Pressley: Tide is turning
The impeachment inquiry into President Trump is causing more voters to “shift” and support impeachment, U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley said in Somerville Sunday, while a new poll showed the televised hearings haven’t changed many minds.
“I already see the will of the electorate moving,” Pressley said during a town hall meeting at East Somerville Community School.
“Now that we’re in this public hearing process, it will shift a lot of people,” she later told reporters at the school.
But so far, it doesn’t appear the hyped-up public hearings are impacting voters’ views on impeachment.
Voter support for Trump’s impeachment was at 45% before the first impeachment hearing took place and then 44% after the first hearing, according to a Reuters/ Ipsos poll.
“We haven’t seen any evidence of a groundswell yet to impeach him,” pollster John Zogby said.
“Most people already have their minds made up,” he added.
The House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment hearings center around Trump’s summer phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The big TV networks — NBC, CBS, ABC and PBS — have pulled normal programming in favor of coverage of the impeachment hearings.
Trump is accused of pushing the Ukrainian president to investigate former vice president and 2020 presidential hopeful Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Days before that reported phone call, Trump froze nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine. The president has insisted he did nothing wrong and denied that any request for help was tied to the freeze on aid.
“These public hearings have been an opportunity for our nation to hear directly from dedicated public servants, from decorated combat veterans and career diplomats who confirm the extent of the occupant’s abuse of power for personal gain,” Pressley said. “This testimony was damning, and the evidence is piling up higher every day.”
“We’re focused on making the tightest case possible so the Senate cannot dismiss it,” she later added.
While Republicans continue to criticize Democrats for focusing too much on impeachment and not on other issues, Pressley has said the House of Representatives’ Democratic majority can “walk and chew gum at the same time.”
Trump tweeted Sunday, “The Do Nothing Dems are now doing even less — and soooo much work to be done!”
Zogby said there’s a possibility the impeachment inquiry will result in blowback at the polls next year.
“If the peoples’ work is getting done, it’s not getting through the noise of impeachment,” he added.
But Pressley argued Sunday that Democrats will win “on every level” in 2020 in the wake of the impeachment inquiry.
“It is emboldening people to show up because they realize even more so that elections have consequences,” she added.