Impeachment trial to pull many 2020 Dem candidates off trail

WASHINGTON — Just before the first votes are cast in the Democratic primary campaign, five candidates — including two in the top tier — could be yanked off the campaign trail to preside as jurors in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.

The absence of Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker and Michael Bennet from the snowy campaigns in Iowa and New Hampshire could give Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg a sharp advantage in the critical first nominating contests.

The House voted Wednesday to send articles of impeachment to the Senate, where a trial is expected to begin in January and is likely to last at least two weeks and possibly longer. That timing creates a logistical nightmare for the lawmakers caught between the imperatives of courting voters in

Iowa and New Hampshire and their sworn duties to serve in the Senate trial.

Top-tier candidates Sanders and Warren are bracing to dash back and forth between Washington and early states. Klobuchar, Booker and Bennet will also have to cut back their campaigning. Some are enlisting surrogates to stand in for them in Iowa and elsewhere while they’re stuck in Washington, and considering hosting virtual town halls.

“The last place I’d think the senators running for president would want to be in the weeks before the Iowa caucuses is tethered to their desks in the Senate, silently serving as jurors in an impeachment trial, the outcome of which we already know,” said David Axelrod, a former strategist for President Barack Obama.

Biden, a former vice president, and Buttigieg, whose term as mayor of South Bend, Ind., will have ended, will be free to campaign and raise money as much as they please, which could help them solidify their already strong positions in the race. Biden is the national front-runner in most surveys and Buttigieg is leading in many Iowa polls.