Nancy, What’s the Rush?

It appears now that the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives are in a hurry to send the two articles of impeachment voted out of the Judiciary Committee to the floor for a vote.  Assuming that it passes, it goes on to the Senate for a trial.

Rather than take their time and fully investigate the charges, Representative Schiff and Nadler limited the number of witnesses to only those that they wanted called.  Why?  Again, why?  The whistleblower has not made an appearance in front of either committee.  Again, why?

There are four plausible reasons.  One, the more debate, the more their lack of evidence gets exposed.

Two, polls show that their impeachment process is not doing well particularly with independent voters.  So the Democrats want to get this over as soon as possible and move on.  Cynically, they have served their base, delivered articles of impeachment that everyone knows are dead on arrival in the Senate.

Three, there are 31 Democratic seats in the House from districts that were carried by Trump.  Many are now in play and could imperil Pelosi’s majority so she needs to get those representatives on the campaign trail so that they can work to protect those seats.

Four, they, i.e. Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler strongly suspect that Durham/Barr are close to sending indictments to a grand jury.  When the charges come out, the Democrats are going to be embarrassed.  Some individuals from the Obama administration charged might even go to jail.  Even worse for Pelosi and company, the criminal trials, assuming that the media bothers to cover them, will continue during the summer and fall leading up to the election and could cost the Democrats votes and seats in the House.  Oh, oh!

Senator McConnell has an interesting choice when the articles of impeachment officially arrive in the Senate.  He can bring it to the floor and have a lengthy debate to expose the weaknesses of the Democrats’ charges.  Or, he can have a quick vote and be done with it.  Either way, if a trial happens, the chances of a conviction are between slim and none and slim left town months ago when this circus started.

The real risk to Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler and company is the longer the impeachment process drags on, the worse it will look for the Democrats.  Almost every American knows a kangaroo court when he/she sees one.  The Democrats own this impeachment process lock, stock and barrel and it has not gone well.

What the political cost of a very partisan impeachment process to the Democratic Party is unknown at this time.  We’ll find out on November 3, 2020.  And, if the Democrats lose the presidency and a large portion of their House majority or worse, control of the House, was it worth it?