If you look at the polling the public is ready for impeachment hearings.
Around 2/3rds of voters want Mueller, McGahn, Hicks et al to testify when that question has been asked in recent polls. If they’re testifying, that’s an inquiry.
76% of Dems & 35% of Indies favor impeachment per CNN’s latest poll (41% overall). Per Newsweek, 60% of Dems and 25% of GOPers want Trump impeached or censured. This one suggests some real softness among the GOP.
The only thing holding up the anti-impeachment majority or plurality is the GOP base (no surprise there) + 10% of Indies (that can be moved w/hearings) + Nancy Pelosi (once she green lights an inquiry, that 76% of Dems number will rise to 90%).
Keep in mind all of these numbers are much stronger for impeachment hearings/impeachment articles than comparable points of the Nixon and Clinton impeachment sagas.
That’s a very weak foundation for Trump that is entirely dependent on Nancy Pelosi remaining committed to opposing over 90% of her party on the question of impeachment hearings, and 3/4ths of her party on the question of impeachment. Does that really seem sustainable to you? I’m not saying that Pelosi won’t pull her best Jeremy Corbyn impression and go against the party’s prevailing and growing view, but it just isn’t that common or sustainable for party leadership to be that well out of step with where the party members are and where they are moving to. In the UK, Corbyn’s refusal to support a new referendum has damaged Labour badly and is partly responsible for engineering a massive realignment in UK politics. Pelosi doesn’t strike me as the type to go down a similar path, but we’ll see.
As I’ve often said, if you give the GOP analogous numbers as are popping up in these impeachment polls vs a Dem POTUS they’d be all in. No struggle. No pained debates. No tortured analysis. Just all in.
If she’s wants to forestall the impeachment movement she needs to accelerate what she is putting forward as the alternative, and that is an investigatory process that lays bare various criminal acts on the part of Trump in a way the public can easily digest and understand. Yes, I realize she’s probably ticking off the procedural checklist confronting her, and is limited by timelines controlled by the courts. But stalling on impeachment while (allegedly) dithering on laying the foundation for even pursuing it is gaining her no fans or sympathy for her dilemma.
Nancy doesn’t want to ruin the mood with the Georgetown cocktail party set. I don’t expect her to do her duty to defend the nation from this corrupt junta.
One of my criticisms of Pelosi is that if you were committed to not impeaching, the thing to have done was to have lined up subpoenas and hearing dates out of the gate the second the Mueller Report was turned in. Catch people by surprise, take control of the narrative, push the WH around. They would’ve been more successful and Pelosi’s position more sustainable. I’d still want to impeach but I can’t say that I wouldn’t be reasonably satisfied if my Speaker was taking a spear to them and forcing them into hearings by using the full power of the House.
Her strategy, such as it is, hasn’t produced much. I know she relies on these 2 district court wins, but they’re not really key to the issues in the Mueller Report and final resolution of those matters is at least 2 months away. She needs to change things up.
Beginning the inquiry I think will go a long way to ensuring that folks understand this process is moving forward. My thought is, she’s waiting for an opportune time to go forward with this, that would put the process in line with the campaign.
Closer to the primaries, et al, might be an ok idea, but I think much of the momentum is now.
[quote=“zillacop, post:18, topic:88520, full:true”]
Clinton was impeached for lying about having sex. Really? A very very stupid move on his part, but impeachable?[/quote]
Whatever you do, don’t ask the Founders!
(Of course they had more skeletons in and out of their closets than you could shake a stick at.)
Hey, don’t forget Anti-Masonic Party candidate William Wirt who received 8% of the vote in 1832. Am I ever glad Andrew Jackson still won. If not, Democrats would still be bitching about Wirt. Third party candidates.and anyone who criticizes your particular candidate are all anti American. right?
Impeachment Inquiry is sort of baked in, right now. The variance seems to be the timing.
As I observed upthread, Trump is doing HIS part.
By the way, most people can tell a backtrack…so the Dems had best do a little better on selling it to the Press.
Over the last couple of weeks I have seen individual Democratic CongressPeople roar like lions concerning the value of Impeachment…even the inevitability of it…then the money question: A direct response asked about WHEN and associated questions…
And then the backtracking begins…well spoken, to be sure, but a backtrack with nebulous specifications and qualifications.
THAT is not acceptable, because it gives “political-sounding” “rationales” when people are looking for something to believe in…
Look: I am not at Pelosi’s paygrade. No one here knows her rationales completely… But the accompanying DEMOCRATIC MESSAGING has got to portray a movement that is slowly and surely building up to an ability to check the abuses of Power of Donald Trump.
