Good article. Someone please get this in front of the speaker
Pelosi, meanwhile, is just trying to turn down the heat until the Memorial Day recess when she can spring her members free to their home states where tempers can cool and stress can dissipate.
And, all our problems will just melt away. The Rethugs will start complying, tRump will not lie, will turn over his taxes and we’ll all live happily ever after.
I look at the 2020 elections like this:
Unless Trump is as popular as Harold Stassen on November 2020, he will cheat and win. The election is life for him.
Literally
The nation will survive under two scenarios:
(a) Trump is gone before the 2020 elections
(b) He is so weakened and devastated that the election itself is an exercise
If Pelosi can achieve (a) or (b), I am all for whatever strategy she chooses. She knows more than I do and she does this kind of thing for a living.
But like Josh says, Trump’s re-election would be catastrophic and exposing this country to
(a) Trump’s ability to gin-up the swing states
(b) The cheating which will occur
is political malpractice.
And, that’s why somehow, some way, he has to be taken down so he cannot run. He will cheat his way to victory. He has no bounds.
Whatever feelings members have towards Pelosi, I hope they express them in private. The media has an obsession with the “Dems in disarray” narrative so don’t feed it.
I said at different times towards the tail end of 2018 and January 2019 that Trump had a window to resign in 2019.I also said Dems had a window to impeach in 2019 and Jan 2020 at the latest. If it got too close to the primaries, Dems would rather run against the known weak quantity in Trump rather than a new GOP nominee who might be able to distance him/herself from him.
However, that argument assumed that Dems would actually have hearings which would further expose and amplify on whatever Mueller found. Instead, we have Nancy Pelosi clearly trying to slow walk things, chew up the clock and make ‘no impeachment’ a fait accompli while doing very little in terms of actually utilizing enforcement powers.
What has changed in the last 4 weeks is that Democratic voters are more impeachment friendly than she expected, and that Dem voters are particularly perturbed at Trump thumbing his nose at them constantly. It’s damaging to the rule of law and the Republic. People want action. They want to see the Dems be able to get some simple, basic things done: like getting witnesses to testify, getting subpoenas enforced etc. We all just know how the GOP would run a committee if they had this much material to work with, and this palpable fear and hesitation on the part of the Democratic leadership just screams weakness. It’s unacceptable and it’s embarrassing.
In addition, the arguments for impeachment are simply more persuasive than the ones against it. If there is a good argument against impeachment, I haven’t heard the Speaker make it.
We see in the primaries that Elizabeth Warren is creeping closer to 2nd place. Kamala Harris has some solid polls as well in the early states putting her in double digits. Being for impeachment hasn’t hurt them. It has put some distance between them and other 3rd tier candidates and is getting them closer to Bernie Sanders. Sanders, who opposes impeachment, has taken a real hit over the same time period. Biden supports impeachment and he keeps rising. What that tells you is that while people respect and admire the Speaker, they don’t necessarily agree with her. They certainly see that Dems who have a difference of opinion with the Speaker have worthy points and that being for impeachment enhances respect for them. It’s not a situation like the GOP where if one opposes Trump on a signifiant issue one is ostracized.
For the Speaker to really fix this, she has to aggressively put her imprimatur on holding Trump accountable. That means she has to make getting McGahn, Mueller etc a priority and communicate to all witnesses that the Speaker of the House views accountability as a priority. Once she does that, the political climate will change, Dems will get a lot more information and evidence out to the people, they’ll have clearer narratives against Trump and the political winds will shift towards resignation of Trump, impeachment or a permanent drop in the polls to where he becomes a clear liability as Bush was for the GOP in 2008.
I don’t understand her resistance here. She’s behaving like the victim of extortion. Her obstructionism has gone far beyond any rational understanding of the situation. Democrats were elected in 2018 to oppose Trump, not to talk about how opposing Trump might keep them from being able to run on a platform of opposing Trump in 2020.
As Dahllia Lithwick points out, the focus on gathering more and more material feels like little more than a delaying tactic. The redacted report is, by itself, sufficient grounds to start hearings. She makes this point more eloquently than I could:
Democrats who say they want to focus on the economy, or the 2020 elections, or other kitchen table issues, give up more and more authority to the reckless, power-snatching president by the day. By attaching no real consequence, they are essentially telling the country that Steven Mnuchin should keep defying a House subpoena of the president’s tax records and Donald McGahn should keep refusing to testify on obstruction of justice. In ceding that power to a president who believes himself all-powerful, they are simply making it so.
Democrats are behaving like they think enforcing the law will make them unpopular. I have no idea why they think this way, but it’s characteristic of the kind of shallow analysis that is killing the party.
I’m done for a while. Anyone with even a tyro’s grasp of History can see what’s happening and where this is heading.
And I am sure that Nancy ‘Neville Chamberlain’ Pelosi will be completely shocked at the disaster she incubated through her inability to act. As with her recent spiritual forbears she is only tough on other Democrats.
Good luck and good day.
I don’t agree. Why shouldn’t people express out loud that they’re frustrated with this whole process. I was convinced Pelosi was just waiting to have so many things stacked against tRump that impeachment would be the logical conclusion. Now, I’m not sure that is where she’s headed. I think she needs some pressure.
Pressure in private can still work, just as they pushed her to give new members more opportunities before they elected her to be speaker. Those opposed her publicly didn’t get what they want. What I was trying to say is, don’t feed the troll(the media). It seems cowardly to use the media to express their frustration without/before confronting Dem leaders in person.
The linked Politico article said “Pelosi has long sought to dissuade her colleagues from trying to remove the president without winning bipartisan support.” The best way to win bipartisan support is to exercise your constitutional duty to hold investigative hearings, amass the evidence, and put your cards on the table. Politely asking the GOP members of Congress if they would like to impeach their party’s president is a non-starter.
There is a third scenario, which I’m working on: turn out Milwaukee. Do everything between now and the Democratic convention to register, prime, and lock up an extra 20K votes in Milwaukee and this election is over. Untether the whole process from the primaries, the economy, polls, white voters in the provinces, and just focus on turning out the decisive electorate. The grassroots will have to handle this like we handled 2018. Dem national leadership is basically making itself irrelevant at this point.
Pelosi’s game plan is to postpone impeachment for a couple of months while they’re gathering evidence and witnesses to present before Congress. That will make the actual impeachment hearings a much better, and convincing show for the American people. It will also have a greater impact if it’s delayed until late summer or early fall. People need to be patient.
great that you keep the caucus “together” in a democratic party sense, not their forte IMO
I see there being less of a problem keeping the Dem caucus in line over non-impeachment action than I do with keeping the voters they seek support from over non-action
at some point, like it or not, fumbling around and playing political calculus with this situation is going to bite them in the ass, be it reality or perception, I mean, really can we be objective and say they appear weak willed yet again, and appearances with voters is everything, as we on this board are outliers in the level of interest we show in our government so our opinions matter the least
Pelosi let Bush skate in 2006 and she’s letting Trump skate now. She is a horrible speaker.
How do you perceive the Tillerson under-the-radar session with House committee this morning potentially intensifying the dialogue?
I actually thought T-Rex did a respectable job as SOS. He was more center-right than right and he believed in international institutions and international agreements. He undermined DOS’ bureaucracy but on the issues of international stability (NATO, Iran Deal, avoiding stupid wars) T-Rex was ok. T-Rex is blunt and would’ve told the truth. If T-Rex gave evidence that Trump directed him to violate the law, that fits into the same pattern that Trump has done with respect to Cohen, Manafort, every witness, and also in other areas like health care and immigration/DHS. That might be the kind of hook to convince Pelosi to impeach. If one can connect the lies and obstruction on #trumprussia to how Trump behaves on every issue, including those that impact the #forthepeople agenda, she just might believe that stopping Trump is the way to achieve that agenda. If protecting the ACA was the primary reason she got the gavel again (not quite accurate imho but it’s what she believes and some data would back her up), and Trump’s lying and obstruction put the ACA at risk (which it has) then impeachment becomes the option to tell people that she can best protect your healthcare by ‘impeaching the motherf***er’.
Oh quit the BS. People make bad decisions when they’re emotional and if there’s one thing we need right now it’s less emotion and more strategy and thoughtful action. We get enough knee-jerk responses from Trump, Democrats don’t need to follow in his footsteps and your petty cynacism doesn’t help.
Guess you don’t understand snark when you see it. BS indeed!