The famous photograph of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pointing at President Donald Trump during a confrontation at a White House meeting in October was widely described as a political Rorschach test.

To Trump, it was an image of a Pelosi meltdown. He tweeted the photo. To Pelosi, it symbolized defiantly standing up to the president. She put it on her website.

That’s the same dynamic among partisans after two days of impeachment hearings. Democrats say testimony from credible diplomats is building a strong case to impeach the president and remove him from office. Republicans dismiss it as hearsay from government bureaucrats who, along with others, have sought to undermine Trump. They say that the hearings only distract from conducting the country’s important business.

It’s hard to imagine the Republican-controlled Senate convicting Trump after the certain impeachment by the House, barring an astounding new revelation. Such a “bombshell” from the hearings will be tough to come by because already there’s little doubt about what Trump did; the question is whether he should be impeached for it.


From White House releases to transcripts of testimony during closed hearings, evidence is accumulating that Trump tried to pressure longtime U.S. ally Ukraine into conducting investigations of his political rivals by withholding U.S. aid.

The audience isn’t necessarily Senate Republicans, none of whom has suggested Trump has committed an impeachable offense, but the voters in 2020.

People have made up their minds on impeachment. According to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, 62 percent of voters say there’s no chance they’ll change their minds on the matter. Another 19 percent say there’s only a small chance. Nearly half of those surveyed say they support impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate, 49 percent and 48 percent, respectively.

But that’s different from the decision facing voters on whether to support the president’s re-election.


That’s what prosecuting and defending the case is really about. It’s a high-stakes battle even if the end result in Congress seems predictable.

The daily, or minute-by-minute, analysis of who’s up and who’s down seems to dominate media coverage so far. How that impacts the public is unclear. But people are now hearing and seeing testimony — on live broadcasts or subsequent video clips — from human beings rather reading dispassionate words from statements made in private.

Essentially, Democrats are attempting to bolster the case on basic information we’ve already known. Republicans have been countering that steady drumbeat by pointing out that the witnesses don’t have first-hand knowledge of what Trump said, and seeking to raise further doubts about their testimony.

So far, Democrats have had the upper hand. That’s not surprising, considering they control the hearings. But that doesn’t guarantee success. They were in charge when special counsel Robert Mueller testified and that hearing not only fell flat, some analysts concluded it helped the president’s cause.


This time around the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank, largely has been disciplined, holding narrowly focused hearings with understandable narratives laid out by foreign service professionals.

Still, things could go south for House Democrats on a number of fronts. One of them concerns the public’s attention span.

Impeachment proceedings are serious and rare, but no longer unfamiliar in modern times, given President Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998. The momentousness of what’s happening could be dulled by the public’s exposure to the culture of constant investigations in Washington. The impeachment hearings are long and not scintillating, even though important information is being discussed. The public could lose interest.

If anyone was getting bored by the testimony on Friday from Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Trump changed that, at least for a while. As she was testifying, the president tweeted harsh criticism of her abilities as a diplomat. At best, he attacked a witness giving a compelling statement about how she was undermined and a victim of a smear campaign by Trump and some of his allies. At worst, it allowed Schiff to ask her to respond to the president, followed by him suggesting Trump was engaging in real-time witness intimidation.


That moment, like others, could fade into the coming volumes of testimony. Keeping the public engaged is a challenge for Democrats. But if people seem ready to move on from the hearings before they’re over, that doesn’t mean the intensity of their interest in impeachment is waning. As the polls showed, people know where they stand.

Besides, the hearings are being framed in ways the pubic has pretty much heard before.

“Day One of the Trump impeachment hearing was a lost day for Democrats,” was the headline of a column in the Los Angeles Times by Scott Jennings, a former adviser to President George W. Bush and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“The evidence of wrongdoing by Trump is overwhelming,” countered the headline of a New York Times column by Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.


The paths of impeachment and the Senate trial may seem clear. But neither Democrats nor Republicans can merely go through the motions, because it’s not about who has the votes in which house of Congress.

McConnell has thrown cold water on a possible Republican attempt to quickly dismiss the case. “My own view is that we should give people the opportunity to put the case on,” he said.

Impeachment by the House could be viewed as the linchpin to defeating Trump next year, the last straw in a three-year string of controversies involving the president. Conversely, a strong defense and acquittal in the Senate could make this a footnote as he rides a strong economy to re-election.

The most credible case to the audience beyond the Beltway may determine which side wins.


Tweet of the Week

Goes to Sarah D. Wire (@sarahdwire) of the Los Angeles Times.

“Pelosi has joined Democrats using the term ‘bribery’ rather than ‘quid pro quo.’”