A guide to US politics in 2019
It seems like Donald Trump is here to stay, and impeachment is extremely unlikely
THE last few months of 2018 have seen the Democrats take over the House of Representatives and Republicans retain control of the Senate, a flurry of revelations about the Kremlin’s role in the 2016 election, an economy that may be beginning to stumble, and signals from numerous Democratic candidates that they are considering bids for the White House in 2020. These are all harbingers that 2019 will be as unpredictable and pivotal as 2018 has been.
Here’s what to watch for in 2019 – and what to ignore:
IMPEACHMENT AND THE NEW CONGRESS: The impeachment of Donald Trump is possible, but actually removing him from office is highly unlikely.
According to the US Constitution, the House can impeach the president with a simple majority vote. Given that many in the Democratic majority in the House would be open to pursuing impeachment, this is a realistic scenario.
However, impeachment in the House leads not to conviction and removal from office, but to a trial of sorts in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority is needed to remove a president from office. Twenty Republican senators and all the Democratic senators would need to vote to convict Trump. Republican support for Trump remains strong in the Senate and Robert Mueller is unlikely to find anything that will cause more than a third of the Republican senators to vote to remove him from office.
Because removal from office is so unlikely, the House would accomplish little by impeaching Trump. Doing so could also backfire if Trump were to win easily in the Senate.
There will be plenty of talk about impeachment in 2019, but if his health holds up, expect Trump to make it through another year as president.
THE 2020 ELECTION: Since Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016, the number of Democrats whose names have been linked to potential 2020 bids for the White House has steadily expanded. Veterans of previous presidential campaigns such as John Kerry, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and perhaps even Hillary Clinton; past and current governors like John Hickenlooper of Colorado and Gavin Newsom of California; senators like Cory Booker of New Jersey and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota; newer faces like Kamala Harris, the junior senator from California, and Beto O’Rourke, whose Texas Senate campaign made him a national figure, in spite of his loss to Republican incumbent Ted Cruz; non-politicians like the billionaire Tom Steyer, and new Democrats like former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg are among those who appear to be exploring presidential campaigns.
At times it seems easier to list prominent Democrats who are NOT exploring a bid for the office than to identify all of those who are. In 2019, that field will shrink. While it is easy to float one’s name more than two years before the election, it is much more difficult to build the kind of organisation and raise the kind of money that will be needed for a candidacy to be taken seriously later in the campaign.
It seems 2019 will be a year of pregame skirmishing that will winnow the field of candidates. Inevitably, this will mean that the unity that defined the Democratic Party in 2018 will give way to division – as activists, donors and supporters line up behind various primary candidates. While it is unlikely the Democrats will have a single strong front runner by the end of next year, we should expect 12 to 18 viable candidates to take shape.
For the Republican Party, presidential politics in 2019 will look very different. The scandals surrounding Trump will make him a less appealing candidate in 2020, but although rumours of potential primary challenges to the president may persist, it is extremely unlikely that any Republican could become the party’s nominee.
For a Republican, challenging Trump in 2020 may help create a profile for the post-Trump GOP (Grand Old Party), but it will not end in victory in the short run. Mitchell teaches in Columbia University’s political science department. His most recent book is “Baseball Goes West: the Dodgers, the Giants and the Shaping of the Major Leagues.” The opinions expressed here are his own.