Free the Democratic Senate Five Running for President: Delay Impeachment Trial Until Mid-February
December 24, 2019
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will have the final word as to when the current two articles of impeachment will be forwarded to the Senate for trial. (Gage Skidmore)
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH
On Wednesday, December 18, the US House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump based on two articles of impeachment. “The House voted 230-197 to charge Trump with abuse of power and 229-198 to charge him with obstruction of Congress,” according to CNN. The fey Tulsi Gabbard voted present.
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At the end of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s news conference (following the evening vote), she dropped a bombshell in response to a last-minute question: the articles of impeachment would be held in the House for the time being. “We cannot name managers until we see what the process is on the Senate side, and we hope that will be soon,” Pelosi said referring to the Dem House managers who will present the case to the Senate.
“So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us, so hopefully it will be fair.” After offering this explanation of why the articles weren’t be sent to the Senate immediately, the pundits weighed in, McConnell mounted his sanctimonious high horse, and Trump practically gagged on how Pelosi had upended his plans for a quick acquittal.
How long the articles will stay in the House has been subject to much speculation. The majority of inside-the-beltway pundits speculate that Pelosi is seeking leverage to assist Schumer in negotiating an actual trial with witnesses in the Senate, instead of the biased short-shrift of a hearing that McConnell is vowing to conduct, already stating the he thinks Trump is innocent. The Senate and the House adjourned for the holidays with the articles still being residing in the House, and McConnell unlikely to change his position due to pressure from Trump and his base.
However, there are other reasons to explain Pelosi’s response in a rushed post-vote news conference. One thought that Laurence Tribe, who is advising Pelosi and the Democratic House impeachment chairs, has is that delaying the impeachment referral could help uncover more wrongdoing, as was the Dem legal counsel argument this week in a case requesting that former White House counsel Don McGahn should be compelled to testify.
In short, as cases that are directly germane make their way through the courts and more disclosures are forthcoming, as in last Friday’s document release that confirmed Trump ordered military funds for Ukraine withheld after his July 25 phone call with Zelensky, the greater the likelihood to build an even more damning case against Trump — and perhaps one that includes one or more additional charges of impeachment.
For her part, on Monday, Pelosi chastised Trump for whining about his hopes for a fixed quick acquittal trial being delayed.
Indeed, time is on the side of the impeachment effort, as Trump has nothing to exonerate him, so new information can only further corroborate his betrayal of the Constitution.
New information could also come up on other Trump Constitutional violations that would force broadening the number of articles. Political analyst Stephen Scott Crockett suggested just that in a BuzzFlash commentary on November 19.
However, there is another non-Constitutional reason to delay sending over the current two articles of impeachment to the Senate besides consternating, dismaying and embarrassing Trump and McConnell.
If held in January, five Democratic Senators who are running for the Dem presidential nomination would, in essence, be sidelined in the month before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, February 3 and February 11, respectively. These two states, which usually set the media “momentum” narratives, are small and rely on the retail politics of personally meeting the candidates.
In some ways, coming to agreement on a Senate trial — which may prove an intractable goal — the first week in January, with a trial to immediately follow, would be to allow Donald Trump to once again cause upheaval for the Democrats in their challenging battle for winning the White House in 2020. The five Senators who would have to sit as silent jurors in January, given an agreement and the forwarding of the two articles to the Senate, would be grievously hampered in their campaign efforts to win the critical first two states in the nation to conduct primaries.
The five senators affected are Senator Michael Bennett (D-CO), Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
Right now, the latest poll in Iowa, as seen on BuzzFlash Election 2020, shows Buttigieg, Biden, Warren and Sanders all within striking distance of first place. It would be unfair not to allow Warren and Sanders, who represent the energized progressive wing of the Democratic party, not to be able to fairly compete with Buttigieg and Biden, who will have no constraints during that period, and occupy the so-called “centrist” lane. The same holds true for Klobuchar who is seeing an uptick in her race to attract more voters in the “moderate” lane. Booker and Bennett also deserve the right to make their case to Iowa and New Hampshire voters.
As far as New Hampshire is concerned, a recent poll indicates that Sanders, Buttigieg, Biden and Warren are within one point of each other. BuzzFlash is not endorsing any candidates to respect the personal choices of Dem voters (“Vote Blue, No Matter Who”), although our long-time readers know that we are an outspoken progressive site. Nonetheless, BuzzFlash does advocate for a fair primary election, and cooping up five of the Dem presidential candidates in the Senate during the crucial pre-February early primary state votes is anything but fair.
Yes, holding the articles until mid-February would not adhere to any Constitutional or Congressional protocol, but the heck with that. The Republicans have been engaged in ruthless, unscrupulous and thuggish electioneering and governing for decades, not to mention McConnell’s years-long blatant obstruction of Democrats and non-Republican voters, including hindering Obama and ensuring right-wing appointments to the federal courts. So, if the Democrats hold up the two articles of impeachment for another month and a half, the Republicans and Trump deserve the heat, as also fresh evidence is likely to pop up during that time period.
(Of course, there is also the suggestion made by some Dems to never send the two articles of impeachment to the Senate, thus denying Trump use of an acquittal to energize his base and fundraise off of his “victimhood.” This, however, appears unlikely because Pelosi doesn’t want to put her “frontline” reps in any prolonged jeopardy.)
The progressives Sanders and Warren, in particular, represent about the same combined 7-day national trending poll average as Biden and Butiggieg. So, if the party is going to choose whether to go centrist or progressive, it is imperative that Sanders and Warren be allowed to openly compete in January in Iowa and New Hampshire. Sanders is already hampered by either negative coverage by the corporate press or being ignored by corporate media in general, as is Warren, ironically according to the “centrist” New York Times. Democrats are going to need to make some hard choices about who they want to defeat Trump, and all of the contenders should be heard from.
As Trump unravels and McConnell continues with bombastic sanctimonious and hypocritical frog-throated pronouncements (and Lindsey Graham goes into full hysterical Lindsey mode), the Democrats will finally be bringing a gun to a gun fight and not a butter knife. The Republicans wouldn’t hesitate to hold off forwarding the articles, so the Democrats should push their buttons until the eyeballs bulge out of Trump and his cult.
In the meantime, the Democratic Party won’t be undercut by another Trumpian moment of chaos. Let him stir up twitter storm after twitter storm: Free the Democratic Senate five to campaign in January.
Hold the two articles of impeachment in the House. It’s a long shot, but it could happen.
The Dems need to be tough on this one, no more nonsense like “it’s not in the rules.” It’s payback time, and there is nothing more important than not letting Trump’s reality-TV show histrionics play a role in deciding the 2020 Democratic candidate for president.
#FreeDemSenateFive
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