The Reach To Impeach, Con't

The battle over impeaching Donald Trump continues for the Democrats with the focus shifting to the biggest blue state of them all, California.  This weekend marks the state's 2019 Democratic convention, and on Saturday it quickly turned into Nancy Pelosi versus everyone else.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was just moments into her speech Saturday when a man shouted out from the back of a convention hall stuffed with thousands of delegates to the state Democratic Party convention.

“Impeach Donald Trump!” he screamed, uttering a battle cry Pelosi has rebuffed, despite growing demands from her party’s activist wing.

“President Trump will be held accountable for his actions,” she said. The I-word never left her lips.

Less than an hour later, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) stepped to the same podium to deliver a very different message. “We need to begin impeachment proceedings!” the presidential candidate bellowed. The crowd roared.

The party’s deep divisions, refreshed when last week’s remarks by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III raised new questions about whether Trump had committed impeachable violations, played out time and again during the first full day of the weekend convention as they have across the nation.

Democrats’ dueling messages highlighted the dilemma confronting the party’s congressional leaders and presidential hopefuls: how to balance the demands of a fervently anti-Trump activist base without alienating the more moderate voters who helped hand them the House in 2018 and could deliver the presidency in 2020.

Saturday was the first of two days that in total will feature speeches by 14 Democratic presidential candidatesin the self-styled home of the Trump resistance. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) electrified the crowd with a fiery address that appeared to take a swipe at former vice president Joe Biden, who did not attend. Three of the candidates are scheduled to speak Sunday, rounding out the largest gathering of 2020 presidential contenders to date.

Among activists, fury with Trump reached the boiling point after Mueller reiterated Wednesday that he could not clear the president of obstructing justice in his probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump’s defiant attitude toward congressional oversight has stoked further anger.

“That’s adding salt to the wounds,” said Maria Elena Durazo, a Democratic National Committee vice chair and California state senator.

It has also opened a fissure between Democratic congressional leadership and the party’s White House hopefuls, who were once largely united in opposition to impeachment. After Mueller’s comments, the list of presidential candidates calling for impeachment grew, even as House Democratic leaders stood firm.

Pelosi and her top lieutenants are seeking to persuade Democrats that the best action is to stay the course they have charted — to continue to investigate Trump and rely on the courts to intervene when they are stonewalled by the administration.

“Our investigations are breaking through the Trump administration’s coverup to get the truth. We want the truth for the American people,” Pelosi said Saturday. She noted two recent court victories and Mueller’s public statement. 

I understand that activists and convention delegates hardly represent the rank and file of Democratic voters across the country.  Many of us just want Trump gone and we want the person most likely to beat him as the 2020 candidate.

I understand that betting against Nancy Pelosi is a sucker move.

But I also understand that Mitch McConnell is running the show now, and that Pelosi is losing the battle with him.  House Democrats have passed dozens of progressive bills, and McConnell has killed every single one in the Senate, refusing to vote on anything Pelosi has gotten through.

The case for impeachment is strong, and I still tend to side with Pelosi: unless there's an ironclad case, impeachment will go nowhere in the Senate.  Trump will only turn to increasingly bellicose actions in order to get hearings off the front pages.

I don't know what the answer is, and it's increasingly frustrating.