DETROIT _ It's just a coincidence that President Donald Trump is staging a "Merry Christmas" campaign rally Wednesday night as the full House considers making him the third president to be impeached.
Planned weeks ago, the rally isn't some savvy programming decision by the reality TV star turned politician to divert attention from the ignominy of impeachment. He'll be in Michigan, a state that he won in 2016 by just 10,700 votes _ and one that is critical to his reelection bid.
But the confluence of congressional and campaign schedules will deliver a historic split-screen moment as a deeply polarizing president seeks to turn his likely impeachment into a badge of honor, not dishonor, and convince his most ardent supporters that he _ and they _ are victims of deep injustice.
His argument, honed in hundreds of vitriolic tweets and captured in a furiously worded six-page letter that he issued Tuesday, is likely to intensify the emotions of partisans and, more importantly, help crystallize for swing voters the ever-looming question of whether he deserves four more years in the White House.
"Hate is usually a greater driver for voters than like," said Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party. "That's good for Democratic intensity, but I think the impeachment hearings have backfired (against them). Mainstream voters just don't like the process."
Although a weekend Fox News poll showed 50% of Americans support Trump's impeachment and removal from office, surveys in critical swing states such as Michigan _ those most likely to determine who wins and loses next November _ have shown support for impeachment below the national average.
That explains why Trump boasted Friday, shortly after the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee approved two articles of impeachment on a strict party line, that impeachment proceedings have been "very good for me politically."
Trump's reelection campaign has issued endless appeals based on impeachment, warning darkly against Democratic perfidy against the president. It's produced an uptick in online fundraising and political enthusiasm since the inquiry began in September.
Campaign aides believe Trump's visits to Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida and other potential swing states will accelerate those trends, especially as his rally in Battle Creek on Wednesday night could take place while the full House does a roll call vote on his impeachment.
"Everyone who's going to be in that building will remember where they were that night," said Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for Trump's campaign.
"To have Democrats on the House floor on CSPAN on one side of the screen and thousands of people at a rally cheering on the president on the other side, what a contrast," he added. "Democrats will be shown live in action trying to overturn the 2016 election while the president is out there with the people."
The president's rally in Battle Creek, a blue-collar town 90 minutes west of Detroit, offers him a prime opportunity to tout the strong national economy and his recent progress toward a preliminary trade agreement with China and finalization of a revamped North American free trade deal with Canada and Mexico.
But the dark cloud of impeachment is likely to overshadow any other narrative.
Trump's six-page letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a torrent of grievance, hostility and projection _ he accused Democrats of every charge that, based on sworn testimony and evidence, they have leveled at him _ may offer a preview of the president's rally remarks Wednesday.
"You are making a mockery of impeachment and you are scarcely concealing your hatred of me, of the Republican Party, and tens of millions of patriotic Americans," he wrote. Voters, he warned, "will not soon forgive your perversion of justice and abuse of power."
Analysts say Trump's venting rage may prove cathartic for him and his most ardent fans, but isn't necessarily helpful if the goal is to broaden his base for 2020.
"There's something confrontational about Trump's rallies that he loves, and it produces the strongest reaction from his base," said Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster. "But if I were going into Michigan, I'd choose to tell the economic story, not to fixate on the personal grievances he's going to have on that day."
"He can have as many rallies as he wants," Hart continued. "Leaving aside the organizational benefits, he's just reinforcing all the things the voters in the middle don't like about him."
Over the weekend, Trump went after Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) the widow of legendary former Rep. John D. Dingell, who served a record 59 years in the House and died in February. After she criticized the president on cable television for trying to "block key witnesses from testifying" to the House, Trump lashed out on Twitter.
"The last time I spoke to Debbie Dingell was her call thanking me for granting top memorial and funeral service honors for her then just departed husband, long time Congressman John Dingell," Trump tweeted. "Now I watch her ripping me as part of the Democrats Impeachment Hoax. Really pathetic!"
Trump rallies, like most of his tweets, have always been primarily about revving up his base. Battle Creek sits in Calhoun County in southwestern Michigan. It's unemployment rate is higher than the national average, and its average household income is lower.
President Barack Obama won the county by a percentage point and a half in 2012, four years before Trump won it by 12 percentage points.
The area's congressman could be a tempting target for Trump. Rep. Justin Amash was elected as a Republican in 2010 but became an independent in July and was the only non-Democrat in the House to vote yes on opening the impeachment inquiry.
On Tuesday, a small group of Trump supporters shouted down freshman Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat who represents a district northeast of Battle Creek, after she announced at a town hall in Rochester that she would vote for impeachment.
By late Tuesday, nearly all Slotkin's vulnerable colleagues in the House Democrats' class of 2018 had signaled their support for impeachment even as they acknowledge it may make their own reelection more difficult.
"Over the past few months, I've been told more times than I can count that the vote I'll be casting this week will mark the end of my short political career. That may be," Slotkin, a former CIA analyst, wrote Monday in the Detroit Free Press. "But in the national security world that I come from, we are trained to make hard calls on things, even if they are unpopular, if we believe the security of the country is at stake. There are some decisions in life that have to be made based on what you know in your bones is right. And this is one of those times."
Lavora Barnes, chairwoman of the Michigan Democratic Party, is optimistic that the state's swing voters will ultimately reward Slotkin and other lawmakers for their transparency and for doing what they believe to be right, regardless of the politics.
In an interview, she said that Michigan Democrats have shifted from a strategy that relied heavily on voters around Detroit and are now working to persuade voters across the state. Impeachment, she believes, won't determine who carries the state in 2020.
"In the end, whatever the Senate does, we've got our own Donald Trump turnout strategy, which is about the 2020 election," Barnes said, pointing to 2018 statewide results where Democrats ran much better than they had two years earlier. "We're making inroads. That's about us taking the time to traverse the state and have conversations with folks all over."
