As fascinating as the presidential race will be the battle for the House, where Republicans took a gruesome beating in 2018 as most Americans looked on in relief and delight.
But now, many of the previously ousted backbenchers see 2020 and its confluence of impeachment proceedings as their ticket back to a government paycheck, a pension, lifetime perks, junkets and a taxpayer-funded staff, all of which small-government Republicans are exceedingly fond.
Said one of them, former GOP congresswoman Claudia Tenney, to Politico: "I think it’s going to be a good year. In a presidential year" — the absence of which, in Tenney's opinion, accounted for 2018 being "a tough year, just not a great environment for Republicans."
Though Donald Trump correspondingly accounted for Republicans' piss-poor environment then, those same Republicans are now counting on the same cataclysmic president to bail them out of their awash rubber rafts.
They may not be wrong. There are 30 Democrats who represent congressional districts that Trump won in 2016, and with the powerful abuser back on the ticket next year, his frothing, fulminating fans are likely to swarm the polling booths in barbarian hordes.
They're incensed that goo-goo House Democrats wish to impeach a punkish little gangster — exposed in flagrante dilecto, which only further infuriates his fans — whom Senate Democrats wish to remove, with the assistance of a few insufficiently numbered Senate Republicans.
As for House Democrats at least, rank-and-file Republicans are pursuing their removal in the GOP's customary exercise of illogic, indecency, and dishonesty.
From Politico, this oddly humorous, Republican piece of work: "Many of those who have picketed [freshman Rep. Anthony Brindisi's upstate NY office] have focused squarely on Democrats’ impeachment push. And it doesn’t matter to them that [Democrat Brindisi] remains one of seven holdouts in his caucus who oppose the impeachment inquiry."
On the other hand, these again-wannabe Republican congressfolk may be magnificently wrong.
Imminent impeachment is taking a toll on Trump's popularity among independents and most other voters not confined to a psychiatric hospital for the electorally insane, and Democrats are financially crushing it in 2016 Trump districts: $14.3 million, third quarter; only $6.08 million for Republicans.
But money will mean nothing and impeachment will mean nothing if conscientious voters fail to execute what is still the most effective, fundamental weapon against demagogues, swindlers and bait-switchers: the vote.