I cried more for my cat than Pelosi.
Posted on 12/20/2019 10:09:44 AM PST by powermill
When it comes to impeachment, the House Democrats’ job is essentially over. The two articles before the chamber have passed. The only obligations left to them are to notify the Senate of their conclusions, name managers of the process, and allow the Republican-led chamber to reach a verdict, which some of its members (including leadership) say they’ve already reached. It should hardly come as a shock that a legislative chamber full of lawmakers who have been outwardly skeptical of the drive to impeach Trump will take a dim view of the articles against him, but the inevitability of what’s about to happen seems to be a surprise to Democrats.
Late Wednesday night, Speaker Nancy Pelosi floated the possibility that the House might withhold the articles of impeachment against Trump and not transmit them to the Senate at all. At least, not until she receives assurance from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that the process will proceed in a manner that satisfies House Democrats.
The Speaker has been in politics for a long time. She has a demonstrated capacity to advance her party’s interests at all costs, even including her speakership. Perhaps she’s playing a shrewd game here, too. But you have to squint to make the end game out. And even then, the blurry object on the horizon looks decidedly unsatisfying from a Democratic perspective.
There are three obvious downsides associated with Pelosi’s apparent strategy. The first is that it utterly contradicts the approach the House has taken over the last three months.
The need to impeach the president was such an urgent matter, we were told, that the House could not wait for the courts to rule on challenges to the White House’s efforts to prevent key witnesses like Mick Mulvaney, Don McGahn, and John Bolton (whom House Democrats didn’t even subpoena) from testifying. These important figures all claimed they would await guidance from the judiciary before consenting to testify, and the indications were that the extraordinary nature of the impeachment process would prove compelling. Now the courts aren’t even sure if they are obliged to continue litigating the matter. With the articles passed, the issue is all but moot. Democrats now insist that the Senate cannot proceed unless it hears from these witnesses, but that is also tacit admission that the fact-finding portion of impeachment proceedings was unduly rushed.
The second problem with Pelosi’s maneuver is that she will be ignored. Perhaps the speaker is trying to establish herself as McConnell’s foil, but the majority leader would have to confer upon her the authority she is demanding. And why would he? The House has no authority to dictate terms to the Senate. Nor should the Senate establish the rules that will govern Trump’s trial until the chamber has been properly informed by the House of the president’s impeachment. Pelosi is essentially threatening the GOP with a good time. Why shouldn’t the upper chamber simply dismiss the demands of House Democrats, making them look impotent in the process while drawing the inevitable out?
And that establishes the third problem with Pelosi’s maneuver: Time has not been on Democrats’ side. Democrats had little choice but to rush the depositional phase of impeachment proceedings, in part, because of the presidential campaign calendar bearing down on them but also because public opinion is slowly reverting to the mean. Support for impeaching Trump has declined steadily since the revelations involving Ukraine began to be litigated in a partisan environment like Congress, and that effect shows no signs of slowing. As for the Democrats who supported these articles, why wouldn’t members of the GOP in the Senate want to allow them to twist in the wind while also giving the Trump-supporting constituents of persuadable Senate Republicans time to pressure their lawmakers?
It’s easy to see why Democratic leadership was so eager to tamp down the demand for Trump’s impeachment from her caucus’s most zealous members. Whatever the merits of Pelosi’s strategy may be—and if you are aware of them, please let me know what they are—they seem objectively outweighed by the downsides. If Pelosi has bluffed her way into a loss, it is a rare strategic mistake on her part. But you do what you can with the hand you’re dealt.
tribe is giving nanny Pelosi bad advise, the case could already be dead
Waiting for yeb boosh to comment in support of this debacle.
What she’s doing is dithering and doddering.
Wrong!. The rules of impeachment thru to the Senate are decided by whomever is in control of the Congressional Chambers. We saw this clearly in the House, didn’t we? Nadler and Schiff simply did what they wanted under their own interpretation of the rules. Why in the world would you think McConnell would allow the Democrats to usurp his power as the head of the Senate?
I think maybe your tin foil hat is a bit snug.
You: “Nancy Pelosi, What Are You Doing?”
Nancy: “I am?”
She’s trying to keep her and her kid out of prison.
“...The only obligations left to them [the House] are to notify the Senate of their conclusions, name managers of the process, and allow the Republican-led chamber to reach a verdict...”
EXCUSE ME???
“ALLOW” the Republican-led chamber (Senate)???
What has happened to journalism?
This article is FAKE. It’s WRONG! It’s author is IGNORANT.
Regarding Pelosi's requirement for "fairness" and Ginsburg's claim of partisanship:
A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.The delicacy and magnitude of a trust which so deeply concerns the political reputation and existence of every man engaged in the administration of public affairs, speak for themselves. The difficulty of placing it rightly, in a government resting entirely on the basis of periodical elections, will as readily be perceived, when it is considered that the most conspicuous characters in it will, from that circumstance, be too often the leaders or the tools of the most cunning or the most numerous faction, and on this account, can hardly be expected to possess the requisite neutrality towards those whose conduct may be the subject of scrutiny.
-PJ
However, the Senators running for President can not claim impartiality as jurors against a political rival
Warren Sanders Klobuchar Booker Bennett
Should all recuse
This sedition and traitorous behavior is getting to be too much. Arrest each of these bums-on-taxpayers’-teat losers. Give them a speedy trial. If guilty, seize their assets and the assets of their immediate criminal families and exile them for the rest of their malignant , worthless, acerbic lives. Enough already!
yebbie and his pocket turtle are too busy trying to sell his left-over taco bowls from his loser’s campaign.
I never got the idea Pelosi wanted to impeach President Trump. She did it to keep control of her Party which is increasingly getting more radical.
She is weak, but as insane as most in her party.
The Singapore solution.
...and give them each a hard bound copy of “Man Without a Country” on the way out the door.
Pelosi could keep the impeachment articles hanging over the next election and threaten a Democrat Senate to carry it through after the presidential election.
What does she have to lose in taking the chance of getting a Dem. majority Senate and dispatching the President after the election if he wins? She does not seem worried about the public’s approval as she has nearly half of the country behind her, plus all the illegals and dead people who will vote for Dems.
Some people might avoid voting for Trump if there’s a chance of him being thrown out of office.
How many FBI files, FISA wiretaps, and other blackmailing tools do you think the dems/deep state have on all 100 senators? They rigged the house against Trump and soon they will have a rigged senate.They only need 4 votes. They already have Roberts in their pocket.
My oint is that they may not remove Trump, but can certainly use the senate as a year long anti trump campaign commercial.
I’m not into conspiracy like so many here are. If the “deep State” had those “secret intel dirt files” so many think they have I am sure at least ONE of those allegedly compromised would have gone public or if not him than a Senator with nothing of consequence in his past would have done so.
Very few people (relative to the huge numbers of people in the country actually have things in their past which would compromise them in public office. Moral standards are so lax now that what used to be a career ender in the past would be a career enhancer today. Things such as homosexuality, drugs, dui and the like are shrugged off today.
Things have changed bigly. I recall when being divorced would kill a political career.
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