Her staunch opposition to impeaching President Trump never made a lot of sense to me. Her basic justification, that Trump wanted to be impeached so he could play the victim was always unrealistic. Trump is terrified of having his financial records examined by Congress, the press, the public, and law enforcement, and an impeachment process would put him at huge risk on that front.
The follow-on argument was that the negative public reaction to impeachment could make it harder to defeat Trump in the 2020 election. She based this on a flawed reading of the results of Bill Clinton's impeachment. And, in any case, the argument treated impeachment not as a Constitutional duty but a purely partisan decision. The same problem applies to her point that Trump is good for Democratic fundraising.
Her argument that if Trump were impeached and the Senate declined to convict him would make it impossible to prosecute him after he leaves office because double jeopardy would apply apparently makes her the first person in the history of the United States to realize that. And it's silly. Impeachment is a political process, not a criminal trial. Of course, double jeopardy does not apply to an impeachment acquittal.
The Pelosi drama has now turned into one of the most dramatic displays ever of the Democrats' reluctance to fight Republicans. Especially since in her fundraising and speechmaking and politicking, Pelosi uses dramatic descriptions of the seriousness of Trump's conduct, even saying she wants to see him in prison. This is a notable contrast to her steadfast refusal to even begin formal impeachment investigations. It looks weak. At least to anyone who's not a political pundit assuming that Pelosi is pursuing some kind of super-sophisticated political strategy.
This really just looks like an unwillingness to undertake a difficult but necessary fight against genuinely rogue and criminal behavior by the President.
The most plausible alternative explanation that I can come up with is that Pelosi could be assuming that the Democrats will have a repeat of the experience of 2006-8, i which the Democrats won back control of the House of Representatives and elected an African-American President in 2008. But two big differences in that situation compared to now are (1) we can't count on one of the worst financial crises in history striking in the month before the Presidential election in 2020 and (2) the radicalization and lawlessness of the Republican Party including a willingess to ignore election laws is far more pronounced today. We're also now in the tenth year of the Citizens United decision, of which President Obama rightly said just after the Supreme Court handed it down in 2010, "This ruling strikes at our democracy itself. ... I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest."
Zach Carter poses the question that the Huffpost headline-writer renders as What The Hell Is Nancy Pelosi Doing? 06/30/2019. He mentions this recent stop on Pelosi's Surrender Tour:
But a few hours after Pelosi declared her devotion to the children suffering at the border, she deferred to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on their fate.
As horror stories detailing conditions at the border began piling up this week, [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell passed a bipartisan bill expanding funding for Trump’s immigration authorities by $4.6 billion. Progressive Democrats in the House, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), wanted to include some basic humanitarian safeguards on that money, but Pelosi, citing resistance from self-described moderate Democrats, decided instead to just pass the Senate bill, no strings attached.
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