushed talk of a possible impeachment proceeding to a new level. Right now, it's potentially tricky territory for both parties.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that 49 percent of all Americans say Congress should initiate impeachment proceedings, while 46 percent are opposed. Among registered voters, it's the opposite - 46 percent in favor and 49 percent opposed.

Those are higher numbers in support than in other recent polls. Three in 4 Democrats now favor a start to impeachment, while 4 in 5 Republicans do not. Fifty-seven percent of women say yes; 44 percent of men say no. Whites oppose; nonwhites favor.

The president has taken on the issue in predictable ways, using scare tactics. On Monday, he warned that a Democratic victory in November would lead to violence, painting Democrats as in the grip of an anti-fascist extremist faction.

Rudy Giuliani, the president's lawyer, warned of trouble from the other direction. Were there to be an impeachment effort, he said, people would revolt against its proponents. The most loyal of Trump supporters already see the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller the same way the president sees it, as illegitimate. Impeachment would be seen by Trump's loyalists as a partisan attempt to undo the results of the 2016 election, to take away what Trump earned at the ballot box.

Trump made another argument Aug. 23 on "Fox & Friends," when he predicted that, if he were impeached, the stock market would plunge. People would be poorer financially, he warned on the Fox News program. But is he correct? It's true that during the Watergate scandal, the value of stocks declined significantly. The uncertainty caused by the constitutional crisis that ultimately led to the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon and his later resignation was one reason. But it's also the case that the U.S. economy was in a bad period anyway, thanks to oil price shocks and other problems.

All of this raises the question of whether the White House is prepared, should the Democrats take the House and move forward to try to impeach the president. Reporting by The Washington Post's Philip Rucker, Carol Leonnig, Josh Dawsey and Ashley Parker, indicates that the answer is no, according to allies of the president. Trump announced Wednesday that White House counsel Donald McGahn will leave after the midterms. Others in the counsel's office already have departed. Republican allies of the president should be concerned.

For now, Republicans and allies of the president see the talk of impeachment as a weapon to be employed in the midterm elections. Fox News' Sean Hannity did a mash-up of the many multiple times Democrats and some commentators used the word on television in the days after the Manafort convictions and Cohen guilty plea.

Republicans might be content to use talk of impeachment to hector the Democrats heading toward the fall campaign - and to rally their base to try to mitigate what looks like an intensity gap with the Democrats. But the Cohen conviction in particular was a reminder of the possible jeopardy Trump could be in. Grants of immunity to two people long close to the president - David Pecker, the chairman and chief executive of American Media, the publisher of the National Enquirer; and Alan Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization - ratchet up the pressure.

Republicans have stood with the president throughout the Mueller investigation, as one guilty plea and now a jury conviction mount up. How long will that stay the case? The midterm election results could be that moment, but only if the results are truly bad, and perhaps not even then. Such is the hold Trump has on the party.

Democrats face their own choices. As energetically as Republicans are trying to stoke the idea that Democrats will launch an impeachment proceeding if they control the House, Democratic Party leaders are just as actively trying to tamp down such talk. They fear that making impeachment - rather than health care or the Trump administration and GOP corruption - the main issue in November could rob them of maximum gains in the House and elsewhere. They are right to worry.

If, however, Democrats control the House, and by more than a few seats, then what? Opinion is clearly divided about the advisability of moving forward, at least based on what is known now. Part of the calculation is a pure numbers game. Are the votes there for articles of impeachment based on current information? More important, would the votes be there in the Senate? On that question, the answer is clear as of today. Getting two-thirds of the Senate to vote for conviction looks out of the question.

There are some Democrats who wish the talk of impeachment would disappear for now. They see it as a getting in the way of the main game, which is the Mueller investigation. Anything that could compromise or cloud that investigation is unwelcome. Once Mueller finishes his work, the politicians can decide whether to get involved. For now, goes this thinking, stay out and stay quiet.

There are other Democrats who see impeachment, even with a strong report from Mueller, as a major distraction from what they see as what should be the party's emphasis after November - the 2020 presidential campaign. Democrats who see the world this way believe the best way to deal with the president is to find a good nominee, take their case for change to the voters and run a better campaign than they did in 2016.

As Michael Nutter, the former mayor of Philadelphia, put it to me recently, "All of that time, all of that effort and all of that emotional energy, I'd rather put into a 50-state, seven-territory electoral operation, win it fair and square and not worry about hearings and votes. Let the American people do what they do best, which is go out and vote and make a decision."

Yet impeachment is the tool the Founders included in the Constitution, and they gave the responsibility to the legislative branch rather than the judicial branch. It is a political tool to be used when needed, which has been rare in the annals of the presidency. In the hyper world of today's politics and media, many people always want to get ahead of the story. But the story remains that of a Mueller-led investigation that moves forward methodically, but still without conclusion.