“People are outraged because they know what is really going on is that Pelosi and the Democrats think that they know best,” Mr. Fredericks said. “Their message to us is, ‘You are really stupid people who go to Walmart and smell and can’t be trusted.’ It’s an insult.”
Still, Democrats are energized, too, and maybe more so if a Senate trial results in acquittal along party lines. Moreover, Mr. Trump’s backlash strategy did not work as well as he had hoped during last year’s midterm elections when he tried to convert conservatives’ anger over what they considered unfair sexual misconduct allegations against Brett M. Kavanaugh, the president’s Supreme Court nominee, into turnout at the polls.
Arguably, the passion generated by the Kavanaugh hearings helped Republicans in select Senate races, but Democrats went on to capture the House.
John Whitbeck, the Republican Party chairman in Virginia, where Democrats captured the state legislature last month, said that impeachment helped Republicans see the stakes of the 2020 election more clearly. But the longer-term political trends, he warned, suggested the party could still fall short.
Read the full report from The New York Times.
