Over the course of the last six months, I’ve made the argument that the Democrat brass has never actually wanted to impeach the President. They know they don’t have a strong enough case, they know middle America isn’t on board, and they know that impeachment will generate all sorts of 2020 blowback. What they really wanted was to placate their rabid base, while spending a year-and-a-half damaging the President in advance of the 2020 election.
Unfortunately, they created a Frankenstein’s monster.
The party has no viable 2020 candidate, and they’ve whipped the base into such an impeachment frenzy that they can’t back down. If they do, the radicals that control the party’s fortunes will abandon them. At the same time, they know that following through on their threats will hurt them with moderates. It’s lose-lose.
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So, how are they going to handle the situation?
Step one is to pile accusation upon accusation in the hopes that maybe – just maybe – one of them will stick. I wrote about that strategy earlier today. Basically, they’re going to toss everything, from ‘Russian collusion’ to Mueller to Ukraine, into the mix. Then they’ll let the press repeat the claims and pray that they have more staying power than they’ve previously shown.
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Step two is ‘delay, delay, delay.’ As Fox’s Chad Pergram reported on Twitter:
10) Do Democrats have the votes for impeachment? Pelosi is a master at reading her caucus. If Pelosi has the votes she’ll likely give the green light to impeach on the floor. If Pelosi doesn’t have the votes impeachment could wait – conceivably until the New Year.
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) December 3, 2019
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11) A member of Pelosi’s leadership team today told Fox that the backlog of bills up this month in the House “works against” a December impeachment vote. And the Democrat noted that impeachment “doesn’t fit the holiday spirit.” That means impeachment could wait until 2020.
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) December 3, 2019
It “doesn’t fit the holiday spirit?” Are they kidding? Does anyone believe that? Of course not, and the ‘backlog of bills’ line is similarly disingenuous. The simple fact is that, if Pergram’s reporting is correct, the Dems are looking for ways to move the goalposts once again.
Remember, initially, impeachment was supposed to come sometime after the Mueller testimony. That failed in spectacular fashion, so they moved on to the Ukraine story. There were rumblings that impeachment would now happen sometime before Thanksgiving. As we’ve seen, the hearings didn’t resonate, so they’re going back to earlier accusations.
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In the past I’ve said that “ObamaCare” was a misnomer. It should have been named “PelosiCare” after the woman who managed to get the deeply unpopular bill passed. Whatever else she may be, Pelosi is a master of beating her caucus into submission. If she’s having difficulty getting the votes, we should assume she’ll overcome it. If, as I’ve suggested before, she doesn’t want to get the votes, that’s a whole different ball game.
Time will tell. As Pergram points out, Clinton was impeached just before the Christmas break. If the Democrats follow that example, we’ll know she’s been dragged into impeachment and was just getting her ducks in a row. If they keep pushing the date back, introducing new investigations, or re-litigating dead issues, we’ll know they never really possessed the will to complete this ridiculous process.
9) Unclear when Dems could try to put impeachment on the flr. Dems today announced the Hse will remain in session almost until Christmas. Remember the House voted to impeach President Clinton on the Saturday before Christmas in 1998. We could have a similar scenario this round.
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) December 3, 2019
