Posted on 11/27/2019 5:37:11 AM PST by Kaslin
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, leader of the Democratic effort to impeach President Trump, told colleagues recently that impeachment is "an urgent matter that cannot wait."
Why? Why is it so urgent that Trump, who has been in office for nearly three years and will stand for re-election in 11 months -- why is it so urgent that he be impeached and removed this very moment?
The reasons probably have more to do with Democratic political priorities than with anything Trump has done or will do.
Schiff and Speaker Nancy Pelosi deny any political motive in impeaching the president. Perish the thought! Pelosi says Democrats are acting "sadly, prayerfully, [and] with a heavy heart." But they are racing to get the job done by Christmas. They're not even trying to hear from some key witnesses, like former National Security Adviser John Bolton, because they don't want to take the time to go to court over it.
The rush is because Democrats are running up against two very political deadlines.
The first is the approach of Democratic presidential caucuses and primaries.
The Iowa caucuses will be held on Feb. 3, and the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 11. As a practical matter, it will be very hard to get impeachment done by then.
Look at the example of Bill Clinton 20 years ago: The House voted articles of impeachment on Dec. 19, 1998. The Senate trial began on Jan. 7, 1999, and Clinton was acquitted on Feb. 12. It seems unlikely that House Democrats, who will ultimately have to deal with a Republican-controlled Senate, will be able to move any faster.
Impeachment during the primaries creates multiple problems for Democrats. One is that it underscores, regardless of the disclaimers, the essentially political nature of this impeachment. The fact is, Democrats are impeaching the president in an election year with the goal of rendering him unelectable against the Democratic candidate. It doesn't get more political than that.
Then there is the practical problem impeachment creates for Democratic presidential candidates. At the moment, there are six Democratic senators running for president. Presumably, some will drop out by next February. But it seems likely that other senators, like top contenders Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, will still be in the running. Instead of campaigning, though, they will be chained to their desks in the Senate chamber in Washington for the duration of a Senate impeachment trial. That's not the best way for a candidate to spend the weeks leading up to caucuses and primaries.
The other reason for the Democratic rush is the potential for impeachment fatigue. Some recent polls have shown public support for impeachment leveling off and even tipping downward. The public has already been through years of the Trump-Russia investigation, culminating in this year's aborted effort by Democrats to impeach the president on the basis of the Mueller report. Then, in September, Democrats turned on a dime and sought to impeach him in the Ukraine matter.
Pelosi and her colleagues clearly saw impeachment as a winner; she declared an inquiry even before the White House released the transcript of the now-famous phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
But something has happened since then. At the beginning of the Trump-Ukraine matter, the public mostly heard a narrative created by Democrats and their allies in the media. Trump had abused power, he had engaged in a quid pro quo, or bribery, or extortion, and he had jeopardized national security. It sounded bad. Support for impeachment grew.
Then came public hearings. Democrats got enormous exposure for their case against the president -- wall-to-wall coverage on the big three broadcast networks and all the cable news channels. And what did a significant portion of the public see? A bafflingly complicated tale of bureaucratic infighting, mostly about Ukraine. Is this what Democrats would remove the president for? Support for impeachment stopped growing.
As it turned out, the much-awaited hearings had exactly the opposite effect than Democrats hoped. Pelosi and Schiff wanted to create a compelling TV show to dramatize Trump wrongdoing. Millions of Americans would be won over. Instead, the public got something that a reasonably attentive viewer would have a hard time figuring out.
So now the quickie hearings are over and Schiff and his Intelligence Committee colleagues are at work -- prayerfully, no doubt -- on a report of their findings. That report will go to the House Judiciary Committee, which will swiftly draft articles of impeachment. Whatever articles the committee approves will then be sent to the full House for a vote.
By that time, Christmas will be fast approaching. If House Democrats make that deadline, and approve articles against the president, a Senate trial will follow after New Year's. And then will come Iowa.
So Schiff is rushing, rushing, rushing. (Yes, the House is on a Thanksgiving break, but the impeachment staff is hard at work.) Impeachment is "an urgent matter that cannot wait." Because politics demands it.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Dec 9 but they are too late. It is the beginning of the end.
My thought exactly.
Because every rally he hosts creates thousands of new voters.
You beat me to it.
Schiff is a puppet.
There are a couple of things going on. For one, the “investigation” is a headline generator. It allows them to dominate the news cycle from here to the elections, and possibly after. It sucks the air out of the room completely and displaces any other subject they don’t want discussed.
It keeps people from noticing what goes on behind the scenes, the fall-out from the failed Russia probe (which didn’t really fail, since it also sucked all of the air out of the room and essentially paralyzed Trump’s agenda except for whatever he could do by order, what orders weren’t countermanded by random judges around the country...)
But also Ukraine itself is a hot-button. Billions went missing there, and Biden is the tip of the iceberg. They most assuredly don’t want anyone poking around there. If they are prepared to go to the mat to defend Biden, its because there is a much bigger story there they do not want discussed. Biden is disposable, but the bigger fish are not yet disposable and do not intend to go quietly.
And, when Trump mentioned the word “server”, I suspect that sent a cold chill down someone’s back. They are not fooling around here, they are playing for all the chips.
Wrong! Pay attention!
Everything the Democrats want to do is cast as urgent, has to be done right now - or else.
Take the climate alarmists: "We only have 12 years to live!"
It's a tactic, nothing more.
That's the real answer.
This is a race. They MUST get President Trump out of office before the corruption is exposed. The big stuff. The years of scamming the foreign aid lottery. They cannot wait until election day because it’s just starting to get rolling. They can ride out Horowitz, but Durham is something different. Must get rid of orange man and stop the comeuppance.
Because democracy.
Watched last night, Fla.
Was maybe the best yet.
They are rushing to get it to Senate as quickly as possible. They know they will take a tremendous drubbing in the Senate and Trump will be acquitted. The democrats saw the portion of the foolish American electorate that they’re pandering to just simply forget the Russia, Russia, Russia farce because the fake news stooges stopped reporting on it. The democrats assume they will get the same result with the busted Ukrainian narrative. That timeline gives them enough time to pull the next impeachable Trump crime out of their a$$ to start the next round of hearings in the house which takes us tight up to Election Day.
Controlling the narrative through the 2020 election. Hope they can remove Trump, but if not, re-take the Senate and hold onto the House. At that point, Trump’s hands will be mostly tied. Which is why the hammer should have been dropped months ago, if there is truly damning information to be released.
The swamp creatures must remain hidden
Rush toward impeachment? It would appear that the impeachment scenario is being advanced to purge the Democratic Party of its old leadership and pave the way for the leftist radicals personified by “the squad” to firmly take over the Party. Pelosi made a huge strategic error when she agreed to impeachment. She at the time felt she had to appease the radical core of fervent Democratic leftists. However she now realizes that the moderates who give her a majority will be hard pressed by impeachment and some will lose their seats. What is more given the overt corruption in the Ukraine by Biden, his son Hunter, herself, her son Paul and Kerry and his stepson, the Republicans and Trump will expose the corruption in the Senate and destroy what is left of the old leadership careers of Biden, Pelosi, Kerry and others. Trump will survive. The Democratic Party will be taken over by the radicals much the way Labor in Britain was transformed. The radicals know they will lose in 2020 but taking firm control of a major Party is critical to their plans. They feel the time will soon come when political conditions will allow them to seize control. Then and only then with radical leftist believers firmly in charge , they will complete Obama’s “transformation” of America.
Pelosi would now love to “censure” rather than impeach but the Rubicon has been crossed and the dogs unleashed. The leftist radical core will openly revolt if they are not allowed to proceed. Nancy is toast.
The sicker she is, the more the little shiffs eyes bug out too.
"I thought they said he was impeached ! WTH ?"
Another big fail, but rather typical for a democrat circa 2020.
There is no rush. There is only the talk of rush. They have been investigating Trump and trying to keep a foul air around him to try to sour him for votes in 2020 since 2016 and maybe before. They don’t want him to be impeached, just made ugly.
And when this thing goes to the senate, if it makes it there, look for them to go after Mike Pence and any conservative front runner to keep up the pressure.
The impeachment trials are not to protect Biden. They’re to set the stage so the public can accept and fall all over with open arms, a disgraced lawyer that lost her “leaf” by “voluntarily surrendered” her law license in 1993 after a federal judge gave her the choice between surrendering her license or standing trial for insurance fraud. So their task of trying to “ugly” Trump is a big one and they are all over it to keep their cash cow.
rwood
“Why the Rush Towards Impeachment? Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”
That is close to the top of the list, if not the top of the list.
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