We begin today’s roundup with analysis by Sam Brodey, Erin Banco, and Jackie Kucinich at The Daily Beast on the Democrats’ Senate trial strategy:
[I]f the Democratic impeachment managers’ presentations on Wednesday were meant to appeal to the Senate’s sense of constitutional responsibility, Thursday’s were designed as an evidence-packed pre-rebuttal to what senators may hear from the White House when Trump’s defense team outlines their case in the coming days. [...]
Intent on packing as much evidence as possible into the 24 hours of floor time, spread over three days, that they have been allotted to make their case, Democrats leveraged their video privileges for a novel purpose: turning senators’ own words from the last impeachment against them.
Michelle Cottle at The New York Times dives into the constitutional arguments made yesterday and highlight’s the Democrats’ preparedness:
Their preparedness is impressive. Even Representative Matt Gaetz, the devoted Trump cheerleader from Florida, observed earlier this week that, thus far, the Democrats’ presentation looked as though it was “cable news” while the president’s defense team’s looked like “an eighth-grade book report.” [...]
Significant time was devoted to anticipating — and shooting down — the defenses that Team Trump is likely to offer, including the president’s unsubstantiated claims about the Biden family’s corruption and the nutty conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine rather than Russia that hacked the 2016 election.
Gail Collins looks at how the founding fathers would have viewed Donald Trump’s misconduct:
Schiff elevated the saga with a lot of American history. He mentioned the founding fathers 28 times in the first 15 minutes. On this front, it doesn’t seem as if he’s going to get much competition. Earlier, when Republicans had a chance to talk, the founders only came up a handful of times, once in a quote from Chuck Schumer.
For much of our modern history Republicans have tended to be the ones continually quoting the founding fathers, usually in regard to the dangers of an over-powerful federal government. Now the tables have turned. Clearly Mitch McConnell and his minions need to come up with some early American heroes who wouldn’t have seen a problem with a president who tries to make secret deals with a foreign power in order to enhance his chances for re-election.
Eugene Robinson calls the GOP defense “as mushy as apple pie”:
The GOP threat to also call former vice president Joe Biden or his son Hunter Biden as witnesses is a big bluff, and Democrats should call them on it. Republicans control the Senate, which means they have subpoena power. They could have summoned the Bidens to testify at a committee hearing whenever they chose. They don’t really want the Bidens’ testimony, which they know would be irrelevant to Trump’s conduct. They’re just in desperate search of a talking point. [...]
I’m realistic. I know that Republicans have the votes to acquit Trump regardless of the evidence, if that’s what they decide to do. But the House impeachment managers’ skillful presentation of their case has made it much less politically attractive for GOP senators — especially those with tough reelection races — to say they won’t even cast their eyes upon evidence that’s being presented to them on a silver platter.
At The Atlantic, Kim Wehle argues the Democrats should add Chief Justice Roberts to their trial strategy:
the Constitution would not have specifically instructed the chief justice to preside if his only role were to sit quietly and do nothing. As the lawyer Martin London credibly argued in Time earlier this week, Roberts has the power and duty to make judgments about the conduct of the trial. [...]
In early proceedings, Roberts made it clear that he will not exercise that power unbidden. Nothing, however, prevents the House managers from making motions—either orally or in writing—to force the chief justice to take a stronger hand in the proceedings. And the Democrats have nothing to lose by trying.
Ryan Cooper at The Week explains the necessity of holding Trump accountable:
[T]he Constitution is still the law of the land, and impeachment is the process we have for dealing with a criminal president. As Schiff argues, Trump will certainly take acquittal as a license to further undermine American democracy. He "has shown no willingness to be constrained by the rule of law and has demonstrated that he will continue to abuse his power and obstruct investigations into himself causing further damage to the pillars of our democracy if he is not held accountable," Schiff said.
And it is a fairly short step from using U.S. taxpayer money to blackmail a foreign country to simply rigging the 2020 vote outright.
On a final note, John Cassidy pens another must-read piece on the cowardice of Republicans to stand up for democracy:
Much has been made of the concessions that a group of Republican moderates, including Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney, elicited from McConnell on how the trial would be conducted. However, McConnell merely agreed that evidence collected in the House is admissible here and that both sides would have three days rather than two to present their cases. The only potentially significant climbdown came when he agreed to another vote on calling witnesses after the first stages of the trial have been completed.
But this concession will matter only if, between now and next week, at least four Republican senators summon the will to break with Trump on an issue he cares about more than anything—his own survival. “This is a moment, I think, of reckoning, not just for the country and for the rule of law and for the Constitution. It’s a very specific day of reckoning for the Republican senators who took this oath, and for the Republican Party generally,” Conway said in his CNN interview. “Are they going to stand for lies instead of truth? Are they going to stand for gaslighting instead of reality? Are they going to just do the bidding of this one man and put his interests over those of the country? That’s what this is about.”