Michigan Democratic Rep. Brenda Lawrence, a prominent supporter of Kamala Harris who has previously backed the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, announced on Sunday that she no longer saw any “value” in the inquiry and urged her fellow Democrats to throw away their support, Fox News informed.
Lawrence’s stance came as polls have shown that independents are abandoning the idea of impeaching and removing Trump from office, including in critical battleground states like Wisconsin, even as House Democrats aggressively presented their poll-tested “bribery” case against the President over the past two weeks.
“We are so close to an election,” Lawrence said Sunday on a Michigan radio program, noting that Trump stands little chance of being convicted by the GOP-controlled Senate. “I will tell you, sitting here knowing how divided this country is, I don’t see the value of taking him out of office. But I do see the value of putting down a marker saying his behavior is not acceptable. It’s in violation of the oath of office of a president of the United States, and we have to be clear that you cannot use your power of the presidency to withhold funds to get a foreign country to investigate an American citizen for your own personal gain. There’s no way around that.”
Lawrence continued: “I want him censured. I want it on the record that the House of Representatives did their job and they told this president and any president coming behind him that this is unacceptable behavior and, under our Constitution, we will not allow it. … I am a Democrat, but I am an independent United States of America citizen.”
Lawrence occupies a safely Democratic district that includes eastern Detroit, and her reluctance to move forward with impeachment suggested that moderate Democrats in swing districts may also be getting cold feet now that all scheduled hearings in the probe wrapped up last week.
Recent polls indicate that Democratic voters are also losing interest in the impeachment process. Meanwhile, 50 percent of independents questioned in an NPR/PBS/Marist survey conducted Nov. 11-15 did not support impeaching and removing Trump from office, with just 42 percent supporting such a move. That’s a noticeable dip in support compared with the previous NPR/PBS/Marist poll – conducted the first week in October – when support stood at 45 percent.
And, a Gallup poll conducted the first two weeks of November indicated that 45 percent of independent voters supported impeaching and removing the President – with 53 percent opposing the move. That’s a switch from October, when the previous Gallup survey put the split at 53-44 percent.
The censure process is not prescribed by the Constitution, and amounts essentially to a condemnation of conduct, without any substantive consequence, by a majority vote in either the House or the Senate.
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