Well, the deed is done. The house has voted to impeach President Trump on two articles of impeachment. Now the focus shifts to the Senate where it is expected the GOP will kill the whole process before it even gets off the ground… or maybe not.
Pelosi is playing coy at the moment about when she’ll send the articles of impeachment over to the Senate. Being careful not to say anything definitive the fact that this is at all a question has given me an idea. Let Trump sweat. The President would like nothing more than to have the Senate immediately dismiss this whole impeachment process quickly and allow the President to move on. Essentially turning this whole process into just another political argument of Democrats impeach, Republicans acquit.
The GOP sees their role as an undo button. They want to reverse this stain on the President by voting to leave Trump in office as quickly as possible which is why I think Pelosi should wait at least a week, if possible until after the new year to send the articles of impeachment over to the Senate.
Let Trump sit in the mess he has made for himself. Let the fact that Trump has been impeached sit and marinate in the national consciousness. Let it really sink in that the President has been impeached. We as a party, as a resistance, gain nothing by a speedy resolution to this process.
We have seen just this year how controlling the timing of how things unfold in a political process can have a huge impact on mass opinion. There were three and a half weeks between when William Barr released his own opinion piece on the Mueller report and when everyone else actually got to see what the report really said and those three and a half weeks of limbo did a lot of damage in the arena of public opinion.
For three and a half weeks the Trump administration was essentially allowed to claim victory and dampen public interest in the Mueller Reports actual findings by being the only source of information. Those three and a half weeks caused a myth that Mueller found nothing wrong. A myth that persists to this day.
I say we do the same with this moment. Let Trump sweat for a few weeks, let the impeachment stand uncontested until after the new year, really let it sink in and feel final in the minds of the masses. Then the Senates actions if quick and dismissive without any debate or testimony will feel to voters more like an undoing of something that’s already been settled, a political mulligan, an attempt to usurp the political process that has already run its course.
Which of course it is.
The GOP will have to push for a dismissal of Impeachment against weeks of build-up, expectation and the sense of finality that sitting with impeachment for a few weeks will cement in the minds of the American People.
I don’t see a downside to “negotiating” for a week or so and then deciding we’re so close to the Holidays that we’ll just have to wait until after the new year to move forward.