The next midterm elections are 466 days away, but members of the chattering class are already discussing the “I” word. The idea of impeaching President Donald Trump is gradually making its way into the national discussion, but not in the way most would expect.
Republicans have begun floating the idea of motivating their base to show up in the 2026 midterms by warning them that Democrats will impeach Trump again if they are allowed to retake control of the House and possibly the Senate.
From NBC News:
Seldom do sitting presidents pick up seats in midterm congressional elections. Trump faces an especially daunting challenge in that he relies on a devoted electoral base that may feel no compelling reason to vote if his name isn’t on the ballot.
One way to persuade Trump supporters to turn out is to press the point that he could face impeachment a third time if Democrats wrest control of the House in November 2026, the GOP operatives said.
The message to Trump’s loyal following is a simple one: If you like Trump and want to protect him from an avenging Democratic majority, vote Republican.
Impeachment “will be the subtext of everything we do, whether it’s said overtly or not,” said a senior Republican strategist who is involved in congressional races and speaks to Trump. The strategist, like others in this article, was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
John McLaughlin, a Trump pollster, said: “The Trump voters are happy and complacent right now. And we have to get them fired up for next year. We have a lot of work to do. If President Trump is not on the ballot, it’s harder to get them out.”
“We know what the stakes are in the midterm elections,” he added. “If we don’t succeed, Democrats will begin persecuting President Trump again. They would go for impeachment.”
Interestingly enough, Democrats do not plan to use the prospect of impeaching the president as a selling point in the next election. They have determined that this would be a “losing issue,” according to NBC News.
As they workshop midterm campaign messages, Democratic leaders are making the opposite calculation. They’ve concluded impeachment is a losing issue. Through bitter experience, they’ve seen that impeaching Trump has neither driven him from power nor crippled him politically.
Two previous Democratic-led impeachment efforts failed to garner the two-thirds Senate majority needed to convict Trump. Despite those proceedings and a quartet of criminal indictments after he lost the 2020 election, Trump remained sufficiently viable to win again in ’24.
Former Rep. Bob Brady (D-PA) warned that if Democrats choose to pursue the impeachment strategy, they are likely “to make him a martyr.”
“You’ve got to be careful: You’re liable to make him a martyr,” former Rep. Bob Brady, chairman of the Philadelphia Democratic Party, said in an interview.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who led the second failed impeachment attempt explained that Democrats plan to attack Trump’s “terrible agenda.”
“We’ve already impeached him twice,” Raskin explained. “So obviously that’s not a complete solution, given that he is able to beat the two-thirds constitutional spread. So I don’t think anybody thinks that’s going to be the utopian solution to our problems.”
Nevertheless, Republicans will still use the threat of impeachment to ensure their voters turn out next year — and they are right to do so. Indeed, Democrats will not run on impeaching Trump — and they are right to avoid this land mine.
But this doesn’t mean that if they win back the House, they won’t try to impeach him. In fact, if they regain power, it might be the first thing they do. In fact, if they win at least the House, the nation should prepare for two years of impeachment attempts from Democrats.
Trump’s first term made it clear that Democrats have come to enjoy trying to impeach the president — even if they know their reasons are a heaping pile of bovine excrement. The reality is that they just can’t help themselves. If they retake only one chamber of Congress, they still won’t have enough power to pursue their agenda, so all they will be left with is putting on more impeachment theater to show their voters that they are doing their part to resist the Orange Man What Is Bad™.
The job of Republicans is to make sure their voters know that this is what is coming should they lose the House. Otherwise, Raskin might just be getting his job back.
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