I don’t think Pelosi is doing it to disadvantage Warren or Sanders (or Klobuchar, not that anything would make any difference for her anyway).
Trump’s not going to be removed from office. Pelosi was/is stalling on sending over the articles to do her unfortunate best to try to get the Senate trial run the way the House impeachment was run. She doesn’t have much power to do so, and eventually “shit or get off the pot” becomes the dominant theme.
The notion “we gotta get him out NOW because he’s gonna start WWIII” kind of fell flat. So it’s not so much “the first primary is in a month - let’s fuck over Bernie”. That’s Bernie Bro conspiracy theory stuff. More like “if it’s so important what the hell are you waiting for”.
Pelosi will send over the articles, we will have the trial for a month or so, everyone will yell and pound on the table and work themselves into a lather. Then Trump will be acquitted almost entirely along party lines, Pelosi will go back to the House and try to impeach him for something else, and Sanders and Warren can fly off to make speeches about their deep commitment to the people of whatever state their campaign aides told them they were in today and figure out how to lose to Joe Biden.
That’s not how it works. Physically going around the country having campaign events is one of the main strategies for winning an election. It doesn’t affect me; I will do my own research and would be fine if a candidate declared “I’m doing this important work blah blah blah, and so I can’t visit your state”, but evidently it does affect enough voters to swing an election. (Don’t you recall how the Ruskies hacked a bunch of polls to show Hillary way in the lead, so she didn’t bother to do enough campaign events in battleground states, and so she lost in 2016? Joking, LMAO.)
If we were talking months and months and months, maybe. But there will be weekends and other days for campaigning, and these candidates have the money and energy to travel. They’ll be fine for the (presumable) few weeks of the Senate trial. And they’ll be on TV a lot with “free media” as they ask questions of witnesses and otherwise speak about the impeachment.
McConnell went from “coordinating closely with WH” and vote to immediately dismiss, to 4 GOP senators announcing they are likely to vote to hear from witnesses and not having sufficient numbers to hold a dismissal vote. So I don’t think Pelosi’s strategy was entirely in vain.
One week. The House voted to impeach on December 19th, then adjourned until January 7, one week ago today.
I think it’s great that a one week delay (counting in “in-session” days) generated calendar weeks of stress on the Senate and President. Well done, Nancy.
Let me get this straight: you think that Democrats may not show up to the Senate trial because of campaign events, AND you think that Senators would have worked through Christmas and New Years to hold an impeachment trial?
I remind you that McConnell had every intention of holding an immediate vote to dismiss. By waiting, Pelosi’s strategy paid off. The fact that we are where we are with respect to the upcoming trial in the Senate serves to undermine your speculation to the contrary.
Not a bit of it! Simply receive the articles on Dec. 19, convene at 11am on the 20th, pass the Resolution of Absolute Innocence and Total Exoneration, and break for lunch.
My local Walmart was staffed on Xmas and New Years. The impeachment is purportedly to remove an imminent threat to our Democracy, and the House and Senate are staffed by elected officials getting very rich from their positions.
You mean “based on evidence and sworn testimony and following the rules of the chamber and previous precedent for such proceedings rather than simply holding a partisan show trial where all evidence is ignored and outcomes are predetermined”? Yes, I agree that that is how Pelosi is trying to get the Senate trial to run. And it is indeed unfortunate that the Senate Republicans prefer the “partisan show trial” option.
I realize that Republicans in Congress have been accusing the Democrats of doing what they themselves are doing, but then right-wingers in America have a long history of projecting their sins onto others.
Sanders and Warren are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus; then Rep Sanders was a founder. Nancy Pelosi was one of the caucus’ early members working side by side with Sanders to advance progressive causes in the House.
That changed when she was elected Speaker. To be effective in that job you sort of have to represent the totality of your own party in order to get their support. Between speaker and minority leader she has been in that leadership role a long time. We might forget what her politics were before she had to carry the weight of leadership. Make no mistake though, she was progressive before it was cool. She was progressive when AOC was still shitting in her diaper.
Why would she try to derail the candidates that are probably closest to her personal politics?
How much say does McConnell get in how the trial is run? The chief justice of the Supreme Court presides over the trial. Doesn’t that mean he basically runs it just as a judge would run a courtroom?