Steve Kornacki on "Wishful Thinking" Around Impeaching Trump & His Book "The Red & the Blue"

This week the House of Representatives held its third vote in three years on a procedural motion that would have led to impeaching President Trump if they had passed. None of these votes have been all that serious, but last week's did get more support than in previous years. 95 Democrats voterd for impeachment, up from 58 Democrats in favor in 2017, and 66 last year.

The temperature is clearly rising among Democrats, and Trump is stoking outrage and division with his attacks on elected representatives of the House who are women of color, telling them to "go back" to "the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."

My guest this week is Steve Kornacki, a national political correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC, who is in my opinion one of the smartest people on TV. We talk about Steve's book, "The Red and the Blue: The 1990's and the Birth of Political Tribalism."

Kornacki dove into the history of the 90's for this book and based on that research he calls it "wishful thinking" to say, as some have, that the impeachment of Bill Clinton helped the GOP win back the White House in 2000, and so Democrats shouldn't be afraid of political consequences if they impeach President Trump.

George W. Bush won the presidency in spite of impeachment, not because of it, Kornacki says. Kornacki notes that there are higher levels of support now for impeachment than there were in 1998, and ultimately says that to try to predict the future through the past on this matter is probably a fool's errand.

I also enjoyed Steve's perspective on the daily and even weekly news cycle, and his exhortation to keep our eye on the big picture. "I spent all this time watching the old newscasts or reading old newspaper articles or magazine or whatever, you find so many of these moments that dominated news coverage politically, for weeks, for days, weeks, months, and are completely forgotten now and completely irrelevant. They never even led anywhere. But you would find all these deep think pieces and debates about what does this mean for the future of the country, and then absolutely nothing. So I try to remind myself that it's very possible with whatever the eruption of the day is now that it's one of those," he said.

Outro Music: "Drift While You're Sleeping" by Trey Anastasio

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