I was sort of off the ledge about the Dems letting Trump off the hook-based on how they let W’s hacks off the hook in 2009. Then Nancy Pelosi gave this interview with the Atlantic.
I’m on the ledge again-somebody talk me off!
Much of what she says is fine-I totally agree with her:
Nancy Pelosi really does not want to impeach Donald Trump—and she’s prepared to take all the heat from her party and the new House Democratic majority she’s hoping to lead, unless she sees something wildly different emerge.
“But she said she won’t let Bob Mueller define the decision.”
“Recognize one point,” Pelosi told me in an interview in the conference room of her minority leader suite in the Capitol late Friday. “What Mueller might not think is indictable could be impeachable.”
It’s good to know she appreciates that. What is criminally indictable is not the same thing as what’s impeachable and it’s good to see she makes the distinction.
“Pelosi said people should pray for the country as long as Trump is in charge. She’s not sure of his mental condition. She thinks he’s degraded the Constitution and American values. She says the intelligence assessments are indisputable that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. She thinks the firing of Jeff Sessions and appointment of Matt Whitaker as acting attorney general in a clear move against the Mueller probe “is perilously close to a Constitutional crisis.”
That’s not enough, she said.
“You have to have evidence, evidence of the connection. Everything’s about the connection,” Pelosi explained.
In other words, it comes down to a topic the president has notably refrained from tweeting about for weeks: collusion.
Agreed we have a lot of grounds for probable cause but to actually indict him-which in Congressional terms is impeachment-requires being able to connect the dots.
Maybe there’s something else in his tax returns. Maybe there’s something that’s beyond the special counsel’s scope. Maybe there’s something Trump has yet to do. “That’s why we want to see the documents,” Pelosi said. “Because we’re seeking truth. We’re seeking truth for the American people about the integrity of our elections and honoring the Constitution.”
So far totally with her.
UPDATE: Though in retrospect it needs to be added that obstruction is impeachable in its own right you don’t have to prove the underlying crime-a canard of Trump and the GOP co-conspirators. Was Pelosi voicing this same canard here? In any case it’s academic as the Mueller Report documented a great deal of both obstruction and collusion.
Then this Atlantic piece talks about those who want to oppose Pelosi for Speaker. I have no sympathy for ‘Democrats’ like this.
“Opponents are working overtime to block her from getting enough votes on the floor to be speaker, counting on all the new members who said during their campaigns that they wouldn’t vote for her not to flake.”
“Any member that pledged to vote against Pelosi or for a change in leadership during their campaign and then flips will be a political dead man or woman walking within an hour of being sworn in,” one of the House Democrats involved in the opposition effort told me Saturday. “And if they think Nancy Pelosi cares about them they should go talk to the dozens of members she made walk the plank during the cap and trade bill [in 2009] that the Senate didn’t even take up for a vote. This is all about her, and not them.”
“That all sounds nice, Pelosi allies point out, but Republicans across the country tried to make her a killer issue in House campaigns, and lost anyway.”
What I find irksome about those who are anti Pelosi is that it’s so reactive-just like with the Hillary haters: because Republicans hate her some Democrats think we should hate her too though they can’t come up with any half way decent reason why. What are we looking for-a Democratic Speaker the Republicans won’t attack?
I’m a big fan of Pelosi and despise the school of thought where ‘Gee the Republicans sure are attacking her a lot so let’s find another Speaker they will approve of…’
She has many accomplishments to show for her leadership in the 2006-2010 period when the Democrats rose to take over Congress and then the Presidency.
There are many reasons I would support her to be Speaker again, not the least of which that it would be quite a step back in a year when so many female candidates won and are on their way to Congress for the Democrats to demote the most powerful and hardworking woman in Washington DC.
UPDATE: To be clear I’m not a Pelosi basher and fully agree with this post by PalmerReport: Get the Hell off of Nancy Pelosi’s Back.
I’m not anti Pelosi at all what I am is anti anti impeachment among nervous nelly scared of their own shadow Dems…
Having said that here is one reason offered I’m not so impressed with-that she will protect ‘President Trump’ from Tom Steyer and impeachment:
“To most Democrats anxiously analyzing the political landscape, there couldn’t be a dumber way to throw the 2020 election to Trump. Look what brought them all the House wins that are still piling up by day, they say, plus all the governors races that went their way and what’s seeming like an at-worst two seat net loss in the Senate. It wasn’t playing into Trump’s talking points, but stressing health care, infrastructure, the way the Trump tax cuts were tilted to the wealthy.”
I don’t understand this thinking-the only way to beat Trump is to agree he’s above the law?
No new leader, no matter who, could absorb what is about to explode, they say. “I just don’t see anyone else being able to serve in that role and push back against Tom Steyer, push back against the two or three or 10 articles of impeachment that get filed,” a House Democrat told me a few days ago. “She’s the only one who can do that. She needs to do that long enough, until the Mueller report comes out… at which point, that will determine what happens next.” This House Democrat was not eager to talk publicly about Pelosi or impeachment, but acknowledged both are going to be an issues moving forward.
UPDATE 2.0: This was in November, 2018 soon after the Dems historical Blue Wave victory to win back Congress. Over nine months later you have to wonder who that anonymous House Democrat was. Where are they now on impeachment now that 130 Dems are now for it…
Just yesterday Ben Lujan the number four House Democrat came out for impeachment-perhaps the biggest boon for the impeachment train yet:
End of UPDATE 2.0
Let’s be clear-I’m all for waiting for the Mueller report. I’m by no means demanding impeachment January 3, 2019-or even February 3 or March 3…’
But this sort of talk gets me nervous:
“To Pelosi and her allies, navigating Trump is the strongest argument for another term as speaker, despite all the veteran and new members who say they don’t want to vote for her, and all their colleagues who privately share that dislike but aren’t ready to act on it. She has the experience and the staff, sure, but that’s only part of it. The caucus will be divided and antsy, and she’s the only one who won’t have to care that people in the Capitol, the White House and the public will hate her for the decisions she makes. As far as she sees it, anyone who’s going to hate her for that hates her already, and she’s at the stage of her career—she’s taken to using the word “transitional,” as she campaigns for what will probably be just one more term at the helm—when it doesn’t matter to her.
“So on impeachment, Pelosi says she’s looking for whatever evidence that was to be so irrefutable that Republicans would join the efforts. She says that’s about protecting the integrity of the country, not letting impeachment become just another politicized process—but it’s also a deliberate poison pill that would almost stop impeachment from ever happening. She knows what it would take for Republicans to come along. She wants the bar set that high.”
There’s obviously nothing that would make Republicans come along-they’ve demonstrated very clearly the last 10 years they care about nothing but partisan Republican power and conservative ideological victories. For that they’ll happily sabotage the recovery from the worst recession since the Great Depression-as they did in 2009-2010, risk the full faith and credit of the U.S. government as they did with debt ceiling chicken in 2011, or even our national security and the integrity of our election process as they’ve proven over the last two years.
I’m all for waiting for the Mueller report and having the Dems do their own Russia investigations-as well as Comeygate I should add-as we saw in (Chapter A) Jerrold Nadler is going to look at least at the question of leaks by rogue Trump agents at the FBI to force Comey’s hand into writing that indefensible letter that rigged the election for Trump.
FN: As noted in Chapter A we’ve heard nothing about Comeygate post election.
But to effectively rule impeachment out at the outset-if that’s what she’s doing, and saying it’s up to Mitch McConnell is to rule impeachment out of the question at the offset-is simply obscene: why should Trump be protected because of the shameless of the GOP, because of what recovering GOPer Steve Schmidt calls the GOP’s ‘faithlessness to their oaths.’
Hopefully that’s not quite what she’s saying. the question of wether or not to impeach Trump should hinge on one question: did he commit high crimes and misdemeanors? If so impeach him regardless of what the GOP has to say about it and it also should not matter-as I argued in (Chapter B) matter a hill of beans wether or not the Senate has the votes to convict and oust Trump from the Russia House.
What I will say is this: while it’s absurd and more to the point obscene to wait for Trump’s GOP co-conspirators on the subject of impeachment it’s perfectly reasonable to wait for public opinion. As noted in previous chapters (get chapters), there’s little question that Trump’s poll numbers have hit a short term equilibrium. There is this idea that Trump’s numbers with the public are all baked in. This I couldn’t disagree with more vigorously-it’s a real problem depending on what folks-including a number of Establishment Dems-mean by that.
What has actually happened is they’ve hit a short term equilibrium in the low 40s. This is due to the fact that the GOP has protected Trump from much public scrutiny the first two years. As I noted in (Chapter D) exit polls showed Trump with 43% approval and 54% disapproval but 46% out of the 54% strongly disapprove while only 22% out of the 43% approval strongly approve. Many in the media speak as if the 43% is Trump’s base-no, his true base is the 22% who strongly approve. The key in the next two years, then, is to slowly chip away at the roughly 20% whose support of Trump is soft-among these folks it’s not at all true that Trump could shoot someone on Broadway and 5th Avenue and get away with it.
If you want to argue that the Democrats should not consider impeaching Trump until we knock loose this soft support that makes up about a 5th of the electorate, that I’ll buy. Perhaps that’s what Madame Speaker has in mind.
Still I’m not entirely sure as these comments by her worry me all over again:
Pelosi argued that Bill Clinton’s impeachment was “so bad, it was so wrong, and they had no right to do it, and it disrupted the public confidence in what we do,” and often likes to point out that she had evidence George W. Bush lied in the run-up to the Iraq War that she chose not to impeach him on. Her model is Watergate, when eventually the Republicans joined in. Bring it up, and she even does a little impression of Richard Nixon making the “V” sign, with her head down.”
“Absolutely she’s right that what they did to Clinton-which was two things they wrongly accuse the Russia investigation of being: a fishing expedition and a perjury trap-was indeed so wrong. But can we not paint all cats as grey? Bill Clinton had 81% popularity in a Gallup poll the week the GOP voted-but came up short-to force Clinton out of office in the Senate. Trump’s numbers are half of that today and as I argued above, will be half of what they are today in two years.While what they did to Bill was a purely partisan excercise-though as we saw in (Chapter A) supported by many Democrats until they realized Democratic voters didn’t want him forced out of office-there are potentially very good reasons to impeach Trump-if conspiracy against the United States with a hostile foreign power to rig an American Presidential election doesn’t rise to the level of High Crimes and Misdemeanors what does? What Nixon did with Watergate pales in comparison.
FN: Here Pelosi seems to buy into a zombie idea of the Dem leadership-that impeaching Clinton was a disaster for the GOP politically-if only that were so! The truth is quite different; it’s quite arguable that Clinton’s impeachment contributed significantly to both Gore’s ‘defeat’ in 2000 and Clinton’s ‘defeat’ in 2016-sorry Bush v. Gore forever puts an asterisk next to the result just as the Comey Letter and Russian Interference forever put one next to 2016.
As for-the first-Watergate it’s plausible that we will never get the-eventual-bipartisan buy in we saw as the parties are a lot more partisan now then then-because the parties are more consistent. The GOP had a significant number of ‘country club Republicans’ from the NorthEast-while the Dems had a number of Southern Dems who were very friendly with Nixon.
While I wouldn’t rule out that at some point you could get GOP Senate support was have to admit that the odds are not for it.
End of FN
As for her decision to let Bush walk, I argued in (Chapter B) that was a big mistake. There seems to be this idea that impeaching Trump is a political loser but where’s the evidence of that? As noted in (Chapter C) a plurality of 49% already want him to be impeached today compared to the 46% who don’t. Again, I think the numbers have to be a lot more lopsided and unambiguous before you think seriously of it but taking it off the table-which is what giving McConnell means? That’s so wrong it’s obscene-giving the most nakedly partisan hack in the country-#MoscowMitch-veto power.
FN: Actually I think I went too far in saying they have to be a lot more lopsided than that-when Nixon was forced out 57% wanted him gone so 49% is at least in the ballpark. However, the 49% poll does remain something of an outlier-the average seems to be in the mid to high 30s-though I haven’t seen many post Mueller testimony polls.
In (Chapter B) I argued that if anything Pelosi’s-and Obama’s choice to let the Bush-Cheney co-conspirators off the hook was a political loser as it demoralized the young, liberal base for no good reason. The same night in January, 2009 that Obama was ‘going high while they went low’ the GOP was planning to oppose him on everything and anything over the next two years.
Considering the Democrats lost 63 House seats in 2010 it’s hard to argue if they had held hearings on the crimes and corruption of the Bush years it would have been even worse. I don’t know that this decision to let the Bushies off the hook was much of a factor in the ‘shellacking’ but what’s clear is that no one gave the Democrats any points for being nice guys-or as we put in in (Chapter C) nice girls as the GOP ran Congress for the next 8 years.
FN: As Ryan Cooper says the idea the electorate will give the Dems responsibility points for one sided demonstrations of good faith is a zombie idea they never seem to get over.
Besides needlessly demoralizing their young, liberal base-many of which they’ve never won back even till this day, alas-unfortunately some people’s memories are too long; seriously, that’s a vice-by letting the Bushies off the hook, they let the GOPers associated with Bush-Cheney-which was very large-quickly rehabilitate their reputations.
FN: What’s very curious is how long their memories were for Hillary Clinton-she could never live her Iraq vote and support of her husband’s crime bill in 2016 while Biden has been able to shrug the same things off-and many alleged ‘leftists’ who could never forgive Clinton are now blandly supporting Biden without any irony. But then as Nate Silver has documented a sizable portion of the Bernie vote was actually #NeverHillary.
Indeed only 31% of 2016 Bernie voters support him this time-compared with 43% of Hillary voters who support Biden.
FWIW Ryan Cooper is a fan of both Warren and Sanders-his first choice is Bernie-but it seems to me that at this point she has a much better chance than he does for a number of reasons starting with the fact she has a lot more notes in her repertoire than he does, Bernie always says the same exact thing in the same way; sorry but it’s not just what you say but how you say it that wins votes-indeed the futures market has her as the favorite now-if you can believe this she is currently 7.2 points ahead of Biden.
Ok she’s now down to 29.4% yesterday it was 30.5%.
https://electionbettingodds.com/
End of FN
In that sense the GOP faced zero accountability for their corruption and abuse of power during the Bush years-Cheney was allowed to skate on leaking Valerie Plame’s identity and blowing her cover. All was forgiven-on the Democratic end. That sure worked out good being the nice guys. Maybe this is what Jerry Falwell Jr meant when he said Nice guys finish last. Yes, it’s not exactly becoming talk from an alleged ‘Man of God’-but probably he was thinking about the Democrats.
Again, hopefully Pelosi means that we should wait for public opinion on impeachment-I agree it’s not yet ripe. If she truly means waiting for Mitch McConnell then I’m very concerned as the Dem base won’t forgive the Dems if they flake out-thinking of Jeff Flake-again.
One other point that I made in (Chapter C) but needs to be emphasized: There is only one reason the Democrats in the House should impeach Trump-when the country is ripe for it which is not yet, and as I imagine it, may well not be until 2020. That reason is if they can honestly say Trump is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. If this is what the evidence shows, then they should vote impeachment. It’s got nothing to do with what Devin Nunes thinks, what Jim Jordan thinks, much less Lindsay Graham or Mitch McConnell.
If there are H&M then impeach. It makes no difference if it’s a party line vote or not. Or it shouldn’t. The GOP, is naturally, shameless. While they had no problem impeaching Clinton on a party line vote they will now become full of self righteous indignation for the Democrats doing the same-the Chuck Todds of the world will be awfully struck and impressed by the GOP indignation. They will view it wholly lacking in irony that the GOP did the same-they won’t push GOP guests on the obvious hypocrisy.
But if and when that happens the Dems must stand their ground and not allow themselves to be bullied by the manifest unfairness of the MSM.
Why because the GOP chooses not to do their job should the Dems then abdicate their own?
It should also make no difference if the GOP Senate led by McConnell doesn’t vote to convict. Every day in our legal system there are indictments-sometimes conviction follows, sometimes they do not. But you can’t refuse to indict out of fear there won’t be a conviction if the facts and the law clearly call for indictment.
By that time-when Trump’s approval is 23% rather than 43% maybe more Republicans will decide to save themselves. But that can’t be the decisive factor driving the decision.
As for politics-what is beneficial from the standpoint of defeating Trump in 2020, ironically I’m not so sure that the optimal situation might not be where Trump is impeached but not necessarily thrown out of office. Maybe it’s because part of me really wants Dems to get a second crack at beating him. Apparently if the 2016 vote was done again based on the 2018 results they would have beaten him.
But I always envision impeaching Trump as something like the Comey letter-ideally the House Dems ought to impeach him about 11 days before the 2020 election. Then for the rest of the election all the MSM will talk about is wether or not Mitch McConnell will take up impeachment in the Senate. Then Kamala Harris-Corey Booker-or Elizabeth Warren-beat Trump with 400 electoral votes and the Blue Wave pushes even the Senate Blue.
So ironically while I’ve heard the risible argument that the Democrats shouldn’t impeach in the House without the unlikely scenario that McConnell and friends at the Senate will remove Trump from office, I see it the other way around: I sometimes wonder if impeaching without removing might not be the best political setup for 2020.
After all, otherwise, maybe Mike Pence is able to con people that he somehow knew nothing about Trump and his co-conspirators but spent the last 4 years reading his Bible, hanging out with ‘Mother’ and studying thick policy books on how to make life better for ‘regular Americans.’
I mean if Trump is per my conjecture at 23% in two years wouldn’t you want to run against him?
On the other hand, when Nixon resigned in 1974 it was also huge pain for the GOP so perhaps wether Trump resigned or just impeached with a vote on resignation pending, it will be pretty good politically…
Oh well. It’s under two months till Dems are sworn in. Jerrold Nadler stated this morning that Whittaker will be the first witness called to testify in January. Meanwhile the American people are not patient-they are protesting to #ProtectMuellerNow.
UPDATE: One bone to pick though-why did Nadler seem to rule out impeaching Brett Kavanaugh? He said the focus of the investigation is why the FBI investigation wasn’t adequate. But if it wasn’t adequate isn’t it arguable that the process by which Kavanaugh was confirmed was illegitimate-and so he is illegitimate and therefore should be removed from the Court-if that’s what the facts show?
I feel like the Democrats seem so anxious to assure they aren’t going too far. Why be so apologetic at the outset-why negotiate against yourself? Again the Dems as the ‘party of nice girls’-Chapter A for more on why you can argue it’s the party even more than of nice guys, of nice girls- seems to fit-why this rush to assure we mean Trump no harm, that really we’re in love with ‘President Trump’-let alone the fact he didn’t win legitimately and so is not the ‘President’ at all?
I don’t know that I would say ‘It’s the best of times’ but it’s pretty good-at least our country has a fighting chance again. Without meaning to, Trump has awoken our nation’s civic spirit. In January begins the great fight to #MakeAmericaLegitimateAgain.
P.S. One other thing I always see when I think about the 2020 Presidential election is Trump gets primaried. Even Jeff Flake is now on the record saying he’d like Trump to face a primary challenger.
He says ‘someone should run’ and is not ruling out that he could be that someone. Of course, Flake’s alleged resistance to Trump the last two years has proven to be to quote Chrissy Hynde, only baby’s breath.
It’s possible he’s saying this now to resuscitate his sullied reputation after voting for Kavanaugh even while admitting the FBI investigation wasn’t adequate. But other primary candidates are Ohio Governor John Kasich-who’s now a lame duck for the rest of the year and Bill Kristol who is looking for a primary challenger-one candidate he’s been interested in meeting with is Trump’s former U.N. Ambassador, Nikki Haley-who really has had some great lines at Trump’s expense at a recent Correspondents’ Dinner.
The battle for what Elijah Cummings calls the Soul of America is just beginning.
Let’s #MakeAmericaLegitimateAgain.
UPDATE: In retrospect this chapter shows a certain ambivalence I had in the immediate aftermath of the Blue Tsnuami. OTOH I supported Pelosi for Speaker but on the other I worried even then if she is something of an impeachment phobe. This is a debate that continues to rage among the #Resistance and within the Dem base-is Pelosi an impeachment phobe who thinks the founders made a mistake in giving Congress this power? Or is she this master strategist who’s just biding her time for the right moment to #ImpeachtheMFer?
Many of her statements seem to show impeachment phobia-her weird neologisms-he’s self impeaching, I don’t want him impeached I want him in prison, he’s just not worth it, it’s too divisive to the country, he wants to be impeached.
It certainly doesn’t help her case to learn that Trump thanked her in a meeting.
OTOH it’s possible that she just wants to be the most reluctant person in the country so that when they do get there she has maximum moral authority. Some on Twitter insist this is what she ‘s doing-setting herself up as the Reluctant Impeacher. I guess time will tell. Still this is one time Reagan was right-trust but verify. We elected this Congress and cant’ wait for them to get there we have to push them there.
As I’ve noted before in previous Whip It posts, it’s still on us to make this happen by showing up at town halls our representatives have over the summer recess, by calling their offices in D.C. or locally, by sending faxes or using Resistbot to make our sentiments heard.
Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121
Call your representative (and only your representative) and ask them to support an impeachment inquiry. If your representative has already thrown their support behind an inquiry, do be sure to thank them.
Indeed, I continue to have mixed feelings about supporting her so vociferously for getting to be Speaker again. She clearly had given signs of her impeachment phobia before the fact but I chose to assume her opposition to impeachment was not foundational-again time will tell.
Ironically, all those who publicly opposed her for Speaker-Seth Moulton, Tim Ryan, Marcia Fudge, my own NY Congresswoman, Kathleen Rice now support impeachment.
If only they’d made that the centerpiece of their opposition than because the GOP says mean things about her…
Time will tell but maybe she will prove to be their best friend-by protecting Trump from impeachment.