Newsweek - USA (2019-10-11)

NEWSWEEK.COM 27

POLITICS

Ivanka Trump and her husband Jar-

ed Kushner, among others, had been

hoping for a period of calm follow-

ing the issuance of the Mueller report,

which the president believes vindi-

cated him. They hoped Trump could

ride a strong economy and a year of

“normalcy,” as one aide put it, straight

through to next year’s election.

Though they understand that

Trump’s appeal to his base is deeply

rooted in his willingness to upend

Washington’s political conventions,

there is concern even among some of

the campaign staff that the endless me-

dia coverage of alleged scandals—from

Russian “collusion” to emoluments vi-

olations (using his presidency to to en-

rich his businesses) to Ukraine—has

worn out a fairly broad swath of inde-

pendent voters and moderate Repub-

licans. The president’s senior advisers

believe that Democrats suffer from

“Trump derangement syndrome,” but

they worry about the danger of “Trump

exhaustion syndrome”—that battered

voters could turn for relief to what one

senior Trump campaign staffer calls “a

sane Democrat.” That, in the current

field of front runners, means Joe Biden.

The fact that Trump’s overall ap-

proval rating has pretty much been

stuck in the low 40s gives some cre-

dence to this view. So too does the

fact that Biden beats the president in

most polls, and is competitive in the

key midwestern states that propelled

Trump to victory in 2016. (Though

some polls show both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders beat-

ing the president as well, Trump’s campaign is far more confident

of its ability to beat either of them.) Ukraine-gate, which one

Trump adviser calls this “shit-show,” guarantees that any hoped-for

period of calm won’t happen. That the phone call to the Ukrainian

president came literally one day after Robert Mueller’s widely

panned testimony before Congress in July, effectively ending the

possibility that Trump would be impeached because of so-called

Russian collusion, has White House aides banging their heads on

their desks in frustration. “We really thought things were looking

up going into the election year,” says one. “Now? Who knows?

ORDER OF BATTLE

House speaker Nancy

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abandoned her long-

held reluctance to start

impeachment proceedings

against Trump (left with

Volodymyr Zelensky). The

biggest political question

underlining the coming

hearings is whether they

will change any voter

minds within Trump’s

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WERE LOOKING UP

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ELECTION YEAR,”

SAYS ONE AIDE.

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