Bryan Preston:
would write that we’ve reached the low point of the Obama presidency, but with two years plus left to run, he and his party are bound to go even lower.
For now, here’s how low they go. They’re literally inventing a threat, and then running on that threat as if it’s real.
Rep. Steve Israel, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Wednesday that conservative calls to impeach President Barack Obama and the House GOP’s push to sue the President are motivating the Democratic base in advance of November’s midterm elections.
“You bet we’re going to run on a Congress that is just obsessed with lawsuits, suing the President, talking about impeaching him, instead of solutions for the middle class, talking about jobs and infrastructure. You bet that we’re going to ask people to support us based on that contrast,” Israel declared at a briefing of CNN political reporters and producers.
As Rep. Israel knows because he has an office there, the House has sent more than 300 bills to the Senate which that body’s Democrat leadership has ignored, canned, panned and cast out. Those bills run across pretty much every issue, from jobs to foreign policy to tax reform to border security. The Democrat-controlled Senate won’t even bring them up for a vote.
So it’s a lie to claim that the House is “obsessed” with going after Obama.
Israel says talk of impeachment and lawsuit against Obama is motivating the Democratic party’s base.
“The phone calls, the emails, people signing up, wanting volunteer on campaigns, has surged literally over the past several weeks. Now it always surges as you get closer to an election, but I’m telling you the August numbers are what the Octobers numbers should be,” Israel said.
And he added that “their accusations of presidential overreach have become a Republican overreach and that is motivating swing voters and persuadable voters.”
There’s absolutely no evidence that most of that is true. Swing voters surely aren’t moving the Democrats’ way over this, at least not yet. Republicans are still ahead on the generic ballot and by my count, stand to gain at least five Senate seats from the Democrats this fall. At least five. But if the Democrats tell the lie loud enough, there’s always the possibility that it may work.