Democrats may have handed Trump his best week ever, and given him crucial momentum for the 2020 election

• President Donald Trump's chances of reelection looked like they were in trouble at the beginning of the year.
• But a series of errors by Democrats, and the persistent strength of the US economy, has put the impetus behind the president as the presidential election gears up.
• On Monday the Iowa Democratic caucuses descended into chaos following the botched rollout of an app meant to communicate votes.
• Trump also used Tuesday night's State of the Union address to laud his economic achievements and dump on the Democrats.
• Trump is almost certain to be acquitted in the Senate impeachment trial later Wednesday, and will use the result to damage Democrats.
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As the new year dawned, President Donald Trump's prospects of being elected to a second term in office looked like they were in serious trouble.

In December, he became the third president in US history to be impeached, after the House charged him with abusing his power as he sought damaging information on Democratic rival Joe Biden from Ukraine, and obstructing the subsequent congressional investigation.

Economic data indicated that a recession could be on its way by mid-2020, imperiling the economic prosperity that had been Trump's strongest campaign-trail selling point.

And on January 1, pollsters at FiveThirtyEight found that Trump had the second-lowest-ever approval ratings for a sitting president at the start of reelection year, with ratings mired at 42.6%. (President Gerald Ford retained the title for lowest-ever approval ratings in 1976 with 39.3%.)

But just over a month into the new year, things are looking very different.

This week, Democrats have helped to hand Trump one of his best weeks ever, giving him crucial momentum to win in November as the election season really starts to gear up.

The Senate is almost certain to acquit Trump of the charges that got him impeached later on Wednesday.

According to The Hill, some Democrats could even join Republicans in passing a not-guilty verdict, giving Trump a bipartisan acquittal which he can brandish on the campaign trail as evidence that the impeachment drive was a bogus partisan conspiracy.

The fact that vulnerable Democrats, like Sen. Doug Jones in Alabama, could side with their Republican colleagues in the Senate to acquit Trump, exposes the Democratic Party's failure to persuade Americans outside their core areas to support their case for removing Trump from office.

On Tuesday night, Trump also used his State of the Union address to boast of prosperity under his presidency, claiming the US economy - which has remained resilient despite projections of a downturn - is the "best it's ever been."

(That claim was one of several inaccurate statements the president made in the address, with an economist saying that the economy is currently falling short of historic highs.)

Trump also attacked the Democrats as radical socialists who would ruin the American economy with vast public expenditure programs. This will not have helped the Democrats, who remain mired in infighting over the direction of their party.

The much-anticipated first vote of the Democratic primary season, in Iowa, also descended into chaos on Monday night following the botched rollout of an app that was meant to communicate votes.

Instead of giving publicity and impetus to a prospective challenger to the president, the unexpected error allowed Trump to seize the occasion to portray the Democratic party as a shambles, while his campaign used the delay to double down on conspiracies designed to exacerbate divisions within the party.

A Gallup poll released Tuesday brought more good news for the president. It found that 49% of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing.

That's higher than the approval rating former President Barack Obama had at the same point in his first term, and seems partly driven by the fallout from the impeachment process - with the approval rating among Republicans now at 94%.

The news cycle moves fast and scandals are quickly forgotten, but Democrats cannot afford many more errors of the scale of those committed in the past few days if they are to dent the president's electoral momentum.