It’s impeachment-lite time
Some coverage here as well as here.
Pelosi quote of the day; “He gave us no choice.”
That’s funny on a lot of levels. First there’s the obvious one, which is Pelosi’s fake pose (probably perceived even by impeachment supporters to be fake) that her reluctant hand was forced by Trump and his terrible terrible activities (like, for example, drawing breath as president).
But the only-slightly-less-obvious reason it’s funny is that it is true, because by doing well as president, and gaining support rather than losing it, Trump has put the fear into the Democrats that they won’t be able to find anyone to beat him in the 2020 election. And if they can’t beat him, the specter of four more years of Trump as president fills them with such dread and fulminating hatred that their only alternative, as they see it, is to impeach him.
So in a sense it is true that he gave them no choice.
One question is: why would Pelosi put her vulnerable representatives from Trump-friendly districts at such risk? After all, Trump won’t be removed. Doesn’t impeachment put her majority at risk, too, if Democrats end up losing those seats? She does have the choice of allowing enough of them to vote against impeachment to give her a chance of preserving that majority in 2020, I suppose, although it would be very risky for 2020 (and it would also make the impeachment margin very small as well as bipartisan only for “nay”).
But I think there’s another reason. These Democrats must vote to impeach, or they face primary challenges from their extreme left wing in 2020. Isn’t that how AOC got elected, through a primary challenge against a guy who’d been in office for ages? The representatives from swing districts may be in a lose/lose position. If they vote for impeachment, they lose moderate support. If they vote against it, they get primaried by the left, perhaps successfully, and then not only do they lose their seats but the Democrats may lose those seats because the majority of voters in each of these districts won’t support far left candidates.
It’s kind like being caught in a trap where the only options are to die or cut your hand off.
Pelosi was reluctant to go down this path a few months ago. Now she is staging impeachment in order to protect the Republic and honor the Founders. What rubbish. The base doesn’t want to live in a Republic and despises those dead, white male racists. So what segment of the voters is she playing to? To me this makes no sense.
Pelosi may be confident that the Democrats can “harvest” enough votes to return the Democrat congressmen from red states, keep the House, and be able to hamstring America for another four years.
Suppose, hypothetically, that Giuliani is correct about the amounts of money corruptly flowing through Kiev during the second Obama administration.
Then it is quite possible that much (most?) of the democrat party establishment is involved and they must keep this from coming out. In particular they must keep their Ukrainian partners from talking or they themselves, personally, are in immediate legal jeopardy.
The impeachment demonstrates to the Ukrainians how much the democrats hate Trump. From the viewpoint of these legally-threatened democrats, the Ukrainians — who do not really care who is president as long US military aid keeps flowing — are the real audience for the impeachment show. The Ukrainians now have every incentive to keep quiet. If they talk about what went on, a new democrat president elected in 2020 might cut off aid in retaliation.
If in a few years the truth comes out anyway, then the impeachment has given these politicians more time to hide evidence, perhaps well enough to stay out of jail.
The whole impeachment spectacle begins to make sense if it is analyzed as a way for corrupt politicians to buy time instead of as a way to help democrats perform well in the 2020 elections.
The President rallies in Battle Creek tonight, Justin Amash’s district. Signal? Yer g’damn right it’s a signal: “you’re toast, Justin”, that’s the signal.
Here’s a hypothesis: Pelosi got where she is by maneuvering within legislative caucuses. She hasn’t faced a competitive contest herself since 1987, and that was it for her. Her patrons the Burtons represented portions of San Francisco for the 22 years they held that seat and only portions of San Francisco. The district was more competitive at that time, but recall San Francisco last elected a Republican mayor in 1959. Pelosi never held elective office prior to 1987 and only entered contests for party positions among electorates of a dimension similar to that of the House Democratic caucus (doing so, again, at Sala Burton’s urging). She’s taking the measure of the caucus. She’s not all that familiar about how to read the voting public.
Interesting hypothesis D Cohen.
Pelosi: OMG, how can a person not laugh out loud at all the fake theater from her. Really? Wearing black to showing mourning for the country. Are the LIVs really that gullible?
Behold (and recollect) the beauty of parity in politics: Sen. McConnell remarks (h/t Ed Morrissey, HotAir) —
Remember last year when the State of the Union speech was delayed because of the government shutdown? We’re not that far away from that annual Constitutionally-mandated ritual. Somehow I have the feeling that Speaker Pelosi and the Democrat House majority will look for any excuse to keep President Trump from speaking there.
Someone needs to write a book called “Profiles in Cowardice”. I could become a best seller. It could feature every Democrat currently serving in the House. Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any Edmund G. Rosses these days.
Waidmann
“… but there’s too much other news today.” — Neo
Horowitz testified in a Senate hearing today, a hearing scheduled a week ago. Who knew? Because the debate on impeachment was accidentally scheduled at the same time.
What an awful day. Republicans and their allies outmaneuvered at every turn. Are they this stupid or is Trump the only decent human being in Washington? D. Cohen probably has it right. So much silly theater but the business of fleecing the voters continues.
Eva Marie:
I’m not sure what you mean by “Republicans and their allies outmaneuvered at every turn.” The simple truth is that with a majority, the Democrats can impeach Trump for anything they want if they can get a majority of Democrats to vote for it. And that’s what happened fairly successfully.
The Democrats controlled the entire process. So the Republicans had no power to maneuver in that sense.
However, the Republicans have done quite well in the court of public opinion. So in the one arena in which they had some power, they seem to have wielded it.
I’m going to have to disagree with you. Trump has done well in the court of public opinion. And the reason he’s done well is because his speech is backed up by action. There was that Kevin McCarthy on Rush’s show explaining that they lost the House by fewer members than they expected. What a victory! Well you have to remember Rush we had a record number of members retiring (I’m paraphrasing) he said. That’s as good an excuse as any, I suppose. And when they DID have the House during the first 2 years of Trump’s Presidency what did they accomplish – no, excuse me – what wonderful excuses did they offer up to us then? I’m sick of the speeches and the congratulatory pats on the back they give to each other. The greatest President we’ve had in a long time was impeached on their watch.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/12/18/trump-impeachment-live-coverage-house-vote-articles/2675243001/
A moderately sane Democrat? From the same post:
h/t PowerLine
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/impeachment-warranted-also-bad-idea/603616/
Backpedaling furiously, but they “had to do something!”
The problem for the Dems is that Trump, himself, has long been hiring lawyers to make sure all his stuff is pretty legal. The Dems are convinced he has done “wrongdoing”, but what, exactly? They were pretty sure the Mueller Witch Hunt would find some crimes they could “switch” to, after the Fake Collusion “bait” was discredited. But they failed.
Now they face losing again. Plus face a news environment of great economic prosperity, which Trump is correctly taking (too much?) credit for. So they have to impeach him to stop him from getting re-elected. They spin the truth to get there.
Notice how they characterize his asking for a favor to investigate a corrupt Burisma as “interfering with the 2020 election, for his own private gain”. Investigating corruption is not illegal “election interference”, even if the corruption is involved in the election. But that’s the story of the Dems.
The Dems, and the Deep State, including many Reps, is full of Hunter Biden type corruption, extortion, and kick-backs. See the Clinton Bribery Foundation’s work in Haiti, and the Haitian activist that wanted to testify against the Clintons but was killed (he didn’t kill himself ). Corrupt Deep Staters supporting other corrupt regimes all over the world. Not just, tho perhaps especially, in Ukraine.
The Democrats are probably worried that the thread of Ukrainian corruption will lead to the “skim”/kickbacks from the sale of weapons to ISIS by way of Qatar and Turkey as well as to the non-delivered cash from the shipment sent to Iran. The game in the Ukraine was small potatoes for those in the peanut gallery. More to the point, “How many dead Yazidis does it take to buy a retirement house on the shore?” The Democrats have to be worried since President Trump and the Crown Prince MbS are both working together.
If the corruption, as well as the associated death of Gadaffi (various spellings), are not addressed, the U.S. will have severe problems with international negotiations in the future. “Burning” some ” “corrupt” “has been” pols is a small price to pay to obtain some bit of a reputation for reliability back.