One thing that could help Vice President Biden, Major Buttigieg, Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, and Andrew Yang immensely is the House Democrats passing impeachment.
Traditionally, the Senate would take over the impeachment case since the house has passed it, but with Speaker Pelosi slow-walking the bill over to the Senate, current Democratic senators running for president are now at a major disadvantage. In a Senate trial, all the senators have to be present for the trial. The jurors for the impeachment trial are the senators, five of whom are currently running in the Democratic primary for president.
This means that Senator Warren, Senator Sanders, Senator Klobuchar, Senator Booker, and Senator Bennet all would likely be limited to campaigning in areas very close to Washington DC. This means that all their campaigns will lose ground in the primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and North Carolina. Depending on the timing of the start of the impeachment trial, it could even affect the 14 states that have primaries on March third.
With so many active senators running in the Democratic primary, the impeachment trial will throw the Democratic primary into complete chaos. The obvious benefactors are Vice President Joe Biden, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg. With four out of the top eight candidates (Warren, Sanders, Klobuchar, and Booker) being removed from campaigning in these important states, we could see a situation where many of their passionate supporters are disgruntled voters in November of 2020.
The only option for these senators to stay competitive is to spend a lot of money on flying and advertisements to try to make up for the loss of a ground game. Only time will tell if any of these senators will be able to attract enough voters to stay competitive in a pretty crowded field.
