Impeachment Questions and Answers

Question: Trump seems to be simultaneously saying he will not be impeachment by the House

because there is a lack of evidence, versus saying he expects to be acquitted in the Senate.  Is he contradicting himself?

US President Donald Trump seems to be sending mixed or multiple messages when it comes to the House impeachment hearings.  Version one is to say that the hearings are a fraud and that he does not expect the House to impeach him.  Version two is daring the House to impeach him so that he can have a trial in the Senate and acquit him.  Both versions are being circulated so that he can look like a winner no matter what happens.

If the House opts not to impeach and instead takes other action such as censure or going after his subordinates, Trump declares himself a winner because they did not impeach.  This is important for him to say so as to prevent the House from taking actions that the president will not be able to  defend himself against.  By that, if the House censures the president he cannot take any action to clear his name.  The same is if the House moves to have his subordinates charged with crimes.

Conversely, if Trump is impeached, he will bear the mark of only the fourth president in US history to have been impeached or face impeachment inquiry. Even if acquitted by the Senate, Trump’s legacy has been damaged.

Whatever the House does will have implications for the 2020 election and Trump’s legacy in his dual messages are efforts to combat both of these problems.

Question: Some defend Trump’s phone call with Ukranian president Zelensky and the request for him to do a criminal investigation of the Bidens as routine or proper.  Was it?

No, it was not routine or the usual way the US or one country seeks to help another country with  criminal investigations.

As a matter of international law, one country has no inherent legal obligation to assist another in criminal investigations.  However by treaty many countries in the world, including the US, have entered into Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATS).  MLATs cover issues such as sharing of evidence, serving summons, and tracing suspects or witnesses. One of the most visible forms of MLATS is the extradition process.

The US has extensive MLATS, with more than 70 of them with other states.  It is also a party to multinational agreements.  These MLATS outline procedures for how and when the US makes requests for other countries to assist in criminal law enforcement activities.  These procedures have clear protocols regarding whom or what agency in the US requests help from a foreign law enforcement entity and they generally do not include the US president making the request to another head of state to initiate an investigation.

The point here is that what should have come out in the impeachment hearings but has not is that treaties govern US requests for foreign criminal legal assistance and the way Trump requested it was highly irregular.  Thus, contrary to claims to the contrary, other presidents have not done what Trump did and treaty governs what should have happened.

What makes this impeachment process different from previous ones?
There are a lot of differences between this impeachment inquiry and the previous three.  One is the fact that the degree of partisanship now is so great that there appears to be little indication of any chance of bipartisan cooperation.

This partisanship is significant because it undermines the structural design of the US constitutional framers from 1787.   Remember back then the Framers presupposed the political parties would not exist (and in fact feared their divisive nature) and the Senate was not elected but appointed by state legislatures. The combination of these two factors made the entire Congress, but especially the Senate, far more independent than it is now.

The increased partisanship today, even compared to 1998 with the Clinton impeachment, questions the extent to which the concepts of separation of power and checks and balances work to the extent that Congress will perform its independent duties to assess the fitness of the president to stay in office.  It looks like party loyalty is more important.  Evidence of that is a story that came out last week indicating that the president and Senate Republican leaders are conferring on how to do the Senate trial.  It seems odd that the supposed impartial Senate would be consulting with the person on trial regarding how to conduct the trial.

Did the Democrats make a mistake in terms of framing the impeachment debate as a quid pro quo?

Yes they did.  The quid pro quo is a criminal bribery model of illegal behavior.  What the qui pro quo framing has done is to make it a question of whether the president broke a criminal law.  This is not how the impeachment inquiry should be framed. As Alexander Hamilton declared, impeachment is not a criminal inquiry, but more of political judgment issue regarding the fitness of a person to remain in office as president.   Much in the same way that debates about money in politics have wrongly been narrowed to the issue of quid pro quo while ignoring the broader issues of how money structurally corrupts the political system, the Democrats in the impeachment inquiry should have been talking about the president as engaging in actions that are abuses of power.  It is understandable while the criminal law analogy has been used, but it too much constricts how to judge what the president did, forcing it into a criminal law model. 

Have the Democrats proved their case?
It depends on what your partisan orientation is and whether you watched the hearings at all or what station you watched them on. Remember, the hearings are not over and it will soon move to the House judiciary Committee and more hearings could take place.

In terms of have the Democrats proved their case, they have clearly corroborated the whistleblower’s allegations, The issue now is a constitutional judgement issue–does what Trump is accused of right to an impeachable offense?  Unlike a criminal trial where we have a clear standard of proof–beyond a reasonable doubt–there is no clear standard here. 

What changes if and when the impeachment process moves to the Senate for a trial?
The playing field changes completely in the Senate.

Again, remember that the impeachment and trial process is not a criminal inquiry.  This means the normal rules of evidence and due process do not apply.  Right now Trump and Republicans are objecting to this, claiming the process involves hearsay evidence for example.  Once it goes to the Senate hearsay evidence and anything else can come in and one should not be surprised if the Biden conspiracy theories and claims are introduced.

How will impeachment process play out over the next few weeks?

While many think the House will vote on impeachment before the end of the year, it may not occur until January or later.  Assume a January impeachment vote, a trial in the Senate could occur just as the Iowa caucuses occur. Such timing could help or hurt Democrats, especially Senators, who can use the trial and their vote to their political advantage.

The Democratic Party’s Missing Electoral College Game Plan

Rule number one of politics:  The first step in exercising political power is to get elected.  Somewhere along the line the Democratic Party has forgotten this.  Why this is important is that right now it looks that Democrats are on the road to another 2020 presidential popular vote victory and a loss in the electoral college.  Simply put, the Democrats have no electoral college victory plan.

            The reality is that  the only number that matters in US presidential politics is 270.  That is the number of electoral votes you need to  win.  US presidential elections are not really national popular votes; they are 50 separate state elections plus the  District of Columbia where in 49 instances the winner of the state’s popular vote nets the candidate the entire trove of its electoral votes.  The combination of  the electoral college and this winner-take-all structure means that effectively in 40 states the 2020 presidential election is over.  How New York, California, Massachusetts, Alabama, Mississippi, and Oklahoma will vote is not in doubt.  The presidential candidates know this too.  The race for the White House comes down to a handful of swing states, prominent among them are Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.  As Trump demonstrated in his 2016 Midwest strategy, winning them was key to his victory and had less than 90,000 votes flipped in them, Hillary Clinton would have won the electoral college victory and not simply the popular vote.

            Political coalitions, like fences, are only as strong as the weakest link.  Democrats need a strategy to hold all the states they won in 2016 and then how to pick up Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin.  Yes, they could try to flip Arizona, Georgia, or Texas as some pipedreams hope for, but the reality is winning them is distant and difficult.  They key is flipping critical swing states.

            What is interesting about these swing states is that their electorates are generally to the left of recent Republican Party presidential candidates and to the right of Democratic Party candidates.  In many ways they are states more centrist than the non-swing states, and certainly more in the middle compared to the overall Democratic Party base.

            There are two way to flip these  swing states.  One option is to move swing voters back to the Democrats.  But here what we know is that who is a swing voter is less and less likely to be someone who moves back and forth between voting Democratic or Republican and more so whether they swing into or out of voting.  Democrats did badly in 2016 because swing voters, especially suburban  females, stayed home or did not vote for them.  In 2018, those suburban females came out for Democrats.  Winning in 2020 is getting these women to vote.  What we know about these voters is that they are socially moderate to liberal but are not left of center.  This is a more centrist strategy.

            Option two is moving voters who do not normally vote to show up.  Presumably these voters are more liberal as they constitute younger people, perhaps people of color.  These are the people who perhaps resonate with issues such mandatory Medicare for all.  These individuals are hard to motivate to vote and they may be a smaller percentage of the potential electorate in swing as opposed to non-swing states.

            The point here is that a viable strategy for the Democrats to win the 2020 election relies upon them winning critical swing states, whether it is running more to the center or to the left.

Unfortunately, the debates so far, the 2020 primary and caucus schedule, and the candidate messages are setting the Democrats  up to fail.  Consider first recent polling data.  In critical states such as Michigan ,  Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin  mandatory Medicare for all is unpopular (or is divisive at best) despite the fact that nationally a majority of Democrats support it.  Nationally, only 41% support eliminating private insurance for a mandatory Medicare plan for all.   A pledge by Warren or Sanders to push for this as an issue may not play well in the swing states.

Two, the current so-called debate structure does not favor or emphasize winnability of Democrats in critical swing states.  Instead, its combination of popularity in national opinion polls and national fundraising keeps potential popular vote candidates alive but does little to winnow candidates to those who are viable in swing states.

Three, consider the primary and caucus schedule.  While arguably Iowa (February 3, caucus) and New Hampshire (February 11, primary) are swing states, the critical states of Michigan (March 10, )  Wisconsin (April 7), and Pennsylvania (April 28) come after the March 3, Super Tuesday which features 14 states and includes California and Texas.  Super Tuesday could well filter out candidates who could run well in swing states because of either the costs or ideological orientation of these 14.  Of these 14 states, arguably only Minnesota and Virginia are swing.  Running and winning the gauntlet of Super Tuesday does not mean one is prepared to win in the swing states that will decide the road to 270.

Perhaps the electoral college is unfair and needs to be eliminated or reformed.  But it is a reality at least for next year.  Democrats need a process that vets candidates and strategy to win the electoral college in 2020.  They do not have it.

Trump, Congress, and the Supreme Court: The Day of Reckoning Looms

                There is a looming day of reckoning for Donald Trump and the Supreme Court, and it will

be a moment of truth for both.  Will the Supreme Court follow legal precedent and rule against the president, or will it show its partisan colors and side with Trump?  This is the ultimate for Chief Justice Roberts and the Court’s conservatives, a moment that no doubt the former dreads.

            The Supreme Court will perhaps have its moment that defines the fate of the presidency much in the same way it did back in 1974 and then in 1997.  In the former, President Nixon during House impeachment hearings refused to turn over to Congress and a special prosecutor taped White House conversations, claiming executive privilege.  Nixon counted on winning this battle.  After all, his Chief Justice Warren Burger headed the Court.

            Yet the Court did the right thing.  In United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974) the Court ruled that while executive privilege did exist as part of the constitutional power presidents had under Article II, such a privilege could not interfere with the Article III powers of the judiciary to do its job and investigate possible criminal activity within the executive branch.  The opinion was 8-0, with Nixon’s own Burger writing the opinion.  For many, the Supreme Court’s U.S. v. Nixon was the final straw that brought down Nixon and led to his resignation.

            Second,  Paula Jones sued President Clinton for sexual harassment for event arising out of when he was governor of Arkansas.   The Supreme Court was asked to rule on whether a sitting president could be subjected to a civil lawsuit.  In rejecting claims of presidential immunity, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681 (1997) that he could be.  That decision was critical eventually to testimony that would implicate the president in committing perjury and being impeached by the House.  Both the Nixon and Clinton decisions were critical Supreme Court affirmations of limits on presidential power.

            Similar Court battles are now looming with Trump.  A New York prosecutor has demanded Trump’s tax records from his account.  Congress wants them too.  Trump refuses to let his staff testify before Congress or honor congressional subpoenas.  He or his administration has gone to court to challenge the requests.  In many case lower courts have ruled against him, and now Trump is asking the Supreme Court to intervene.  There are at least four areas or issues in which the law is settled by past precedent or where decisions by the Supreme Court  could tip the balance of power between Trump and Congress.

            Congressional Investigatory Power.  Cases such as McGrain v. Daugherty,273 U.S 135 (1927) Barenblatt v. United States, 360 U.S. 109 (1959), and U.S. v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974) stand for the proposition that Congress has broad investigatory powers backed up subpoena power to enforce compliance.  In both Daugherty and Nixon, the investigations involved investigations into possible criminal activity in the executive branch perhaps involving the president himself.  In these cases the Court ruled for Congress.   There is also  Committee on the Judiciary v. Miers, 558 F. Supp. 2d 53 (D.D.C.2008) ruling that executive branch senior officials must comply with congressional subpoenas to testify.  Since these decisions few question the authority and scope of congressional investigatory authority and current precedent suggests requests that at least in cases when it involves possible criminal activity, White House officials must comply with the subpoenas.

            Prosecutorial Subpoena Power.  Prosecutors  have broad power to investigate crimes and gather evidence of it.  This is the case  in when the president is the target of investigation.  While there may be Office of Legal Counsel Memoranda contending a sitting president may not be indicted for a crime, they did not dissuade the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Nixon from ordering the president to comply with a federal prosecutor’s subpoena.  It should not matter now that the prosecutor demanding Trump’s tax records is a state one, the same principle applies.

            Congressional Impeachment Power.  In Nixon v. United States, 506 U.S. 224 (1993) Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote the plurality opinion  for a unanimous Court ruling that matters of impeachment are political questions and not subject to review by the federal courts.  This case involved a constitutional challenge by a federal judge  over procedures  used when he was impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate.  The significance of this ruling  is that the House and Senate have broad leeway to undertake impeachment investigations and trials.  They suggest that challenges by a president that he is not getting due process, or that there are specific evidentiary or other procedural issues that must be followed (no admission of hearsay or secondary accounts), or that what counts as a high crimes and misdemeanors can be reviewed the federal courts should be  dismissed.

                Presidential Pardoning Power.  Perhaps the one area where one hopes the Supreme Court deviates from existing precedent is in regard to presidential pardoning power.  Article II, section 2 of the Constitution grants the president pardoning power.  In cases such as Ex Parte Garland,  71 U.S. 333 (1867), and Murphy v Ford, 390 F. Supp. 1372 (1975), the judiciary gave the president “unlimited” authority to  issue pardons.   These cases did not raise significant interbranch or separation of powers issues that hindered the powers of Congress or the federal courts.

            However, assume that the Trump administration continues to resist congressional subpoenas and Congress eventually holds officials in contempt, as it is allowed to do.  Can the president issue pardons to  overturn the contempt citations?  Current precedent either supports this if Garland and Murphy are read broadly, or we do not know if read more  narrowly.   If the Supreme Court were to uphold presidential pardons to thwart congressional contempt citations it would vastly undermine  the latter’s investigatory powers and tilt power significantly in the direction of the president to undermine oversight.  One would hope that while the Supreme Court would continue to give broad discretion to presidents to issue pardons, it cannot come at the expense of diminishing congressional authority.  One hopes that the Court would follow the logic of U.S. v. Nixon and rule that pardoning power must yield to the needs of Congress to do its job and to allow for investigation of possible criminality in the executive branch.

                In these four areas of law the Supreme Court will potentially decide the fate of the Trump presidency, and the scope of presidential power going forward.  Trump’s refusal to cooperate with investigations flies in the face of legal precedent and rests upon dubious executive branch Office of Legal Counsel memos that do not have the force of law and which have not been tested in court.

We know that Justice Roberts is acutely aware of the impression that the Court is increasingly seen as a political body, and he pushed back against Donald Trump who contended that there were “Obama judges.”  He has done so despite the fact that there is overwhelming evidence that the conservatives on the Roberts Court are voting ideologically, and with a current Supreme Court stacked with five Republican presidential appointees, including two by Trump.

            Were this Court to overrule or, more likely distinguish current precedent when it comes to congressional investigations, impeachment power, or prosecutorial power, or expand presidential pardoning authority in ways that favor the president it would not only tip the balance of power in favor of Trump, but also cement the image of the Court as no more than partisans wearing robes. 

Chief Justice Roberts is facing a day of reckoning, and one wonders whether he can rise to the challenge.

Whistleblowing, Anonymity, and Impeachment

Donald Trump and the Republicans want to out the anonymous whistleblower who first reported

on the president’s telephone conversation with the Ukrainian president.  Exposing him along with subpoenaing Hunter Biden in the Trump inquiry are at the heart of Trump’s impeachment defense.
The demand to call Biden is diversionary.  By that, try to argue he did something wrong as  an excuse for the president’s demand that Ukraine investigate Biden.  Besides the fact Hunter Biden  was already investigated and cleared, even if he did do something wrong it does not excuse the president’s behavior.  He called on another country to investigate a political opponent and conditioned military aid on it.  This is either abuse of power or a violation of federal campaign laws,  both possible causes of impeachment.
Two, part of the demand to expose the whistleblower is legal–asserting that constitutional  due process demands that the  president has a right to confront his accuser.  This argument fails for an obvious reason–impeachments are not criminal inquiries.  No less an authority than Alexander Hamilton in Federalist number 65 made this point.   The criminal due process protections of the Bill of Rights do not apply.  Two, even if exposed it would not matter because other sources and testimony have independently corroborated the whistleblower’s original report.
But more important, the purpose in outing the whistleblower is simple–we hate snitches.  In labeling the whistleblower as a traitor hits at a culturally deep seated belief in American society. From the time we are very young the most dreaded thing to be called is a tattletale, fink, or stool pigeon.  Remember times in school when someone threw an eraser and the teacher asked who threw it?  No one confessed and all of you detention.  You sat there thinking it was unfair but you never dared raise your hand and snitch on who did less recess would not have been pretty for you that day.
The point is that culturally we hate snitches and Trump is trying to play on the hate.  One of my professors Edward Weisband long ago pointed this out in his Resignation in Protest.  In the US we claim to care about ethics, integrity, and individualism, but then punish the principled public official as disloyal or not a team player who exposes the corruption.  The way to evade culpability for corruption is to expose  the whistleblower, argue he is disloyal, and therefore discredit him.
In attacking and exposing the whistleblower something more dangerous is being undermined–the historical importance of encouraging individuals to report fraud and abuse, often with the need to guarantee anonymity in order to prevent the very type of retaliation that Trump and the Republicans are trying to do.  Dating back to the early days of America, in 1777 Congress passed a law encouraging members of the military to report to them suspected cases of prisoner abuse.  The 1863 False Claims Act encouraged reporting of profiteering and abuse during the Civil War.    The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 created mandates in the private sector for anonymous reporting of suspected illegal behavior in the corporate world.  The 2010  Dodd-Frank law strengthened these provisions.  Finally, the Inspector General Act of 1978, the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998, and the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2012  all were adopted to encourage the exposure of political corruption within the federal government.  In many cases, they guarantee the anonymity of the whistleblower.  They do so to prevent reprisals and attacks against them because we hate tattletales. 
American history thus shows the importance of laws to encourage whistleblowing.  Exposing  corruption and abuses of power is critical to the promotion of a free society.  The Trump-Republican  attack on the legal protections afforded to whistleblowers is powerfully shortsighted, both in terms of how exposing this specific whistleblower will not alter the case against Trump, but also in terms of the damage it does to exposing improper and perhaps illegal behavior in government.

Ten Questions on Impeachment and the 2020 US Elections

1 - One year out from the 2020 elections, what does it look like?

One year out from the 2020 elections American politics is very polarized.   The US is experiencing the greatest gap in income and wealth at least since the 1920s and studies point to a nation with rigid social mobility.  The result is a nation divided geographically, racially, and most important, politically.

The country is very divided across a range of issues including health care, the economy, foreign policy, and most important, over the performance of President Donald Trump.  Democrats and Republicans have very different views on Trump’s performance, and the coming 2020 elections to a large extent will be a referendum on him.



2 - What are the big election themes?

Really the 2020 elections are about Trump–a referendum on his performance and whether he should get a second term, or even impeached or removed from office.  But beyond Trump, the major issues seem to be health care, both cost  and access, the economy, which seems to be slowing, immigration, and perhaps foreign policy or how the US engages with the rest of the world.

3.  On Thursday the Democrats in the House formally voted to authorize an impeachment inquiry.  What was the significance of that vote?

First, this was not impeachment, merely formalizing what has been going on for several months.  The Constitution gives Congress broad investigatory and oversight powers and the line between those functions and their constitutional power of impeachment is thin.   There is amble case law on this as precedent.  Thus, for a legal perspective the vote on Thursday meant little, but politically it was significant. 

With that vote Donald Trump is only the fourth president in US history subject to a formal impeachment inquiry.  That is not a great club to be in.  But also politically, the vote is important for other reasons.  Trump and the Republicans have thus far complained that the impeachment process is not legitimate and transparent, thereby justifying the president’s refusal to cooperate.  Never ask for something because you might regret getting it. Those reasons not disappear.  Again, from a legal perspective, none of this mattered, but now politically if the president or Republicans refuse to cooperate when they have the ability to do so it looks bad for them politically.  Also, the president’s decision not to cooperate looks even more like possible  obstruction of justice.

Also, now the formalizing of the impeachment inquiry sets up a long process of educating the American public about the president’s behavior.  If the president fights the inquiry, it drags the process further into 2020, placing impeachment into the center of the primaries and perhaps the general election.  The more Trump fights, the more it drags on, the more it gets into the center of the  election.  How the impeachment and the 2020 elections intersect is a great question.  Will it mobilize Republicans or Democrats?  Or is the issue really how it impact party base mobilization and swing voters in a few swing states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin?  This latter scenario may be the real issue.


The impeachment complicates the ability of the two parties to work together, which was already bad.  It also complicates the electoral picture because it is not clear which party the impeachment process favors.  Will it boast Democratic or Republican base voting.  How will it impact swing voters, especially in a cluster of swing states such as in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.  Finally, the timing of a possible impeachment and Senate trial is critical to how it impacts politics.


4 - Three months are left before the primaries begin and four months before Super Tuesday, which this year will have California and Texas.  Where are the Democrats?

Right now the Democratic field for president is wide and deep, but there are really only a handful of serious candidates.  Generally, Iowa and then New Hampshire are the two states that have the biggest influence on the presidential nomination process in the US.  The Iowa caucuses are February 3, 2020.  Yet this coming year California and Texas have moved their primaries to March 30, with early voting in the former coming the day of the Iowa caucuses.   These two primaries may make Iowa less important, or change the strategy of the primary process.  California and Texas will require a lot of money and momentum, and it is not clear that doing well in Iowa will provide either.  In addition, candidates may need to decide whether to commit resources to Iowa–with few delegates–or work to do well in California and Texas, which have more delegates. The change in primary schedules complicates the strategy for 2020.

Moreover, while the Democrats are united again Trump, they lack a defining narrative of what they want to do and what they stand for.  They are missing the elusive narrative.  Right now they are a party divided facing a president who has a unified Republican party behind him.  Despite the slowing  of the economy, a dreary manufacturing sector, and how health care and the trade wars are hurting  his base economically, there is no sign that these factors are eroding his support.

5 - Who are the favorites among Democrats?
At this point it is Joe Biden, Elizabeth, Bernie Sanders, and Peter Buttigieg who are the top tier candidates in terms of money raised and standing in the polls,    Biden is the leader among the more centrists of the party while Warren and Sanders are fighting for the left.  The questions will be who emerges as the candidate of the left and then how will they square off against Biden and then which side–the moderate or the left–prevails within the Democratic party.

What has been surprising is the endurance of Biden.  Despite his weak debate performance, he still is at or near the top in national and many state polls.

6 - What about Trump’s  wall?  Is it still an issue.

The wall was always a metaphor about other things that Trump was forced to own and take literally  as a promise.

The wall will continue to be an issue for Trump and his base, but the impeachment and court challenges to the wall are complicating this as an issue.  Trump will raise it at rallies but he has somewhat moved on to running against his impeachment and Democrats as his core issues along with going after immigrants.

The other issue of possible concern for Trump is the slowing of the US economy, but so far it does not look like it is affecting his support among his political base.

7- How will the China theme impact as elections?

China is a surrogate for immigration, isolationism, and protectionism.  These themes resonate with the Republican base and so far there is no indication that the economic consequences are weakening support among Trump’s base.

8 - Is it possible to apply for an independent (Bloomberg) or a competitive third party to enter the race?
People always talk of an third party candidate or party but the entry barriers, such as costs and legal challenges to get on the ballot, make it unlikely that a third party will emerge.  Bloomberg also dislikes Trump enough that he will not enter as a spoiler.

9 - What about the congressional elections?

It seems unlikely the House will flip, especially with the number of Republicans who are retiring.  The issue is whether the Republican can hold the Senate. Currently that have a 53-47 effective majority.  In 2020 there will be 35 Senators up for election, of which 23 are Republicans.  The impeachment process and possible Senate trial will test their loyalty–support the president or act to protect their own Senate seat.

One should also not forget that many state legislative seats are up for election in 2020. This is the election will determine control of the state houses going into the 2021 census and redistricting.

10–Any last thoughts?
Forget all the national polls.  Remember that the presidential election is about the electoral college and the race to 270 electoral votes. The next president is the only who moves a handful of swing voters in a few swing counties in a few swing states. That is the real presidential election.