Impeach the motherfucker

Democrats are mired in an impeachment mess of their own making.

Conflicting signals from the House’s most powerful Democrats have left rank-and-file lawmakers exasperated, unable to say confidently whether the House is, in fact, considering one of the weightiest actions any Congress can take: recommending a president’s impeachment.

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Others are wrangling over semantics, with some insisting the House is in an “impeachment inquiry” while others are hewing to the “impeachment investigation” terminology, which the Judiciary Committee introduced in court filings in late July. Others, like Nadler, say they’re synonymous.

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Meanwhile, Speaker Nancy Pelosi avoids the terms altogether. In a talking-point document sent to the caucus Tuesday morning, Pelosi’s office described the House’s investigative activities in anodyne terms, characterizing them as typical House oversight of the executive branch. The talking points characterized a Thursday vote by the House Judiciary Committee — billed by the panel as a formal acknowledgment of the House’s impeachment probe — as “procedures related to its investigation of the president’s wrongdoing.”

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Since returning from the six-week August recess, Pelosi has publicly and privately sought to limit talk of impeachment in favor of discussing the caucus’s policy aims, such as new gun limits.

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[I]t has strained the Democratic Caucus, that it has aroused suspicion among the party’s base and that it could weaken the House’s hand in court.

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The set of talking points distributed by the speaker’s office, which was obtained by POLITICO, does not mention impeachment; instead, the document, which was prepared in conjunction with the Judiciary Committee, referenced federal court opinions stating that the House has an absolute right to investigate.

But those cases have yet to yield new information, and even the ones that the House have won are tied up in the appeals process.

  politico

Members from a number of moderate districts still don’t want to be associated with an impeachment inquiry; they are feeling little pressure from constituents and have decided they’d pay a political price for supporting one.

I think that position is irresponsible on its substance and probably wrong on the politics. But a compromise in which the Judiciary Committee runs the inquiry, developing the case for possible articles of impeachment, even as moderates continue to talk about health care, is not a wildly absurd solution for leadership to adopt.

For now, anyway. Because here’s the thing: This cannot be sustained forever.

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Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) just doesn’t seem to want this to get too far, and that’s creating absurdities such as these:Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) just doesn’t seem to want this to get too far, and that’s creating absurdities such as these: In a talking-point document to colleagues Tuesday morning, Pelosi’s office described the House’s investigative activity in anodyne terms, characterizing them as typical House oversight of the executive branch. . . . In a talking-point document to colleagues Tuesday morning, Pelosi’s office described the House’s investigative activity in anodyne terms, characterizing them as typical House oversight of the executive branch. . . .

Pelosi has at times adopted the harsh rhetoric of pro-impeachment lawmakers, most recently accusing Trump of violating the Constitution by allegedly steering government spending to his luxury resorts.

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On other occasions, Pelosi has been clear that impeachment — a full House vote on articles of impeachment, should those emerge from Judiciary — cannot happen until it’s bipartisan, and that the public must be brought along.

The first of those will never happen, and setting that bar essentially gives Republicans in lockstep support of Trump veto power over what the House does with its institutional authority. The second looks increasingly as though it isn’t materializing, though one might argue that if the leadership forcefully supported the impeachment inquiry, it might help shift public sentiment toward the idea.

  WaPo

Indeed, bringing the public along implies someone doing the bringing, and if she's not willing to engage in bringing, how can it happen?

If the existing impeachment inquiry does strengthen Judiciary Democrats’ legal hand, and they win some court battles, forcing the administration to cooperate with their investigations, it could build a public case against Trump whether or not they impeach in the end.

But if Democrats lose these battles, and they end up with very little to show for these efforts — even as the leadership is still equivocating about an impeachment — there will be hell to pay.

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Regardless, what remains unanswered is this: Could anything substantive emerge about Trump that might move the Democratic leadership at this point?

It doesn't appear so.

If the leadership has decided that no vote will ever happen no matter what, and is just running out the clock — while leaving the impression a vote could still take place under certain circumstances — that constitutes a very deep incoherence, one that only ensures that this tension will have to come to a head at some point.

If so, that incoherence is itself the problem festering at the core of this whole mess.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.