Why Democrats will be forced to impeach Trump if they win the House

If Democrats regain the House of Representatives in the November midterm elections, the party will face "enormous pressure" to pursue impeachment against President Donald Trump, The New York Times' Sunday Review explained.

The story, written by The Times' chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker, appeared under the headline, "Is Trump on a Collision Course With Impeachment?"

Baker coauthored the upcoming book Impeachment: An American Tale with Jon Meacham, Timothy Naftali and Jeffrey A. Engel.

"While Democrats are largely ducking the topic on the campaign trail, few in Washington doubt that impeachment will be on the table if they win the House on Nov. 6," Baker reported. "If that happens, anyone who thought the battle over Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation was ugly and divisive should buckle up, because history suggests it would provide only a small taste of what lies ahead."

Many political analysts believe Democrats are favored to win the House of Representatives in the midterms, which would give them the simple majority necessary to impeach President Trump. But impeachment is similar to an indictment in the criminal courts, it is not a finding of guilt, which can only happen in the next step, a Senate trial.

Even if Democrats were to also retake the Senate, they would only have a narrow majority in the upper house and remain far shy of the two-thirds vote needed for conviction, meaning Trump would only be removed from office if over a dozen Senate Republicans turned on the administration.

"Such a scenario seems unlikely unless the special counsel, Robert Mueller, produces a report with such damning information that it transforms the current political dynamics," The Times noted.

"Regardless of whether Mr. Mueller reports any ties with Russia during the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump’s critics have a laundry list of what they consider impeachable offenses, from hotel and other private business activities that benefit from foreign governments to the firing of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, after trying to get him to drop an investigation of a former aide to hush money paid to two women to keep them from talking publicly about sexual encounters before the election," the story continued.

"The elected Democratic leadership has been reluctant to talk about it, out of worries of a public backlash or playing into Mr. Trump’s hands," The Times noted. "But it is hard to imagine Democrats not going there if they take the House, given the enormous pressure from their liberal base to at least open an impeachment inquiry."

In an August poll by The Washington Post and ABC News, 49 percent of Americans favored impeachment, while 46 percent opposed it.

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