While pro-impeachment Democrats are trying to rally their peers to the cause, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is fretting that the American public doesn’t realize that impeachment does not guarantee President Donald Trump’s ouster from office.
And you’re worried because people didn’t realize that voting for the Dotard could make him President?
I’ll just add that #1, having him impeached by the HOR is more important than having him convicted and removed from office by the Senate, and #2, an impeachment by the HOR makes every single Republican in Congress go on record as supporting a traitor! THAT is the way to winning in 2020! Why is that so fucking hard to understand???
Madam Speaker, you had tremendous support to hold your current position as Speaker after the 2018 election, but i dare say that support is beginning to crumble beneath you. Your legacy as a Representative of the people is on the line! And no! I do not enjoy saying that!!!
:What we have to do is educate the public on the benefits of the Impeachment Process, most of which nearly all of us here know very well."
seriously? did you read the article? your sweeping statement of “what people know very well” is off the charts… the gop woman who stated that she hadn’t heard anything bad from the meuller report and that she thought trump was exonerated by it, is not untypical. your blogger’s bubble reasoning is similar to the fox news bubble. this is a process and pelosi gets it. the info can come out through the congressional investigations and the criminal investigations into trump. he will use the “i-word” as a rallying cry. get a grip.
Yesterday’s news reports were the first time that I noticed Pelosi a bit flustered and irritated. The push on impeachment keeps coming. She can’t deny that the base of the party wants it. The reaction at the CA Dem Convention is telling. Attendees at this convention are generally a combination of social justice left leaning Dems + old school Dems who have not really been that invested in the Russia investigation. Yet, that crowd was all about ‘impeachment’. They see it as part of the essential corruption that the GOP represents. Pelosi knows she can’t escape that.
So she made a few more baby steps in the direction of accountability. I’ll welcome it though it’s nowhere near where I think we need to be.
Pelosi continues to gaslight impeachment, throwing up a number of confusing and disingenuous rationales instead of investing her political capital in getting subpoena compliance. The shine is starting to wear off of Pelosi though. More Dems are starting to realize that she has no secret 11 dimension chess plan to impeach Trump. She’ll have to be dragged kicking and screaming to it. Her political strategy is to set the Dems up to run a campaign on the theme that ‘he’s impeachable but we can’t impeach’, which to me is very reminiscent of Kerry’s muddled message on the Iraq war. That message allowed Bush lanes to stand his ground on his failing policy because of stylistic clarity rather than deal with the substance. He won.
I think Pelosi’s approach is an historic mistake that will result in an historic failure barring a recession (which frankly could happen). I’ve been a big supporter of Nancy Pelosi since she decided to run for leadership in Dec 2004. However, she is now failing the test of history. She is failing the moment. You can’t depend on her to lead Dems to the right place. We the voters need to be the leaders. That started to happen over the past 2 weeks. However, more needs to be done. She is an obstacle to an impeachment inquiry, to defending the Republic, to defeating Trump. Ironically, the only thing holding up the anti-impeachment plurality/majority in the polls is Nancy Pelosi. She is Trump’s last line of defense. More folks need to understand that.
The way I look at it, if this country wants to elect a neo-fascist gov’t they can do so. I don’t plan on helping them and I plan on fighting them every step of the way. Mueller provided us an impeachment referral. We should impeach Trump and defend the Republic.
I am not even sure some members of Congress understand that impeachment is only half way to removing the President. Once he is impeached in the house, the senate holds a trial. Without the senate on board impeachment is a wasted exercise.
The founders made the process hard on purpose. I consider the two stage process a feature, not a bug.
Pelosi is losing the opportunity to let this process move in a fashion free of the drama of intra-party politics. The schism is very capable of overwhelming the actual purpose. She may be thinking many chess moves forward but the process is moving past her. Waiting is making her along with the party by proxy look weak and indecisive. She really needs to look at the consequences in two ways. The process can lead to an impeachment, Yay! Or the process can ensure the people know exactly what they are dealing with.
“Donald Trump is a traitor!”
“Donald Trump is mentally unstable!”
“Donald Trump has committed impeachable offences!”
“Donald Trump is a tool of the Russians!”
“Donald Trump is Putin’s Puppet!”
But we’re just fine leaving him in place as the leader of the Most Powerful Nation on earth, and in charge of the nuclear codes.
Way to lead, Speaker Pelosi!
(This is the box that the Democratic Party “Leadership” painted itself into with its Russiagate hysteria over the past three years.)
Classic Democratic practice, wherein necessary actions are euthanaized in service of the sacrosanct Status Quo. “The Democrats–where good ideas go to be smothered in their cradles.” F these high school Student Body Presidents, anyway, quisling away for the principal’s approval. They’ll. Never. Buck. The System. They’re too invested in the role of Beautiful Losers.
I’m still amazed at the failure of Democrats to (at least out loud) say, we’ll go through the process, investigate and have a vote if they decide to progress to that point. THEN IT’S ON THE SENATE.
If the impeachment process goes like we all expect (or believe) it should and the public comes around like they did under Nixon, then put the Senate on the record. Get people like Collins and Portman and others on the record. If the evidence is the shitshow we all expect it to be, let them get up there in spite of it and tell the American public that this shiftless, amoral scoundrel still deserves to hold the highest office the world. And then see how they fare in their re-election bids.
“However, I’ll counter that I don’t think people are that stupid. People can understand that they’re watching hearings, not a trial with a verdict at the end.”
i see your issue. you are conflating stupidity with ignorance. educate them without running up the impeachment flag. they will listen better. the gops are in the process of self destruction. when the shit hits the light of day, they will be left with miore than egg or milkshakes on their faces.
Exactly. As much as I respect John Dean, is anyone going to listen to him? Not even me. This is stupid and waste of time and makes the Democrats looks so foolish and weak. Can House members challenge Pelosi’s leadership? If so, it’s going to happen soon.
Anyone read the latest article by David Faris?
I like how he thinks:
It may not appease the impatient, but it would be a novel idea. I suggested just holding hearings up until the election to damage Trump as much as possible, He puts a twist in it at the end.
I really like the way he writes. here’s an excerpt:
And if Republicans don’t like it, they should consider backing slowly away from the ticking time bomb of open corruption, emotional incontinence and cheap sadism in the White House to whom they have yoked themselves so pitifully.
Okay, I’ll bite. The idea as a I understand it is that Pelosi is failing because instead of supporting committees that are investigating the president, she hasn’t launched an “impeachment committee” which will focus everyone’s attention on the impeachment. Then, I suppose, that committee – which numerous posts on this forum say the public should understand to not yet be impeachment – will educate the public until we get to a decision about impeachment. Then the public will understand this not to be a partisan process, but simply something the Dems have to do, and will understand when the House then launches formal impeachment vote (have I lost you yet) and then understand that vote as not yet impeachment because then the Senate has to have a trial at which time all the GOP will vote to acquit the president. So then we will have had an impeachment process leading to a formal impeachment inquiry to a vote to a trial that results in not vindicating this impeachment. However, we should be mad at Pelosi because what I just outlined is an obviously winning strategy that if nothing else allows us all to go down with this ship with honor, defending the constitution or at least this specific part of it, even as we lose the rest.
Of course, nothing’s inevitable. There’s a chance it doesn’t quite play out that way. But are the odds good enough it won’t that we’re willing to move all our chips to the table? To relentlessly flog Pelosi as a has been and sell out because she doesn’t agree?
I get the passion and fear. I get that something has been violated that out to be an obvious case for impeachment. But I worry that people continue to overrate the chance of success of this one strategy, and underrate the chances of catastrophic failure. Declaring impeachment now calls the shot, even as many other winning possibilities remain. It’s like throwing the ball in and deciding to shoot from half court. Can you win that way? Sure. Can you throw away your last chance? More likely.
Nancy knows things that we don’t. Ramping up a circular firing squad against her does not help and only adds division, you know, that thing the Russians want us to do so much. And you keep attacking her creating division, gas lighting? Really? That’s a bridge too far. I’d like to get impeachment started too, but timing is everything. I’m ready to roll on it, but there is a reason she’s holding back the reins for now. And if trump & company want impeachment, and want it now, that gives me some pause until such time as we are ready to get it done despite their wall to wall weaponization of it.
I did not see the entire CA Dem convention, but the little I did see, health care seemed pretty popular.
you do not get what is going on. she does. it needs to be crystal clear to the larger public.playing into trump’s evil little hands is the big mistake.
But if popular support for impeachment is rising, maybe Speaker Pelosi’s strategy is having effect.
Apparently, she first wants popular support for impeachment to build, and by playing cautious and devil’s advocate, she might be goading the public to “push back” against her ostensibly cautious approach.
