Pelosi Goes All-In on Impeachment But Now Must Win Over Public
Pelosi Goes All-In on Impeachment But Now Must Win Over Public
(Bloomberg) -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has launched her Democratic majority on a high-stakes, partisan impeachment fight she had resisted for months, gambling on an effort now backed by about half the country.
The 232-196 vote on Thursday blessing the inquiry, without any Republican support, put many Democrats from districts won by President Donald Trump on the spot by forcing them to decide whether to back an investigation that’s all but certain to result in impeachment. It’s a vote Republicans hope to capitalize on a year from now when those Democrats face re-election.
The reluctance of her more moderate members had persuaded Pelosi to slow the process, until now.
“It’s a sad day because nobody comes to Congress to impeach the president of the United States,“ she told reporters before the vote. Just two Democrats, both from Trump-leaning districts, broke with Pelosi to vote against the resolution.
The partisan outcome was not unexpected -- Republican lawmakers weren’t consulted in the drafting of the resolution and none of them have backed impeaching Trump. But it gives the president a powerful talking point as the battle starts to transition to higher-profile public hearings and ultimately a trial in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Trump’s re-election campaign on Wednesday night started running national television commercials, attacking Democrats including Pelosi for not focusing on “real issues.” It adds to the flood of tweets and statements from Trump lashing out at Democrats for investigating him.
“The Impeachment Hoax is hurting our Stock Market,” Trump tweeted Thursday as the House debated the resolution. “The Do Nothing Democrats don’t care!”
Separately the Congressional Leadership Fund, a GOP super PAC, said it’s launching a digital ad campaign targeting 29 Democrats from Trump districts who were key to their party winning the House majority in 2018.
Pelosi has been buffeted all year by competing demands. House Democrats, especially from districts Trump won in 2016, had resisted backing a formal inquiry while more liberal members from safe districts pushed hard to start proceedings. They cited a host of issues, including possible obstruction of justice acts laid out in Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s report.
But the stark picture laid out by an anonymous whistle-blower -- of a president withholding millions in military aid to Ukraine as he was asking Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son -- changed Pelosi’s calculus. It also led more moderate members to drop their reluctance.
The speaker also shifted her tactics under unrelenting attacks from Republicans that the process lacked legitimacy because the full House had not yet taken a vote.
Political Peril
Many of the same reasons Pelosi was initially reluctant to pursue impeachment still exist, however, including the lack of overwhelming public support for the inquiry. Polls show roughly half of the public backs the investigation, though not necessarily Trump’s removal from office. That ranges from 55% in a mid-October Quinnipiac University poll to 48% in a Grinnell College survey about the same time.
Pelosi herself has fretted about the wear-and-tear on the voters’ psyches, telling columnists recently that she wonders how much the American public is willing to endure, according to Atlantic magazine.
“How much drama can the American people handle?” she asked, according to the magazine. “Where does the law of diminishing returns set in? Where is the value added not worth the time?”
Democratic Representatives Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey and Collin Peterson of Minnesota voted against the resolution. Van Drew, a conservative, won a seat in 2018 that had been in Republican control for more than two decades. Peterson is in his 15th term from a strongly Republican district that gave Trump 61% of the vote.
That there were no other defections from Democrats elected in Trump country is an illustration more of Pelosi’s legislative prowess than to these members’ great desire to run on impeachment next November as they face voters.
Still, the fact that Republicans stood united in opposition -- including all 19 who aren’t seeking re-election to the House next year -- is a testament to Trump’s power within the party and his hold on GOP voters.
Republican Concerns
Republicans have troubles of their own, however, with the vote tying them ever closer to a president who continues to poll poorly and with the potential for more damaging testimony ahead. The political balance also is complicated by numerous retirements of senior Republicans, making the climb even steeper to regain the speaker’s gavel.
Representative Justin Amash, an unabashed Trump critic who quit the Republican Party earlier this year and became an independent, warned his colleagues against lining up behind the president.
“This president will be in power for only a short time, but excusing his misbehavior will forever tarnish your name,” he tweeted before voting with the Democrats. “History will not look kindly on disingenuous, frivolous, and false defenses of this man.”
Ground Rules
Republican have complained that the entire inquiry is unfair and illegitimate, and that the House resolution doesn’t change that.
“At least today the majority’s admitting what we have known all along -- that the House was not following an appropriate process for impeachment,” said Representative Tom Cole, the top Republican on the Rules Committee.
House Rules Chairman Jim McGovern countered that the resolution gives Republicans equal power to question witnesses, the ability to issue a minority report and issue subpoenas unless the majority votes to block it. It’s a standard that Democrats said was similar to the process used during the impeachment inquiries of presidents Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon.
To contact the reporters on this story: Steven T. Dennis in Washington at sdennis17@bloomberg.net;Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, Steve Geimann, Joe Sobczyk
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