And so, at last, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has stopped hugging the articles of impeachment to her bosom and has delivered them to the Senate so President Trump can be put on trial. They’ve been “exhibited” on the chamber floor, and Rep. Adam Schiff has read them out lovingly, stroking each tenuous charge with relish.
The monthlong delay delivering the articles was ostensibly so Pelosi could try to force Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to promise testimony she claims is vital but which she and Schiff couldn’t be bothered to obtain at the appropriate stage — that is, before voting to impeach. As we’ve noted, the Democrats want it both ways, saying the evidence they heard in the House is abundantly sufficient to impeach, but also that new witnesses are necessary for a proper trial.
So much, so commonplace.
But how does delay affect the Democratic presidential race? It means Trump’s trial will still be going during the Iowa caucuses and perhaps also through the New Hampshire primary. Who does this help? Well, consider. It means that of the four top candidates, the two furthest left, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, will be stuck in Washington on trial duty while the two in the “moderate” lane, Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, will be campaign blitzing to win the first states in the nation.
Are Pelosi and Capitol Hill Democrats putting their thumbs on the scale for Biden the way they did for Hillary Clinton against Sanders in 2016?
Maybe.
But there is also a split in the party. As our cover story, “Obama’s Biden Betrayal,” makes plain, the former president is trying hard to undermine his ex-veep and getting ostentatious help from his media acolytes, notably during CNN’s debate on Jan. 14. The vainglorious former president is desperate to go down in history as the progenitor of a dynasty of “progressive” Democratic presidencies. He hates the idea that his stumbling septuagenarian sidekick might define the legacy for which he hankers.
Elsewhere in the magazine, Nic Rowan examines the high-spending but laughable presidential aspirations of Tom Steyer and concludes that the billionaire who experienced a Damascene conversion to deep green environmentalism eventually got fed up with financing the campaigns of politicians who ignored him and decided, instead, to run himself. Kaylee McGhee writes of another doomed candidate, Sen. Cory “Spartacus” Booker, who, she says, sacrificed his reputation for bipartisan cooperation to his presidential ambitions.
In the wake of America’s elimination of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, Benjamin Weinthal declares that it is France and Germany that are undermining NATO, not the United States or its many allies in the Middle East. Economist Stephen Moore lays out the difference between working hard and hardly working.
Daniel Hannan and I lament the loss of Sir Roger Scruton, who died this month. As well as being a great conservative intellectual, philosopher, novelist, composer, editor, and fighter for freedom against communist tyranny, he was a personal friend and inspiration.
