If elected, will Hillary or the Donald be impeached?
Will one of them become the first POTUS to be successfully impeached?
Paddy Power have a market up on if Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be impeached and resign during their first term.
I have a few concerns with this bet, for example the impeachment process against Richard Nixon never completed to full impeachment, as Nixon resigned as President before the House of Representatives formally impeached him, so if something similar happened, this bet wouldn’t pay out, also that was during Nixon’s second term, again that wouldn’t pay as per the terms of this bet.
If there’s one Presidential candidate you feel that is likely to be impeached it is Donald Trump, especially as some of his policies seem unconstitutional, however this is no bet for me, even before looking at the recent sub-optimal polling that indicates Hillary Clinton is going to be the forty-fifth President.
Another reason that makes me say no Trump bet is that the actual mechanics of the impeachment process, one of the early steps is a majority of House of Representatives most vote to impeach the President (the Senate conducts the actual impeachment trial.)
With the way the House of Representatives has been heavily gerrymandered redistricted in recent years, the GOP majority there is safe, even when Trump is the nominee for President so if they vote on partisan lines, and a successful impeachment conviction needs two-thirds of the Senate to vote for it. Given the current and anticipated make up of the Senate a vote on partisan lines stops the impeachment.
With Hillary Clinton, there would be a symmetry with her being impeached, given her husband also faced impeachment for turning The Oval Office into The Oral Office, but she seems to be the great survivor, given the way her opponents have tried to use the events in Benghazi or her private email set up to topple her but have failed, and as above, if we see a vote in the Senate on impeachment on partisan lines she’s safe.
Overall this is one of those bets where you wish the bookie would offer the other side of the bet, especially with it being limited to the first term only, but if forced I’d put a very small stake on the 50/1 Hillary option simply because the polling indicates she’s on course to win in November.