The morning after Senate Republicans voted 53-47 to let Trump continue his Iran war without congressional constraint, gas stations across Southern California started changing their price boards. Again. By mid-March 2026, the average pump price in the state hit $5.82 a gallon. In Bakersfield, a truck driver named Omar Vega told me he was spending an extra $340 a month just to keep working. He didn’t use the word “impeachment,” but he did say this: “Someone needs to stop him before we all go broke.”
That sentiment is spreading faster than any campaign slogan could. Trump’s approval rating has collapsed to 38 percent, according to Economist/YouGov polling, with disapproval hitting 59 percent. Among independents, the number willing to back him has cratered to just 26 percent. These aren’t abstract figures. They represent a sitting president whose policies are now widely seen as both economically destructive and constitutionally reckless. And yet, as Robert Sulnick argued recently in a piece gaining traction among Democratic strategists, the party has been hesitant to name what should come next: impeachment.
Not impeachment as a fantasy or a fundraising tool. Impeachment as a stated campaign commitment. If Democrats retake the House in November 2026, Sulnick argues, they should make clear now that holding Trump accountable through formal proceedings will be part of their agenda. The idea isn’t to distract from affordability concerns. It’s to connect them. Trump’s tariffs, his unilateral war in Iran, and his attacks on democratic norms aren’t separate issues. They’re the same crisis, and voters are living through all of it at once.
The numbers tell that story better than any stump speech. Reuters and Ipsos found that cost of living is the top issue shaping votes this year. Trump’s approval on that issue sits at 29 percent. His broader economic approval is only slightly better at 35 percent. An ABC News, Washington Post, and Ipsos poll found that 71 percent of Americans believe his tariffs are feeding inflation, and 64 percent disapprove of how he’s handled trade policy. The Council on Foreign Relations estimates that his tariff regime is costing the average household about $1,681 in real income annually. That’s not a rounding error. That’s rent, groceries, and childcare.
Then there’s the war. Trump’s military campaign in Iran, launched without congressional authorization and sustained despite bipartisan unease, polls at just 37 percent support. Fifty-nine percent of Americans oppose it outright. The fallout isn’t theoretical. Reuters reported that gas prices jumped nearly a dollar per gallon between late February and mid-March, with 55 percent of Americans saying the spike was already hurting their household finances. AAA’s national average reached $3.98, but that figure masks regional pain. In parts of the Midwest and West Coast, families are rationing trips and rethinking summer plans.
I’ve covered enough wars to know that public opinion shifts fast when the costs hit home. What’s unusual here is the speed. Typically, a president gets a rally-around-the-flag bump. Trump got a bill instead. His Iran policy isn’t just unpopular in polling. It’s unpopular at the pharmacy, the gas station, and the check-out line. And because Republicans in Congress voted to let it continue, they own it too.
That linkage is where Sulnick’s strategy gets sharper. He’s not proposing impeachment in a vacuum. He’s suggesting that Democratic candidates draw a direct line between Trump’s actions, Republican enablement, and voter pain. On December 11, 2025, the House voted 237-140 to table articles of impeachment, with 47 members voting present. That wasn’t a vote for Trump’s policies. It was a vote to shield him from accountability. Every Republican who supported that motion also supported the tariffs squeezing small businesses and the war driving up energy costs.
Immigration offers another opening. Trump has long framed himself as the strongman on the border, but recent polling shows that narrative cracking. By February 2026, 65 percent of voters said ICE enforcement had gone too far, up from 54 percent the previous June. That shift suggests voters are distinguishing between border security and cruelty, between policy and spectacle. It’s a gap Democrats can exploit if they’re willing to speak clearly about what accountability means in practice.
The challenge, of course, is that impeachment has baggage. Trump was impeached twice during his first term, in 2019 and 2021, and acquitted both times by a Republican-controlled Senate. Critics will say it’s performative, that it energizes his base, that it distracts from kitchen-table issues. But those objections assume impeachment and economics are separate tracks. They’re not. If your wages are flat and gas costs more because of a war the president started without asking Congress, that’s an economic issue and a constitutional one. Impeachment, in this context, isn’t a distraction. It’s a remedy.
Conviction in the Senate would require a two-thirds majority, which remains mathematically unlikely even if Democrats flip the chamber. But impeachment isn’t only about removal. It’s about investigation, documentation, and forcing votes that expose who stands where. A House majority can subpoena documents, call witnesses, and build a public record. That matters in ways beyond Trump’s personal fate. It shapes how future presidents understand the limits of power.
Rep. Salud Carbajal’s campaign in California’s 24th District offers a working model. A former Marine Corps reservist, Carbajal has been blunt about Trump’s Iran war, calling it a betrayal of the promise to end endless conflicts. He’s also been granular about affordability, recently completing a Central Coast tour focused on how rising costs are hitting local families and small businesses. His message isn’t choose one or the other. It’s that Trump’s conduct and your grocery bill are connected, and both demand action.
That dual focus, what political operatives call “walking and chewing gum,” is what Sulnick is pushing Democrats to adopt nationally. It’s not enough to talk about lowering prices if you don’t name why they’re rising. It’s not enough to criticize Trump’s excesses if you don’t say what accountability looks like. Voters aren’t children. They can handle complexity, especially when it mirrors what they’re already experiencing.
The 2026 midterms are still months away, but the framing fight is happening now. If Democrats wait until after the election to talk about impeachment, it will look reactive, like they’re chasing headlines rather than delivering on a mandate. If they say it plainly now, as part of a broader message about governance and fairness, it becomes something else: a promise to act, not just complain.
Trump’s weakness is real, and it’s broad. His policies are unpopular. His war is unpopular. He is unpopular. Republicans in Congress are shielding him anyway, and voters are noticing. The question isn’t whether Democrats should talk about accountability. It’s whether they have the nerve to say what accountability requires. Impeachment isn’t a side project or a progressive wish list item. It’s what happens when a president breaks his oath and a political party decides that matters.
