Most of the moderate and conservative Democrats in the House are against impeaching Trump. I think most of us can agree upon that fact. Correct? If not, here is their favorite “news”outlet that they love to run to — Tigerbeat on the Potomac — with this headline from September 15th:
Moderate Democrats warn Pelosi of impeachment obsession
Vulnerable House Democrats fear the party's drive toward impeachment will undercut them in 2020.
Granted, this was before all the latest Trump scandal with the intelligence whistleblower complaint. But I suspect this group of Democrats are holiding firm about impeachment because Speaker Nancy Pelosi is still throwing cold water on impeachment. And the moderate and conservative Democrats are now publicly complaining to Pelosi to stop impeachment.
A day before the House Judiciary Committee took its biggest step yet toward impeachment last week, moderate Democratic Rep. Anthony Brindisi voiced his frustrations directly to Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The battleground freshman told Pelosi and other leaders at a closed-door meeting that he and other centrists feared that talk of impeaching President Donald Trump was threatening to swamp the Democratic agenda, according to multiple people in the room.
“It’s very frustrating for me — someone coming from a district that was one of the districts that helped get us into the majority — having so much focus on things like impeachment or other issues that are divisive,” Brindisi said in an interview, adding that he’s been talking to fellow swing-district freshmen who have similar concerns with the fall agenda. “We should be focusing on the kitchen table issues.”
Emboldened is mine.
And we have Representative Stephanie Murphy of Florida waving around a poll that shows congress is focusing too much on impeachment. And then there is Congressman Max Rose:
Another vulnerable freshman, Rep. Max Rose, gave the same warnings about impeachment in a private meeting with Nadler. A few days later, Rose unleashed his frustrations publicly with an op-ed in his hometown paper, cautioning that Democrats are “in danger of losing the trust of the American people” with its unrelenting focus on Trump.
“I’m doing what I think is the right thing to do,” Rose said in an interview, adding that no single incident propelled him to write the op-ed. “I want to see this party — and I know it has it in it — get to work passing substantive infrastructure and health care bills by the end of the year.”
Still my work, and I am coming back to that later.
Anyway, it keeps getting better and better here:
Many House centrists, particularly members of the Blue Dog Coalition, have sought to pivot from talking about Trump’s alleged corruption and obstruction to a piece of the Mueller report that’s a lot less controversial: election security.
The Blue Dog Coalition offered a kind of counterprogramming last Thursday — timed just hours after the Judiciary Committee’s vote — with nearly a dozen members taking part in interviews, floor speeches or social media posts to help nudge the narrative away from impeachment and toward the need to safeguard elections.
“I certainly think that the election security elements of the Mueller report have not been given a due amount of coverage and awareness that’s necessary,” Murphy told reporters Thursday, when asked about the event coinciding with the Judiciary vote.
I want to see if I understand the centrists arguments so far:
- We have the usual binary choice: impeachment or “talking about kitchen table issues.” We can’t do both.
- Centrists on Daily Kos think that progressives do harm to Democrats when we criticize centrist Democrats, but it’s OK that centrists can run to a Republican rag to criticize other Democrats.
- The centrists act like House Democrats have not passed important bills this year. They have, but most have been stillborn in Moscow Mitch’s Senate.
- As to the above point, what makes any House Democrat think they will pass an infrastructure bill or something on election security with Moscow Mitch in control of the Senate?
Every week has been infrastructure week with Trump, only to see nothing get done. And speaking of the orange ape, what makes any Democrat think that Trump will sign a bill about improving election security? It’s as if none of the Blue Dogs ever bothered to read the Mueller Report.
Joe Biden is Mr. Centrist. And Trump is trying to get foreign assistance to sink Biden. Trump is actively trying to fix the election. Again. But this time he has the power of the White House, unlike in 2016.
But we are to allow Trump to keep up his corruption because the moderate and conservative Democrats are afraid. And if Biden get the nomination, Trump will use the power he has to destroy Biden, who the moderates and conservative Democrats claim to support. Why not be proactive and go after Trump?
But you know what? A congressman who has not been thrilled with impeaching Trump is now open to it: House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff. From Tigerbeat:
Impeachment may be "the only remedy" should a recent whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump prove true, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Sunday.
"I have been very reluctant to go down the path of impeachment, for the reason that I think the founders contemplated in a country that has elections every four years, that this would be an extraordinary remedy, a remedy of last resort, not first resort," the California Democrat said on CNN's "State of the Union."
"But if the president is essentially withholding military aid at the same time that he is trying to browbeat a foreign leader into doing something illicit that is providing dirt on his opponent during a presidential campaign, then that may be the only remedy that is coequal to the evil that that conduct represents," Schiff added.
Emboldened mine again.
- Schiff has not been a champion of impeachment.
- But Shiff is now considering that impeachment may be the only option to try and hold Trump accountable for his actions.
- The article goes on to highlight that Schiff readily agrees that the Republicans in the Senate will NOT convict Trump.
Still, he acknowledged, the Republican-controlled Senate would not go along.
"There's no chance of us persuading the Senate, the Senate Republicans, in an impeachment trial. They have shown their willingness to carry the president's baggage, no matter how soiled its contents," Schiff said.
- And he argues that Democrats need to make the argument to the American people that this was the only option left.
- I want to emphasize that Schiff called what Trump did “evil.”
Do Democrats really want to run on a platform that Trump is evil, but it is up to the voters to do something about him? Schiff is at least acknowledging that Democrats have a constitutional duty to not just investigate Trump but hold him accountable for his actions as president. And I don’t know how many times I have to say this, but if Trump is pulling this now, what will he do in the next 16 months with no one to try and stop him?
For the umpteenth time, I urge anyone on Daily Kos who has one of these moderate or conservative Democrats as their congresspersona to contact them and ask “Why don’t you support an impeachment inquiry?”
Sunday, Sep 22, 2019 · 8:12:15 PM +00:00
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Merlin1963
From NBC News:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday assailed the Trump administration's efforts to block a whistleblower complaint involving President Donald Trump's apparent effort to have Ukraine investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his family.
In a letter to colleagues Sunday, Pelosi said the administration "will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation" if Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire fails to provide the complaint when he testifies in front of the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday. The complaint reportedly centers around Trump's July conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during which Trump is accused of pressuring Zelensky to investigate Biden's son Hunter's role at a Ukrainian energy company.
As the New York Times and others reported, the phone call led to a whistleblower complaint which is now at the center of a standoff between Congress and the administration. The administration has refused to turn over to Congress details of the complaint, though the Washington Post has reported that allegation centers on a "promise" Trump made.
Emboldened is mine.
I thought everyone should see this latest word from Speaker Pelosi on this matter. It is still too damn vague for my tastes.