House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) expressed his personal support for impeaching President Donald Trump Monday, taking a step further than most of his fellow Democratic leaders.
“Frankly, we are concentrating our resources on whether to impeach the President,” he said during a WNYC interview about possibly impeaching Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh. “Personally, I think President ought to be impeached, but we need to concentrate on that in next few months.”
He added that it’s his committee’s responsibility to lay out Trump’s misdeeds and move the public opinion onto the side of impeachment.
“In my personal opinion, impeachment is imperative not because he’s going to be removed from office — the Senate won’t do that — but because we have to vindicate the Constitution,” he said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has maintained that impeachment is a losing tactic because the Senate will acquit the President and it might hurt Democrats politically.
Listen to the interview here.
"Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties." – Abraham Lincoln
For some reason the Democrats can’t seem to hear that failing to impeach will hurt them just as badly, if not worse. Who wants to vote for a party that refuses to stand by its convictions, out of fear that it might cost them the next election? What it suggests is that if they do win, they will sit on their hands and do nothing.
You’re conflating separate issues.
Not a good look.
The Democrats in Congress are working to educate the public to the severity of Trump’s misdeeds and malfeasance.
This takes time, because the public is pretty dense and resistant to such information.
The party as a whole has a great set of priorities for after Trump’s defeat.
Anyone who would not vote for the Democrats—regardless of how the impeachment issue turns out—is supporting Trump.
Period.
Full Stop.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.”
(Note to Secret Service: This is what’s known as a “metaphor”.)
I think Digby has a good take on this.
Bill Barr’s Department of Justice is disingenuously refusing to hand over grand jury documents from the Mueller report, citing the House’s muddled messaging, and specifically House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s repeated statements that they are not in the midst of an impeachment investigation. Meanwhile Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., is clearly pushing from the other direction, taking the first official procedural steps toward an impeachment inquiry last week. The party is all over the place and it couldn’t have picked a worse time.
I realize that none of the candidates vying for the 2020 nomination want to step on congressional toes. But House Democrats are making a hash of this. Impeaching Trump is the first step in the major reform agenda that will be necessary to deal with this complex set of challenges. And the Democrats’ eventual candidate will have a lot to lose if the House doesn’t follow through.
You know that Trump will run on the message of Democratic fecklessness and his own survival superpower. “They couldn’t find anything wrong! I am too strong for them!” The way things are going, more than a few of those famous swing voters might just conclude that he’s right.