Testimony might contain facts

I get emails from a few progressive organizations. Most of them, alas, either ask for money or ask me to sign a petition (and it seems all they accomplish is add me to more email lists). I also read a couple progressive sources and they frequently get quoted and linked here.

Over the last couple months, once the impeachment process geared up, a frequent sentiment in these sources was that the House should vote on articles of impeachment but never actually send them on to the Senate. All the Senate was going to do – as Moscow Mitch told us repeatedly – was exonerate the nasty guy. Then the nasty guy could launch into the 2020 campaign saying those Democrats harmed the country because he had done nothing wrong and the Senate acquittal proves that.

So those progressive emails urged me to tell Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not forward the articles of impeachment, instead to keep investigating and add more articles as appropriate.

Maybe she was listening. This morning Pelosi announced a delay. When articles of impeachment are handed over to the Senate the people doing the handing over are the House members who will serve as floor managers. Pelosi has said she can’t tell who those floor managers should be until the Senate decides what kind of trial there will be.

The Senate and Moscow Mitch are still deciding whether there will be witnesses. The nasty guy wants a circus – all the people he considers an enemy brought in for roasting. As Mark Sumner of Daily Kos put it:

That’s the point where not only Republican senators, but McConnell himself, are having trouble. Not because they are concerned about having circus that breaks with Senate decorum. But because witnesses have a tendency to provide testimony, and testimony might contain facts.

That’s the only thing McConnell definitely does not want.

Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos thinks Pelosi’s maneuver is genius. It puts Moscow Mitch in a bind. It also gives Pelosi and Democrats leverage in the trial, something to which they would normally have no input.

Moscow Mitch put on a 30 minute rant from the Senate floor doing all sorts of projecting – accusing Democrats of doing what he intends to do. In response, Pelosi observed the Founding Fathers provided a way to deal with a rogue president. But, “I don't think they suspected we could have a rogue president and a rogue leader in the Senate at the same time.”

A few excerpts from Eleveld’s article:

McConnell is now caught between Trump, who is desperate for Senate acquittal, and his vulnerable GOP senators, who at the very least need the appearance of a fair trial to paper over the reality that they’re simply a rubber stamp for Trump.
...
Pelosi has put McConnell's “greatest strength” [exercising raw power] on trial for the American people to judge in 2020. And, based on the polling, nearly everyone outside of Trump's cultists is predisposed to side with Democrats.

Pelosi gets this, and she also knows that the longer she waits to transmit those articles, the worse it gets for McConnell. Trump will get absolutely rabid in his desire for acquittal, making vulnerable GOP senators even more anxious. And the more time that passes, the greater the likelihood of good court rulings that put more documents and witnesses in the offing. Refusing to take them up will only make McConnell look more partisan, more unfair, and more unfaithful to democracy. So Pelosi might take a bit to transmit those articles to the Senate.

This could take a while to play out. Which is good.