counties have more in common with counties from other states than with counties within their own state. yes. which is why we do it this way. you just came back from beaver. that s a county that john kerry carried in 2004. unbelievable. by four points. yes. and now donald trump carried it by 19. these are the old labor democratic, shiny democrat guys. these are home blue collar democrat, reagan democrats and you re in a town, a river, a lot of towns around it, a steel mill closed and in al equipa, when the steel mill closed, 30, 40,000 jobs going away in the mid 80s. that s really impossible to make up but they re hoping trump can bring back some of the manufacturing economy they had before. they re getting a new plant, a cracker plant that will do a different kind of manufacturing. it is still not the same as what they had. it is interesting, so beaver county, which kerry carried, and
re-election. voters think impeachment is important and they want an investigation to get to the facts, and they want to see the process play out, but when it comes to 2020, they re focused on issues like health care, climate, gun violence, and impeachment seems a bit of a separate issue for them. you got the point there, huh? i think we know. voters are thinking about a lots of things other than impeachment. at the same time, impeachment is not hurting these democratic candidates with voters at all. in the two months since the democrats began the impeachment inquiry, republicans lost control of the virginia state house. they lost gubernatorial elections in two red state, kentucky and louisiana. so there is a lot to chew on whether a republican or a democrat. and let s dive in, with nbc news capitol hill reporter lee ann caldwell. and michael steele and washington post college ummist, deputy editorial page editor ruth marcus. and ruth, it didn t surprise me to hear that from voter
so how is impeachment going to feel more than five months later. like old news. but it will be news that motivates the base, if everything happens what is expected to happen, it will be news that motivates the bases in two contradictory ways. president trump will claim that he was vindicated. democrats will argue that he was impeached and there will be that middle that probably wants to talk about something else. i will say this. based on sort of what i think, what i think the white house strategy basically is, which is they don t ever want it see a senate trial, nobody wants a senate trial, i don t think the republicans want a senate trial at all but they got to act like they want one and so the question is, they re going to try to have this and try to blame the other side, each party will tri to blame the other side of trying to short-circuit this process and the question is going to be, does that fire up one bay or the other? on process? does the democratic base get fired up, the
concerned about in singling out voters who go to events, they re self selecting, and they decided, but what we don t know are the democrats not going to events and sitting back and waiting, but they too seem to be i would say passively for impeachment. sure. let s be clear. we know in america, among american voters, there s a very small segment of the electorate that is up for grabs and up for grabs segment of the electorate, they may be up for grabs between bernie sanders and elizabeth warren, but they re not up for grabs between those and trump. and so that is not a crowd, that s a crowd that is already, is one of the imbeds say, priced impeachments. i think all of them. the political landscape, they know their candidate, that s a given, that their candidate, more than medicare for all, it is a given that their candidates are going to be for getting trump out of office, but they also have priced in the political reality, voters have,
have to stand up for the working families of this country. and i don t think it is a good idea that we mock, that we model ourselves after trump and say lock him up. look, we have to bring this country together. you know, lee ann, this question has been asked rhetorically, and simply going, if you believe the president as an existential threat to the country, so much so that he should be disqualified from being able to seek re-election, the presidential democrats are not on the same page as the congressional democrats. no, which is kind of funny, so as a congressional reporter, watching these debates at night and seeing that first question, it was mind boggling, i was not expecting them to lean away from it so much. it was really shocking to me. and our entire capitol hill text chain was in shock. but a reminder of bubbles. we all live in bubbles, capitol