The current round of impeachment hearings do not seem to be going the way the Democrats might have hoped.  No smoking guns have been found, while key anti-Trump witnesses, including the recently-replaced Ambassador to the Ukraine, admitting under oath that no crimes had been committed. Just as was the case during the ill-starred Clinton impeachment hearings two decades ago, instead of damaging the President, the hearings seem to be damaging his accusers.

At this point, the tracking polls are, at best, inconclusive. However, there is one daily tracking poll that is virtually infallible.  That’s the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  The frequently skittish Dow is notorious for rising and falling based on the perceived successes (or failures) of the president. It was therefore no mystery to stock market analysts why the Dow tanked just six weeks or so before the 2008 election, a vote that saw the widely unpopular George W. Bush finally voted out of office in favor of Obama.

So what is the Dow saying about the presidency of Donald J. Trump?

Let’s run some numbers:

On his election day, November 8, 2016, the Dow closed at 18,323.  The next day – the day after the election, and the first day where the election could have some impact on the mercurial and gun-shy Dow, the closing average rose more than 250 points, to 18,589.  Now fast-forward to Inauguration Day, January 20^th, 2017. On the day Trump was sworn in as President, the Dow reached 19,827.  Between election day and Inauguration Day, the Dow jumped more than 1,500 points – a remarkable endorsement of the expected Trump presidency.

A year later, on January 19, 2018, and despite concerns over a possible government shutdown, the Dow surged nearly 600 points, to 26,116.  And on Monday of this week, more than a year after the Democrats took back the House, and nearly two years further into the Trump Presidency, the Dow broke a record, closing at 28,036 – soaring another two thousand thousand points in less than two years.

It seems that Wall Street is neither dissatisfied with President Trump – or at least his economic policies – nor is it acting as if it expected the impeachment effort to force Trump out of office.

What makes this record-breaking number even more significant is that occurred after several years of non-stop Trump media bashing. At first, this harsh and one-sided criticism was all about Trump’s supposed (presumably illegal) ties to Russia.  Then, as soon as those spurious charges were finally debunked by Special Counsel Mueller’s final report, the partisan Democrats launched themselves into a new feeding frenzy, this one over supposed corruption in the President’s dealings with the Ukraine. 

Ironically, this demand for blood occurred at virtually the same time as self-admitted charges of corruption were leveled at Joe Biden, by Joe Biden.  The former Vice President was caught on camera, speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations. In this tape, available and unedited on YouTube, Biden willingly bragged about his personal initiative to withhold a billion dollars in Federal foreign aid funds in a successful effort to force the Ukraine to fire a prosecutor. This man’s “crime” focused on his investigation into a Ukrainian corporation where Biden’s son, Hunter, served on its board of directors. Biden’s self-indictment could only be a self-evident example of extracting a quid-pro-quo to protect his son, using taxpayer dollars and his position as Vice President to make this happen.

“I tell you, you’re not getting a billion dollars,” Biden told the CFR, claiming that he told Ukrainian officials that they had no choice. “I’m leaving in six hours – you’ve got six hours. If the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting the money.”

Then he went on to tell the CFR this:  “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid,” Biden concluded. 

Somehow, this blatant use of taxpayer’s billion dollars to protect his son is not an impeachable offense. In fact, Biden was clearly claiming bragging rights for his action.  Yet President Trump’s call to the Ukrainian President – for which a full transcript was immediately released – is deemed to be impeachable, even though no money changed hands and no quid-pro-quos were either asked for or offered.

Which brings us back to the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  Wall Street could hardly give a more ringing endorsement to Trump than to repeatedly break all-time records, even as the public impeachment hearings continued going forth.  It’s almost as if the beating heart of the American economy is giving Donald Trump a rousing thumb’s up. 

What they gave his Democrat accusers is another thing entirely.

Note: In October, 1992, author and political consultant Ned Barnett published a study in the New York Time. This report accurately predicted what the Dow Jones would do in 1993 and early 1994, depending on whether George H. W. Bush was re-elected, or if challenger Bill Clinton deposed Bush and became President.  Barnett’s “outlandish” claim that the Dow would soar to record heights if Bill Clinton was elected proved true.

Graphic credit: Needpix