Photo : Tasos Katopodis ( Getty )

When it comes to the issue of impeaching one of the worst Republican presidents of all time, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has done exactly the same thing that she did over a decade ago when presented with the issue of impeaching one of the worst Republican presidents of all time: Nothing.


And as more and more House Democrats have come out and backed the push for impeachment, Pelosi has only become more indignant that it’s a bad idea, even refusing last week in a press conference to entertain “any more questions on this subject.”

And what exactly has the ostensible leader of the opposition party in Congress so publicly breaking with over half of her caucus on whether or not Trump should be impeached done to public support for impeachment? It’s cratered, and the Trump administration knows just who to thank.


Following Monday’s trainwreck of a Corey Lewandowski hearing, the Washington Post reports that Trump essentially knows that he’s in the clear:

Trump and White House officials, meanwhile, are reveling in Democrats’ difficulties. In fact, the president — who watched Lewandowski’s testimony from Air Force One on Tuesday — was laughing and joking about the hearing, arguing that Democrats have no idea what they’re doing and that no one cared about the Mueller report anymore, according to one person who spoke with him. [...] Two White House officials suggested that the administration could defy congressional requests because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has made it clear she is reluctant about impeachment. They also have calculated that there won’t be a public price to pay for stonewalling Congress, in part because the clock is running out.

“When I’m looking at the legislative calendar, you’re seeing there is not much left there. How much can they really do between now and when everyone is trying to run for their seats?” asked a senior White House official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.﻿

Incredible. A job well done.

Really makes it seem worth it that the Democrats have used their first nine months in power to pass legislation that Mitch McConnell was never going to allow a vote on in the Senate, instead of pushing through an impeachment effort that, even if it failed, would have at least cornered the GOP into a public vote of support for a corrupt and unpopular president. Also, there’s no law against doing both! Alas, I guess you can’t walk and chew gum at the same time after all.


Aside from just being a complete dereliction of duty from a chamber that’s supposed to hold the executive branch accountable, this is yet another shining example of the liberal insistence that Democrats should only publicly support things that poll with supermajority approval from the American public in order to stay in power after 2020.

Elections are not a game where you win if you’re left with a positive score after the net approval is added up on all of your issues, but regardless, polling is not some immovable object. It’s a snapshot in time. It changes, and one way to try to influence that change is for the leader of the party to make the case that it’s necessary, rather than allowing over a hundred mostly unknown members of the caucus to be labeled as freaks who don’t even have the support of their own leadership to pursue their far-left agenda.


On this measure—and really, almost every other one since the Democrats took control of the House in January—Nancy Pelosi’s leadership has been a failure.