Pressure on Pelosi: Majority of House Dems Now Favor Impeachment

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Welcome to the new majority of the majority, the one that favors impeachment proceedings. Per the Daily Beast:

The majority of the House Democratic caucus now supports an impeachment inquiry against President Trump, with Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) becoming the 118th Democrat in the chamber to support moving to such proceedings.

“[President Trump] seems to think that Mueller’s performance wasn’t enough to trigger an impeachment inquiry,” the congressman wrote in an op-ed in the South Florida Sun Sentinel. Sorry, Mr. President, the question is no longer whether the House should vote to proceed with a formal impeachment inquiry. The inquiry has already begun.”

Atta boy, Congressman. I see it took you only about a month longer than me.

Yes, you read that right.

For the longest time – in some eyes – I held off on supporting impeachment. It’s true, all through the spring, right up until about the Fourth of July. I believed we could have it all, we could have high pressure hearings, ones that threaten Trump’s administration, while also staving off accusations of “political witch hunt” among independents. But, at the point where I started to notice the little flags everywhere, you know the ones? Yeah, it was at that point that I noticed a couple key points were dropping from my plan to have it all.

Not enough was getting done. For one thing, I read that the lawsuit on the Executive Privilege assertion has just been filed. Same thing regarding the attempt to get Trump’s taxes. Now, being an attorney in my own life, I think I can assure you that, though lawsuits take a great deal of time and preparation, which includes some nasty letters (always scoffed at), they do not, or should not, take that long. I also noticed the lack of heavy-weight hearings uprooting Trump’s most spoiled vegetation.

I decided that only an impeachment inquiry could shed light on all those facts that I believe Trump needs to run against.

So, it is good news, to me, that a majority now favors impeachment because now Pelosi is in a real bind. It is true that she is Speaker for the rest of this session, until January 3rd 2021. But that does not make her speaker after that time, especially if Trump wins. There will be some extremely angry people if Trump is reelected, and not just on this site. Some powerful congressional leaders will be looking for someone to blame, and will look right at the roadblock to an impeachment inquiry.

Notice that I did not say “impeachment and conviction” because we all know that #MoscowMitch is not letting his comrade go down in a pile of borsht. No, this is not about removing Trump from office, at least not prior to the election. This is about setting a record that makes it very difficult for Trump to be reelected.

It is easy to sit back and think that the racist attacks have sealed Trump’s fate. But, so far, the economy has been “good,” not great, but “good,” to most people. And that is damn hard for a Democrat to run against. It would be much easier if clear crimes have been established, and I don’t even mean “obstruction of justice” crimes. I am talking about “paper crimes,” the ones for which there are no defenses, like tax evasion, fraud, and money laundering. These are the types of crimes that I expect to come out of a real impeachment inquiry.

They would also expose much of Trump as a fraud, dissipating that Trump “mystique” among the Right. It will not make Republicans vote for the Democrat, not many, anyway. No, but what it could easily do is cause many Republicans to stay home; “I’m just not going to put my name onto that guy again,” type of thing.

I suspect that is what the majority of the Democratic Caucus now thinks, too. This is also a problem for Pelosi because she can no longer say that a “majority” of Democrats favor putting off the proceedings. She can say “many” do, but she can no longer say “most.” Words matter at this level, hers much more than most, and those words have been quite valuable to her. She no longer has them, and it is getting hot this summer, due in no small part to high pressure.

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1 COMMENT

  1. And, it REQUIRES 218 votes in the House TO ACTUALLY IMPEACH*. So, 118 (or whatever) is still not nearly enough.

    *Technically, that’s just to “send articles of impeachment to the Senate”; the House doesn’t actually “impeach” anyone.

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