You might be surprised. Lots of independent voters won't rule out either party but they do tend to have a negative view of congressional dems and republicans. Bernie tends to be more admired by independents and a decent number of republicans I've met. Being seen as part of a political witch hunt might hurt his standing with some of those independents and GOP voters who might have considered voting for him in the general. I imagine even some never trumpers are going to be turned off by the impeachment process, regardless of what the facts are and who did what, because they're idiots, and they might hold their nose and vote for Trump in the primary. The dems have to be careful they don't turn Trump into a martyr. This could backfire on them badly.
This is kind of surprising.
The frustrating thing about not turning Trump into a martyr though is that he's quite adept at turning himself into martyr any time he receives negative feedback, regardless of how merited that negative feedback is. In that sense, the only way for Dems to *not* turn him into a martyr is to let him get away with whatever he wants. And it gets to a point where not calling him out - just because he'll only use it to be a martyr - causes more underlying, longer-lasting backfire (because precedents are being set, false narratives get enabled) than the immediate backfire of his martyrdom.
(It isn't a null point you're making, there are different degrees of calling him on stuff and it's definitely worthwhile to 'pick and choose battles' - but I mean, I just also want to point out that Dems held back on impeachment as long as they reasonably could. There was enough in the Mueller Report. Waiting too long to avoid the martyrdom backfire has, in a sense, already enabled him by lending a modicum of credence to the "witch hunt" bullshit.)
(I'm not trying to be argumentative here, just kinda adding thoughts to the pile).
eta: Just as an example of what I mean by "lending a modicum of credence" to his bullshit, I'm guessing most of his base believe that he absolutely would have been impeached after the Mueller Report if there were any impeachable offenses therein, because there's 'no way the bloodthirsty haters would have let that opportunity pass' if there were impeachable offenses. Ergo,
not picking that battle enabled the "witch hunt" narrative. Or the way that ultimately the only impeachment articles that made the cut were those things that were irrefutably proven - and as such, that served as 'proof' that the more serious offenses (e.g. bribery, extortion) were absolutely dreamed up and untrue - which again, isn't the case.
I'm probably on board with that^.
