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A few chapters ago I was panicking just a little bit at the idea that the Dems would blow this. But I’m feeling better from the signals the top Dems are sending. Talk about a coming subpoena cannon is simply music to my ears.

House Democrats plan to probe every aspect of President Trump’s life and work, from family business dealings to the Space Force to his tax returns to possible “leverage” by Russia, top Democrats tell us.

What they’re saying: One senior Democratic source said the new majority, which takes power in January, is preparing a “subpoena cannon,” like an arena T-shirt cannon.

  • Based on our reporting and other public sources, Axios’ Zach Basu has assembled a list of at least 85 potential Trump-related investigation and subpoena targets for the new majority. (See the list.)

Incoming House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told “Axios on HBO” that he expects Trump to resist the committees’ requests, demands and subpoenas — likely pushing fights over documents and testimony as far as the Supreme Court.

  • Why it matters: The fight will test the power of the presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court.

Even on impeachment where it seemed that a number of top Dems were trying to throw cold water on, apparently the Dems are going to at least start exploring the issue early.

Top Democrats, who had largely avoided the subject during the campaign, now tell us they plan to almost immediately begin exploring possible grounds for impeachment. A public report by Robert Mueller would ignite the kindling.

  • Tom Steyer, the liberal activist who spent more than $100 million during the campaign to build support for impeachment, said establishment leaders who are trying to postpone talk of impeachment are “the outliers”: “80 percent of registered Democrats think … we’re right.”

Very true-it’s also a fact as we saw in (Chapter A) that a plurality-just under a majority (49%) want ‘President Trump’ impeached.

UPDATE: I will admit that this poll was something of an outlier-though many outliers to the down side have been focused on by the MSM. Still the MSM in it’s anti impeachment narrative has treated the level of support for impeachment as static-it was only 19% to impeach Nixon in July, 1973.

Now that the Democrats have-sorta kinda-opened an impeachment inquiry the process itself has a chance to increase support-that’s the idea of an inquiry. Indeed, one idea the Savvy seem to have is that Trump is different-that his numbers are ‘all baked in’; Jay Rosen recently argued that the MSM pundits and the Dem consultant class are very close which might explain why so often the bad Beltway narrative is also the narrative of the Dem consultant class.

The  notion that Trump’s numbers are ‘ all baked in’ seems to mean in practice that he gets complete carte blanche-after all why condemn him out or try to hold him accountable or attempt to sanction him in any way as his numbers are allegedly frozen? It’s been my conjecture that an inquiry will lower his numbers. Indeed, as Craig Unger bemoans in a podcast with Sarah Kendzior when will the Democrats have daily hearings on Trump’s perfidy, his racism, his xenophobia, his abuse and corruption of the Office, his illegitimacy?

What’s been confirmed once again recently-in the aftermath of the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings, Trump’s despicable ‘send her back’ rants, his ramping up on mass deportations and-in some ways even worse-mass detentions-is that Trump is most surely not teflon. At the start of the year after his absurd single handed shutdown of the government his numbers crashed into the mid to high 30s. Post El Paso we are again seeing his numbers slowly tick down. 

Even Rasmussen shows him down to the 45% level with better polls show him sinking lower.

But if you-as Dem consultants like Steve Israel-simply presume he’s teflon before you even throw a punch-ie listen to Israel and friends and refuse to throw a punch under the premise Trump is bullet proof-then you have validated Trump’s own ideology-that he can shoot someone in broad daylight on 5th Avenue and get away with it. I’m sure Israel would explain to us that white swing voters in the MidWest don’t care if he shoots someone in NYC.

FN: Regarding political strategy to the extent that the MSM pundits and Dem consultants focus on winning over GOP leaning independents, Obama-Trump voters they are doing it wrong.

This is going to be a base election. A campaign always has a choice-persuasion vs. focusing on turnout. The GOP establishment tend to focus on the latter the Dem establishment on the former. In other words, both the Dem and GOP establishments devalue Dem base voters-nobody caters to them.

But in 2020 negative partisanship is key to turnout.

Those who focus on policy are presuming that they can persuade the other side but the sweetspot for Dems is to mobilize the anti Trump majority-those who don’t like Trump have always been the majority-even in his electoral college win of 2016.

End of UPDATE

Two of the most powerful incoming chairs tell “Axios on HBO” that they are plotting action far beyond Russian interference in the 2016 elections.1) Schiff, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, told us he wants to help special counsel Robert Mueller, and plans to release — with some redactions of classified material — transcripts of dozens of interviews the committee conducted during its own Russia probe.

Schiff is the man of the hour-the pundits asking who the Dem stars are look in the wrong place-it’s Schiff, Nadler, Elijah Cummings. Schiff clearly understands the great hope and responsibility the American people have given to him and his members.

  • Schiff says these transcripts contain numerous possible contradictions with other testimony and facts that have come to light, meaning possible legal jeopardy for the witnesses, who have included White House officials and alumni.
  • “I want to make sure that Bob Mueller has the advantage of the evidence that we’ve been able to gather,” Schiff said. “But equally important: that Bob Mueller is in a position to determine whether people knowingly committed perjury before our committee.”
  • Asked if there are real questions about contradictions between the testimony of Roger Stone, a close ally of the Trump campaign, and emails that have surfaced since then, Schiff said: “That is certainly the case.”
  • Schiff said: “We’re going to want to look at what leverage the Russians may have over the president of the United States.”
  • See a clip.

But if talk of a subpoena cannon is music to my ears, the talk of Nita Lowey is the sweetest symphony:

2) Incoming House Appropriations Chair Nita Lowey of New York, a close ally of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, said “yes” to each of a long list of possible investigative targets, including the Space Force, hurricane relief in Puerto Rico, White House security clearances, White House use of personal email and more.

  • “We have our boxing gloves on,” Lowey said. “I’m ready. And so is Nancy.”
  • See the clip of her answers.

We reminded Lowey and Schiff of a Jonathan Swan scoop from August, “Republicans secretly study their coming hell,” reporting that House Republicans had built a spreadsheet of potential investigation targets, based on Democrats’ public complaints and statements.

We have our boxing gloves on. I’m ready and so is Nancy. 

Sorry I doubted, you, Madame Speaker. It’s just that I can’t wait for January 3…

FN: As the record shows I’ve gone back and forth on this numerous times since then. At this late date-August 21, 2019 I have to say the jury remains out wether I feel many of us in the Dem base and #Resistance were right to endorse Pelosi so strongly for Speaker or not-when the jury gets back we’ll see if in fact Trump will be impeached or not-if not then it she was the wrong choice-if only her opponents-who all have endorsed impeachment-had made this the centerpiece of their opposition.

 

Let me say this-the idea of switching Speakers now is a really bad idea. One reason I find it so irritating is that half the candidates who vowed to oppose her did so at the prompting of GOP opponents. Why would you allow the GOP to pick the House Speaker? So many Democrats seem to take the bait-if the GOP attacks her, let’s find a new Dem Speaker the GOP will approve of…

More to the point, this is not the time to switch horses-with the fight that is coming, we don’t need someone learning to be Speaker doing on the job training.

Listen as far as I’m concerned she should be Speaker so long as she wants. But from what she says this will likely be her last term as Speaker. Right now we desperately need her knowledge and experience.

What you never hear about is how wonderful a public servant she really is. She had planned to retire in 2016-she only stayed on after Hillary  lost was robbed reasoning the party and country needed her. At this point her game plan seems to be to get us through this tough fight and then there will be new leadership in 2020.

As for Seth Moulton-what kind of a Democrat wants to fight Nancy Pelosi at this moment in time rather than Donald Trump?

FN: Again, in retrospect I feel rather different. Moulton is full throatedly for impeachment-if he had made the campaign about her being an impeachment phobe maybe they would have had a shot in defeating her. But they didn’t do a good job of explaining why she wasn’t the best woman for the job. Certainly today I’d endorse Moulton-or Marcia Fudge, or Kathleen Rice-for Speaker or whatever they wanted on the basis that they are for impeachment while we still don’t know if Pelosi is just running out the clock in her zeal to protect this illegitimate President from accountability.

Nadler tries to assure us that nobody wants to see Trump held accountable more than the Speaker-if so she does a great job of hiding this zeal-and let’s be clear simply winning the 2020 election is not holding him accountable; for that he must be impeached-full stop.

P.S. More music to my ears from Adam Schiff:

“Yes, Democrats will wait for Mueller’s report, but incoming House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) has said he would look at how the House’s probe into potential meddling was incomplete and seek to fill in any remaining gaps. His predecessor, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), has been accused of trying harder to find a government conspiracy against Trump rather than wrongdoing by Russia and the Trump campaign.”

In an interview with the Fix, Schiff said that “it’s not my intention to sit by idly while we await Mueller.”

Schiff also makes clear that Nunes’ counterinvestigations into the DOJ will be DOA in January.

Another beautiful song by Schiff:

Matthew Whitaker, we’re watching you.”

Just six weeks. But, the #ProtectMuellerNow activists are rightly not waiting as Whittaker can do a lot of damage in six weeks.

At this point I feel pretty confident that Nancy Pelosi and her leadership know what they’re doing. The one question I still have for them: what about a Select Committee?

We had one for Nixon. There was also one for Iran-Contra; and even fake investigations like Whitewater and Benghazi had a Select Committee. What we have in Congress now is an ungainly mess. There are-or at least were sprawling investigations in various committees-the House Judiciary, the Senate Judiciary, the House Intelligence, the Senate Intelligence.

But at the end of the day, it’s wasteful and inefficient to have all these various committees operating at cross purposes, covering the same ground, while not sharing their findings with the other committees.

Combining money and resources into one comprehensive committee-a Select Committee-would be far more efficient and cost effective.

Perhaps the intention is to begin working on various committees but as facts emerge-and the Mueller report is delivered the impetus for a full Select Committee may show itself. I just wonder-and hope-if the leadership has at least discussed a Select Committee. John McCain was the only one who has publicly discussed this possibility, at least in early 2017, he later gave up-God rest his soul.

If Benghazi got a Select Committee, Russiagate needs the same-as does Comeygate for that matter…

Additionally you can make the case that we need a 9/11 style independent commission-trouble is, this would require the buy in of “President Trump’ so it’s evidently DOA.

UPDATE: Like SE Hinton would say that was then this is now. I’m not sure how confident I am in Pelosi’s leadership at this point-this is the most important moment in her career-will she blow it? We will see.

It turns out that she never even considered a Select Committee-Mitch McConnell had totally rebuffed McCain’s call for a SC; it turns out that Pelosi was no more interested in the idea than McConnell.

So history will show that Benghazi got a SC but Russian Collusion didn’t. Will it also show that Bill Clinton was impeached but Donald Trump was not?

UPDATE 2.0: Say this for as Nita Lowey-she has officially come out for an impeachment inquiry making her 1 of the 136 Democrats who have done so.

So she has her boxing gloves on-does Nancy? Or is fighting ‘just not worth it?’ or is Trump going to self knockout? 

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