Already one of my New Year's predictions has bitten the dust. I had predicted that Nancy Pelosi would hang on to the articles of impeachment until after the State of the Union Address. But she has announced that the House of Representatives will send the articles to the Senate next week.
From the Vox article:
"The transmission of the impeachment articles was expected to be a formality, as it was for Bill Clinton’s impeachment — it’s just a procedural step where they’re officially sent over from the House to the Senate.
But shortly after the House voted to impeach Trump on December 18 over his attempt to force Ukraine to investigate one of his political opponents, Pelosi made the surprising announcement that she wasn’t prepared to pass things over to the Senate just yet.
The problem, she said, was that because of comments Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had made about being in lockstep with the White House, she doubted he would hold a “fair trial.” So, she said, she wanted to wait and see what the Senate’s plans were regarding witnesses — or, at the very least, for more information on how the Senate trial would work.
Democrats offered several possible justifications for the move — that it could buy time to obtain more evidence, or that it would put a public spotlight on Republicans’ attempts to restrict the trial.
But most interpreted the move as an attempt to force concessions out of McConnell. The idea was that, since Trump badly wanted to be acquitted, delaying the trial would infuriate him. That indeed happened: Trump was furious. The problem was that McConnell and his Senate majority didn’t budge."
My personal opinion is that she never expected that McConnell would give in. But she wanted to shine the light on his refusal to allow witnesses to testify. She knew that eventually the House would have to send the articles of impeachment over.
It is a foregone conclusion that the Senate will not convict Trump. However it isn't over until it is over.
The media have been playing this as a winner-loser game. So if Pelosi gives McConnell the articles without getting the rules book, he wins.
ReplyDeleteExcept that is not what has been going on. Pelosi has exposed McConnell as a bigger control freak than DJT. And now that she has established that, DJT won't be able to claim exoneration from the eventual outcome; he will simply have to thank Boss McConnell for rescuing him.
In terms of actual damage to the Republic, McConnell has done more, so far, than the disrupter-in-chief. If he would spend his time worrying about Congress's authority vis-a-vis the White House, he might do some good. But he is wasting his muscle on the Senate's authority vis-a-vis the House. Which means that eventually he will make Trump a bigger national disaster than himself.
"In terms of actual damage to the Republic, McConnell has done more, so far, than the disrupter-in-chief." You are right, Tom. McConnell had a head start; he was doing his best at republic-damaging during Obama's administration.
DeleteYeah. I should have indicated I was also thinking about his blocking Obama appointments to the judiciary so there would be a lot of openings for Trump to fill with eager law school grads who have never set foot inside a courtroom that wasn't Moot.
DeleteSean Hannity is attempting to intimidate Senate Republicans by threatening to give out their phone numbers if they allow witnesses to be called during the trial. A couple of observations about that; if he's talking about their work phone numbers, that's an empty threat. Those numbers are readily available on government and party sites to any who want to find them. If he's talking about giving out private information, it's another story. That's a practice known as "doxing", and there are both state and federal laws against using it against a federal employee.
ReplyDeleteMy question; why is he so afraid of witnesses being called? If there's nothing there, it can't do any harm to the obfuscator in chief. Hannity is obviously very personally caught up in this drama, to a boundary-crossing degree. He's only a Fox loudmouth, not anybody who actually counts in government, for heaven's sake.
I do wish he would call to the president's attention the fact that Puerto Rico is suffering from a series of earthquakes, and it still hasn't received a lot of the assistance Congress voted -- beyond the paper towels Donald J. Trump personally tossed out -- for Hurricane Maria 27 MONTHS AGO. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory.
DeleteI know the great golfer wouldn't be in the weeds of detail about Puerto Rico, but surely somebody at Fox could tell Hannity, who could tell Trump. After all, if we can kill Iranians 6,100 miles away, we ought to be able to help our own people.
Trump has not even mentioned PR in his tweets. He retweeted a bit about Colorado firefighters helping in Australia, but otherwise zippo.
DeleteMost of it is the usual dreck about how Democrats are all "defending" Gen. Suleiman.
He also took credit for the reduction in cancer deaths, though: "So much good news coming out of this administration," though he says the media is so full of "fake news," why he even believes the latest cancer stats is beyond me.
I don't think he has ever considered PR part of the United States, or anything other than a poor relation, and a distant one at that.
DeleteHe doesn't demonstrate even basic competence for his office. If he was CEO of a company he would have been fired long since.
My personal opinion all along is that a president who has been found "not guilty" by the Senate is a president who can go into the coming election crowing that he's been "exonerated"; whereas a president who has to enter the fall election period with the weight of an ongoing impeachment around his neck is a president who is running with a serious wound.
ReplyDeleteThus, I've thought all along that the Democrats' game should be to stretch this out through November. Instead, they decided to expedite matters in the House. And now that Pelosi has handed over the articles to the Senate, more damning stories are leaking out, about which testimony wasn't solicited by the House. No doubt there will be a certain amount of pressure on the Senate to allow additional testimony; but McConnell and Co. proved during the Kavanaugh hearings that they're more than capable of navigating that sort of semi-orchestrated pressure.
I guess what underlies Democratic haste in all this is the desire to keep the House and capture the Senate; they don't want to be accused of bogging the government down for many months with the impeachment spectacle. Maybe there is something to that. But it strikes me a loss of focus. Isn't the number one priority to get Trump out of the White House? A Trump who claims "Exoneration!" will be more difficult to unseat.