Rep. Andre Carson Warns Dems: Impeaching Trump Will Give Him ‘Electoral Advantage,’ Make POTUS ‘Underdog’

Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) warned Democrats on Thursday that President Donald Trump could get an “electoral advantage” in 2020 if Democrats begin impeachment proceedings and allow him to become an “underdog.”

“I think the American people have to watch this very closely, because President Trump is a smart man. I know people say he’s dumb. He’s clever. He’s very clever,” Carson said on CNN. “And I think he loves the fact that people think that he’s such a brute. Now, he’s not a policy wonk, but he’s very smart. And so to leverage this in a way that makes him an underdog gives him an electoral advantage. So, we have to be very strategic and very wise.”

Carson made his remarks a day after at least 10 Democrats running for president called for impeachment proceedings to begin, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) insisting that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report is an “impeachment referral.”

“If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” Mueller said in his first public remarks on the Russia collusion investigation. “We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime.”

Though top Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) have repeatedly expressed their concerns that Trump is “goading” Democrats into impeaching them so he can benefit at the polls in 2020, they may soon be under more pressure from the party’s critically important black voters and the white liberals who are moving into majority African American districts to impeach Trump.

Rep. Dwight Evans (D-PA) told the New York Times this week that the issue he constantly hears about from his constituents is: “We sent you for one reason only: to get rid of the president, right? Why haven’t you gotten rid of him yet?”

The Times noted that around the country, black House members who represent majority-black districts like Evans’s “are hearing much the same from their African-American constituents, as well as from white liberals who have moved into the nation’s urban core.”