Pelosi-- Away From The Mic: "The Proof's In The Putin"

Pelosi isn't happy about Tom Steyer's $10 million worth of impeachment ads. Neither is Trump. Pelosi says the ad is "a distraction." Her latest desperate strategy is a new slogan: "No Drama Democrats," which is supposed to make someone think that the Dems, in contrast to the chaotic Republicans, are the natural governing party. "While not an official slogan," wrote Heather Caygle, "Pelosi has discussed the strategy broadly in recent leadership and caucus meetings, urging members to avoid talk of impeachment and resist taking Trump’s bait on whatever topic is dominating his Twitter feed that day."

Pelosi and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD.) both issued cautious statements Monday after former Trump campaign aides were indicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. The House Democratic leaders reiterated their calls for an independent commission while carefully avoiding any speculation about Trump’s potential collusion with Moscow in the 2016 campaign.

...[Pelosi] is encouraging her rank and file to take a measured approach to all things Trump, banking on the strategy that the president and congressional Republicans will bomb big with voters on their own by next November... [S]he has encouraged Democrats to stay focused on policy battles, telling members at their caucus meeting last week they “will be in the majority” if Republicans head into the midterms without a single major legislative accomplishment... Pelosi has encouraged lawmakers to talk up what a Democratic majority can deliver for voters, plugging their economic message on repeat in hopes that it will eventually break through with voters.

It probably won't. It's too amorphous and tepid, purposefully so, in order not to offend the New Dems and Blue Dogs who have nearly as much in common with Republicans as they do with progressives. You think I'm exaggerating? Kyrsten Sinema, the grotesquely corrupt Arizona Blue Dog (head Blue Dog in fact) was, until recently when she started trying to clean up her act, sporting a ProgressivePunch score of 20, indicating that on crucial votes she was voting against progressive legislation 80% of the time. And although Sinema is certainly the worst Democrat in Congress-- the reason Upchuck Schumer hand-picked her to run for the Arizona open Senate seat next year-- she's hardly the only Democrat who votes with the GOP more than with Democrats on crucial roll calls. Look at this bunch of 10 freaks Pelosi is trying to accommodate, turning off millions of Democratic voters. Each one has an "F" rating:

• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- 37.39
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- 39.36
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- 39.62
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)- 43.33
• Charlie Crist (Blue Dog-FL)- 44.05
• Al Lawson (D-FL)- 45.76
• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)- 47.43
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- 49.18
• Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL)- 50.56
• Tom O'Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ)- 50.82

I bet Pelosi devoured Gabriel Sherman's Vanity Fair piece on impeachment though, even if it made her uncomfortable. "Until now," wrote Sherman, "Robert Mueller has haunted Donald Trump’s White House as a hovering, mostly unseen menace. But by securing indictments of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, and a surprise guilty plea from foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, Mueller announced loudly that the Russia investigation poses an existential threat to the president. 'Here’s what Manafort’s indictment tells me: Mueller is going to go over every financial dealing of Jared Kushner and the Trump Organization,' said former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg. 'Trump is at 33 percent in Gallup. You can’t go any lower. He’s fucked.'"

And Nunberg isn't exactly the only Trump worrying that that the fascist edifice Trump and Bannon built is hollow and about to tumble over. Impeachment is now something everyone at the White House is thinking about. Trump blames his mental midget son-in-law, although maybe he should have known Jared is a moron years ago. Everyone else who knows him does.

Speaking to Steve Bannon on Tuesday, Trump blamed Jared Kushner for his role in decisions, specifically the firings of Mike Flynn and James Comey, that led to Mueller’s appointment, according to a source briefed on the call. When Roger Stone recently told Trump that Kushner was giving him bad political advice, Trump agreed, according to someone familiar with the conversation. “Jared is the worst political adviser in the White House in modern history,” Nunberg said. “I’m only saying publicly what everyone says behind the scenes at Fox News, in conservative media, and the Senate and Congress.”)

And Bannon is revving Trump up with tales of McConnell and Ryan waiting to stab him in the back at the first chance. You thought the White House was an insane asylum before?

On Halloween, the NY Times published a column by Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein, A Readers Guide To Impeachment to promote his new book, Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide. Despite Pelosi's wishes, this is going to be a super-charged year until Election Day, 2018.