Wednesday 27 November 2019

If Impeachment Fails?

Around two months ago, most folks presumed that the hearings in the House would result in a packaged situation (3-plus charges) going to the House floor, and passing by 218-plus votes to move to the Senate. 

This week, there's hints that some House members (those running in difficult elections in 2020) are shaking their heads.  No one says the present number, but one might assume it's around five members in this shaky situation presently.  With 235 seats won in 2018, there's a slim 17-seat margin here.

So the likely scenario?

Most House members will return to their home-state today, and spend Thanksgiving in the district.  They will talk to various people, and return with a fresh prospective.  Most folks will tell them that there just isn't much coming out of this hearing business, and they are wondering what exactly has been accomplished so far in 2019 (little to nothing).

I will go and suggest that around fifteen members will appear by the end of next week, and suggest that a condemnation vote would be better, and just derail the whole impeachment hearing business.

Nancy Pelosi (House Speaker) will chat with various groups and count the votes.  I might suggest that she's only sure of about 210 votes, and that ten votes are real shaky, with the rest all saying they will abstain from the impeachment vote.  She might have the numbers, but it's real shaky and if they fail on the vote, it's massive fallout coming.

A week will pass, and the decision will be made to shut down the hearings, avoid the impeachment vote, and just condemn the President (getting all 235 votes). 

Then the news media is stuck with a 'dead' story.  How does CNN go for a full week straight....telling the dead story with twenty-five 'experts'?  The general public will be laughing over the situation, and the journalists. 

In terms of political value?  The Democrats will have wasted most of 2019 to reach this point, with nothing to show for the days of effort.  In simple terms, they got used by Trump yet again. 

No comments: