Congress isn't obsessed with impeachment; media are
By Catherine Rampell
The Washington Post
Yes, Democrats can walk and chew gum at the same time. The problem right now is that all anyone ever asks about is the gum-chewing.
President Trump is steadily advancing a narrative that Democrats are unable to focus on a substantive policy agenda because they’re too fixated on investigating, subpoenaing and, eventually, impeaching the president.
Or, as our victim in chief tweeted on Monday: “The Dems are getting NOTHING done in Congress! They only want a Do-Over on Mueller!”
This sort of nonsense is something we’ve come to expect from Trump. But more troubling, perhaps, is that many of us in the media have also been amplifying his false narrative.
As I noted in The Washington Post Opinions’ recent 2020 Power Ranking, the number of Democratic officials calling for impeachment has grown in recent weeks. Maybe they’re jumping on the impeachment train because they believe it’s the right thing to do, or because they think it’ll be politically advantageous.
But another plausible explanation for why so many Democrats are now talking about impeachment is that’s what we in the media, primed by Trump, ask them to talk about; often to the exclusion of other substantive issues that those Democrats are working on and that voters care about.
The topic dominated Sunday morning political shows this past weekend. In one particularly frustrating exchange, NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd asked Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Michigan, to address criticisms that the Democratic Party is too myopically focused on subpoenas and impeachment rather than “kitchen table” issues. He did this, of course, while only asking myopic questions about subpoenas and impeachment, and none about any of those “kitchen table” issues.
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