People Want Impeachment Hearings, Not Fake Impeachment Hearings

Yesterday, AOC was on CNN talking about impeachment-- or lack thereof. Asked if she was satisfied with the way Pelosi is handling-- or not handling-- this whole mess, she replied, "personally, I am not... I think that an impeachment inquiry is right on our doorstep... If now isn't the time... what is the bar, what is the line that we're waiting to be crossed for an impeachment inquiry, and so far it doesn't seem like there is one... And so without a clear boundary, it seems as though we're kind of sitting on our hands. So, if now isn't the time, then I think a lot of folks would like to know, when is the time?" Even Jon Favreau, a more establishment-oriented Democrat, and host of Pod Save America, was quoted yesterday, saying "Impeachment hearings are the only way to ensure television coverage of Trump investigations. It’s the only way to take the microphone away from Trump. If you’re still against it, fine, but don’t expect regular hearings to command the same kind of media attention."

Pelosi's mini-impeachment bullshit, pointless committee hearings, that virtually no one is bothering to watch, is a dead end-- like Pelosi's self-destructed career. If the idea was that voters would watch and become enraged and demand impeachment, that's not going to work without an audience. Impeachment will get an audience; committee hearings won't. Pelosi and the rest of the House genriatric octogenarians should resign today, immediately-- this second-- and let the Democrats pick new leaders, not based on who most successfully whores themselves out to special interests and divvies up the moolah, but on the quality of members' leadership skills and policy ideas. I nominate Ted Lieu, Ro Khanna and Pramila Jayapal.

Let's take a step back and look at an essay from William Rivers Pitt at Truthout, Democratic Leadership Shoots Own Feet, Reloads, Shoots Own Feet Again. I think he saw the hearings Monday even more pointless than I did. "It should have been titled," he wrote, "Yet Another Example of Democrats Making Fools of Themselves While Wasting Valuable Time. It was a comprehensive disaster. Some of us saw this televised fail coming a mile away, and Donald Trump’s defenders had themselves a field day."

The entire hours-long endeavor served no purpose whatsoever in the search for knowledge regarding the Trump administration, but provided a splendid platform for right-wing grandstanding that will linger far longer than any of the proffered testimony. This kind of Democratic self-immolation has been going on for days now, and if it keeps up, Trump will win re-election next year by 4,000 points without ever having to leave the building.

“Here we sit today in a hearing with the ghost of Christmas past,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) of the hearing’s “star witness,” Watergate figure John Dean, “because the chairman of the committee has gone to the speaker of the House and sought permission to open an impeachment inquiry and she said no.”

Hard to argue with that statement, which captured the spinning-wheels nature of the entire event. Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) has been pushing hard to open a formal impeachment inquiry, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) continues to resist. In the absence of a genuine inquiry, Rep. Nadler was left to preside over Monday’s toothless farce.

Anything that makes a lump like Rep. Gaetz look sharp and witty is bad news, and when his star-turn comes at the expense of what should be a serious and legitimate inquiry by House Democrats, the writing on the wall is clear: Speaker Pelosi is fully prepared to let her caucus look like perfect fools in public if it serves her efforts to avoid impeachment entirely. It is beyond cowardice. It is dereliction of duty.

“Mr. Dean,” pounded Gaetz, “how many American presidents have you accused of being Richard Nixon?” The answer, now, is two: Before Trump, Dean spent most of the George W. Bush administration comparing that president to Nixon, as well. As with Trump, it was an apt comparison, but Rep. Gaetz targeted the repetition of the claim to lethal effect, stating, “We’re here reopening the impeachment inquiry potentially into Richard Nixon, sort of playing out our own version of That ’70s Show."

“The Democrats want to talk about Watergate?” crowed Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) on Fox News. “I mean, this happened before I was born. This is a total waste of time.” Gallingly, Senator Hawley is also correct: The hearing was a waste of time. This isn’t Watergate; this is worse by orders of magnitude, and despite Speaker Pelosi’s ongoing reticence to acknowledge it, the public at large knows this.

“A recent CNN poll released the last week of May found that 41 percent of the public supports proceedings while 54 percent does not,” reports the Washington Post. “Another Fox poll from May similarly found 42 percent supporting and 50 percent opposed.”

Those numbers have Pelosi spooked, but since we’re talking Watergate in the absence of actual action, let’s put them in context: Before the Watergate hearings began, only 19 percent of the country supported impeaching Nixon. After the hearings, that number jumped to 57 percent. Approval for impeaching Trump is already above 40 percent without a single real hearing being held. The ground does not get any more fertile than that.

“Privately,” The Post report continued, “several Democrats said they agreed with the GOP’s harsh assessment, wondering why Dean was called in the first place.” Terrific. An already-fractured caucus splits even wider, and Chairman Nadler-- a lifelong Trump foe who fears this rogue president not one bit-- is left straining at his leash, paws digging uselessly in the dust. Nadler didn’t have to do this hearing, of course, but he called it hoping that even a weak something would prove to be better than nothing. It wasn’t. Nadler deserves better than what happened on Monday. We all do.

It would be bad enough if Monday’s sham hearing had been the only Democratic failure of the last seven days, but it wasn’t. On Friday, the House Rules Committee announced it would not, in fact, follow through with plans to hold Attorney General William Barr and former White House counsel Don McGahn in contempt for defying subpoenas. By Monday, it appeared the contempt hearing was back on. Late Monday afternoon, however, a deal between House Democrats and the Justice Department to provide only a portion of the subpoenaed Mueller report evidence was announced, putting contempt back on the shelf.

It is exactly this half-assed, discombobulated approach that has been motivating Rep. Nadler to advocate so strongly for opening an official impeachment inquiry, because an official inquiry would put all the investigative eggs into one basket: his. This is not a power grab by Nadler, but a way to organize the frictionless chaos of the current situation under one roof.

Instead, we are left with the sort of raging incoherence evinced by Speaker Pelosi when she told Nadler on Tuesday night that she wants to see Trump “in prison.” Translation: She wants something she lacks the power to do, but refuses to undertake an action she absolutely has the power to do. This is Peak Democrats 2019.