"By any metric, Trump is in trouble."

Writes Megan McArdle in "Poll by sinking poll, Trump inches toward impeachment" (WaPo). The headline suggests that low poll numbers is a high crime or misdemeanor.

If polls determined who gets to be President, Hillary Clinton would be President. She had the clear lead in the polls. But under the Constitution, the presidency goes to the person who wins in the Electoral College, and there isn't another go-'round for that until 2020. So the only alternative is impeachment, which requires the House to vote based on "high crimes and misdemeanors," not whatever's in the current polls, which we know were egregiously wrong in 2016.

But what made me want to blog this is the first line of the column, "By any metric, Trump is in trouble," which is followed by:

A poll out from The Post and ABC on Friday shows that 60 percent of voters disapprove of the job he’s doing as president, a new low. But that’s just one poll; the polling average at statistician Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight shows Trump with a mere 53.4 percent disapproval rating, which is better than its 56.8 percent peak last December.

So there's an obvious "metric" — the famous Nate Silver metric — by which Trump is doing better than last December, but "By any metric, Trump is in trouble"?! Who is McArdle writing for these days? [THAT IS: Who is her intended audience? I know who her employer is.]

But a presidency is not in good shape when the best spin on the new poll is “It’s an outlier! Only 53 percent of the country thinks the president is terrible.” The poll is especially ugly for Republicans with midterms looming in two months.

No. 53 percent didn't say "the president is terrible." They said "disapprove" when asked whether they approve of disapprove. And they might disapprove of other options too, such as impeachment or even (if it could be magically possible) Hillary for President. Has McArdle compared the congressional approval poll average? I'm seeing 19.0 approve and 71.2 disapprove. I suspect that a lot of us don't like much of anything, but we've got to have something.

McArdle continues:

FiveThirtyEight’s forecast for the midterms puts the likelihood of Democrats taking the House at more than 70 percent. Their chances of taking the Senate are lower, but Republicans are hardly a lock despite a very favorable map for them. And if Democrats manage to eke out a majority in both houses of Congress, here is the poll’s really bad news for Trump: Half the country wants him impeached....

Voting for a Democrat instead of a Republican doesn't mean you want the drama of impeachment. But maybe the 2018 election can take the clear form that it's a referendum on impeachment. Would that help the Democrats? To me, it makes them seem too chaotic (which is the main thing that disturbs me about Trump).

McArdle recognizes that the Senate needs a supermajority vote to remove Trump, but her by-any-metric logic includes the way "these things have a way of taking on unexpected momentum." I think it's the opposite. No President has been removed by impeachment. This is a thing that has a way of losing momentum.

After the midterms, we'll be heading into the next presidential election. Is the first-year of run-up to that election going to be consumed with impeachment weirdness or can we have the straight-up political fight in which specific anti-Trump candidates stand up and say why they would do a better, more upright job of being President?

I saw how Democrats in Wisconsin squandered their anti-Walker fervor using the recall method in the middle of Scott Walker's first time, lost that, and then stumbled into the next regular election, and lost that too. It was partly the weirdness of the unusual procedure and partly the failure to develop a strong candidate to defeat Walker. Their anti-Walker fervor did not do what they felt in their hearts it just had to do. I scoff at that stupid drama. Let the Democrats put up a great candidate, like they didn't do in 2016.

More McArdle:

It’s all too easy to imagine a similar scenario for Democrats intent on impeaching Trump as they come up short looking for Republicans to help them make it across the finish line. But it’s not entirely impossible to picture a few Republicans going along....

We've gone from "by any metric" to "it's not entirely impossible." Come on! Were we not supposed to read this far into the column? WaPo is all headlines and first lines these days. Get your hit, and maybe you can face another day with Trump as President.

But even if Republicans hold the party line, what Trump faces in this scenario is bad enough: a public trial that he can’t avoid by firing the investigators, nor distract from with more Twitter blasts. One senses that public humiliation, especially at the hands of an establishment that has always looked down on him, is the thing that Trump fears most. Though far from certain, that humiliation is growing more likely.

Trump gets his energy from the deplorables — the humble people. The elite's going big on humiliating him will release tremendous energy, energy that Trump knows how to use. But government isn't entertainment, so I'd rather not see this grand drama play out. But these people who are hankering for it... I don't think they're picturing the fight and its repercussions.

To say "By any metric, Trump is in trouble" is to flaunt your lack of imagination.