Political intrigue is high in the US this week – but it’s everyday voters who we should listen to

The last two weeks have been a particularly dramatic, even for a particularly dramatic US administration. Ever since Democratic speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced she was opening an impeachment investigation into Donald Trump, Republicans have been playing an aggressive defensive game. Allegations of corruption against the president have been met with counter-attacks against the integrity of Democrats and claims that Dems want to seize power in 2020 and turn the US “socialist” (a scary word in the US which only the most left-wing of the left-wing contingents will deploy, and even then with caveats).

Running the US Voices desk during this period has meant talking to a wide range of people. I reached out to my contacts in the Democratic Party first, who were almost universally happy to support impeachment proceedings (though they wished the narrative would shift to the new policy proposals of candidates like Elizabeth Warren, which were also released in the past few days). I then spoke with my Republican and conservative contacts, who surprised me by also saying that they backed impeachment or at the very least oversight of the president. And I finished off with a long conversation with one of my writers on the ground in Washington DC: Andrew Feinberg, who remains as politically neutral as possible while reporting from the White House, told me that his contacts close to the president had confided concerns about how Trump would deal with the impeachment proceedings. They were particularly worried that he was refusing proper legal help, instead choosing to rely on “yes-men” whose skills aren’t necessarily up to the job. Andrew wrote a longer column about what’s being whispered in the halls outside the Oval Office here.

It’s impossible to tell how this investigation will end – though we can assume that Republicans, who have control of the Senate, will crush any impeachment bill as soon as it comes down to them to vote. There is an outside chance that Trump might resign before potentially humiliating details come to light, as Nixon did. More likely is that he will continue steamrollering through, blaming “corrupt Democrats”, “liberal elites” and “the fake news media” for publicising problems in government, and concentrating on drumming up anger against his opponents as part of his 2020 “Keep America Great” campaign.

One of the most interesting Voices pieces I handled in the midst of this controversy was written by an everyday American in Florida, rather than a trained journalist. David Weissman voted for Donald Trump in 2016 after believing that he was backing a “patriotic businessman” who would “keep immigrants out” and “stop Democrats taking our guns”. He has undergone a remarkable ideological transformation since then, which began – strangely enough – with a Twitter conversation between himself and comedian Sarah Silverman. Silverman replied to him after he publicly criticised her comedy, and they engaged in a surprisingly compassionate open dialogue that led Weissman to seek out other Democrats and read about progressive values. He’s now campaigning for Elizabeth Warren and has registered as a Democratic voter for the 2020 general election. He wrote about his journey from one end of the political spectrum to the other here.

Opinions like David’s are so important to hear in the run-up to the election. It’s easy in journalism to forget that most people aren’t glued to every single press conference, and most people aren’t interested in a blow-by-blow account of everything happening between every single political representative every single day. David Weissman reminded me that there are important reasons why Elizabeth Warren might seem particularly electable for people like him: she was once a Republican herself before switching parties, so she can speak to current Republican voters directly rather than talking down to them. Many American conservatives fear being patronised and ignored, and many of them assume that Democrats think they are either stupid or evil. Warren’s own history means that she can’t be accused of that – which is hugely significant when you consider how pro-Trump Republicans usually respond to sceptical Democrats.

My conversations with David also made me realise that slowly, quietly, a lot of former Trump voters really are becoming intrigued by the Democratic candidates running for president next term – and that, despite so many claims to the contrary and Trump re-election rallies which seem even more charged than they did before, we might yet see a change in administration in 2020.

Yours,

Holly Baxter

US comment editor