UPDATED: Pelosi Is Losing Senate Dems
Several sites are reporting that Diane Feinstein--undoubtedly speaking for quite a few more Dem senators--is demanding that Pelosi send the articles of impeachment over to the Senate:
Dianne Feinstein says it’s time for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to send the impeachment articles to the Senate.
“If we’re going to do it, she should send them over,” the California Democrat said. “I don’t see what good delay does.”
— Laura Litvan (@LauraLitvan) January 8, 2020
Looks like a cave to the GOP, united behind Trump and Cocaine Mitch--this is the kind of thing that makes McConnell such a great Senate leader:
Other Senate Democrats are joining Feinstein in her calls against Pelosi’s decision to withhold the articles.
According to Vox Senior Political Correspondent Andrew Prokop, Senators Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., agree it is time Pelosi send the articles to the Senate.
“I think the time has past [sic ]. [Pelosi] should send the articles over,” Murphy said.
Imagine what their polling is telling them!
UPDATE: Ya gotta luv the way Scott Jennings puts it:
McConnell just ate Pelosi and Schumer's lunch
Jennings' op-ed piece makes an interesting contrast to the other CNN pieces, liberally linked throughout his article. Samples:
This is the bombshell Trump's team didn't want revealed
John Bolton's statement should scare Trump
Uh, right!
Here are some excerpts from Jennings' article, edited to work in a more or less continuous style:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer have been bested by Mitch McConnell yet again. The two Democrats attempted to create impeachment leverage where none existed by withholding the Articles of Impeachment passed last month against President Donald Trump.
But like your Aunt Frieda threatening not to bring her awful fruitcake to Christmas Dinner, their plan didn't work. Nobody wanted it in the first place.
McConnell won this round against his Keystone Cops opposition because he has something Schumer and Pelosi don't: a reasonable argument.
I guess opposing Donald Trump is a helluva drug.
The days of Pelosi being hailed as some next-level genius impeachment strategist I guess will have to come to an end for the liberal pundit industry. Her plan to withhold the articles of impeachment to create that "leverage" over McConnell failed spectacularly. No Republicans were harmed, pressured, or otherwise inconvenienced in the making of this sad, sad film.
They failed to convince a single Republican in the House that impeachment was necessary. They failed to pressure Mitch McConnell's conference to do their homework for them.
And they will fail to remove President Trump from office when all is said and done, instead delivering him to a perch of exoneration from which he will bludgeon them for weeks.
This could not have gone more poorly if the Democrats had tried. Any Republican senator on the ballot this year knows it would be suicide to join Pelosi or Schumer's hapless crusade now.
Meanwhile, Pelosi's great triumph was getting all those Trump district freshman reps to walk the plank for her.