Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, have been railing about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s intention to run a partisan impeachment trial, demanding that he call additional witnesses to testify on President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. But Democrats’ complaints just make it all the more bizarre that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to rush through a vote on impeachment in the House, which guarantees that all control over the impeachment process will be transferred to Republicans.
House Democrats have made a calculated decision to try and get impeachment over with as soon as possible. Instead of taking the Trump administration to court to compel testimony from key players, including Mick Mulvaney, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Pompeo, and John Bolton, Democrats decided to just fold any defiance by the White House into the obstruction of Congress article of impeachment.
There are certain reasons for this. Pelosi has clearly determined that it will be better for swing-state Democrats if impeachment is off the plate before the election year, so they can start transitioning to discussing policy issues targeted at these swing districts. But as I’ve argued, rushing a vote is ultimately a mistake.
Given that Trump will be acquitted in the Senate no matter what, the whole point of the House proceedings should be to gather as much information as they can until they have exhausted all resources. Democrats want to be able to make the strongest case possible for impeachment, and barring removal, they want to establish that there was wrongdoing so egregious that it hurts not only Trump’s reelection chances but also the chances of any Republicans in competitive seats who defend him.
From a political perspective, though, Democrats’ efforts have been largely a bust. Trump’s approval rating is now 44%, according to an average of polls compiled by RealClearPolitics. That is not great for a president facing reelection in under a year, but it’s effectively unchanged from the 45% it was before Pelosi launched impeachment proceedings on Sept. 24 — and it’s actually on the higher side for his presidency.
Support for removing Trump from office via impeachment is averaging 46.7%, compared with 47.3% opposition. That means that in three months, not only have Democrats effectively failed to drive down Trump’s approval rating, they couldn’t even convince the 52.9% of those who already disapprove of Trump to back removal.
One could argue about the merits of whether McConnell should call various witnesses independently of what the House has chosen to do. But the political reality is that McConnell is going to run the trial in a way to minimize any damage to Trump. There’s no reason Pelosi, knowing this, should effectively shut down the fact-finding process by rushing to hand everything over to the Senate.
The only way it makes sense is if you assume Pelosi mainly wanted to go through the motions of impeachment to satisfy liberals who were demanding it, without an interest in actually getting to the bottom of what happened or really holding Trump accountable. Turning liberal wrath toward McConnell is perhaps her way of avoiding scrutiny from her side about her mismanagement of the impeachment process.
