and perhaps just not having witnesses. do you have any conventional wisdom, josh, is it out there on which approach is better for the democrats or the white house? i think mcconnell has actually shifted on this issue a little bit. remember, a short time ago, he was talking about how painful this was going to be for democrats who were running for president for the folks out on the campaign trail like senator elizabeth warren, senator klobuchar, senator booker and so forth, that they said be tiwoul up for week and weeks for some kind of trial for president trump and now it sounds like that was something of a bluff. i think what you have is a few moderate republicans who are basically, you know, stemming the discussion of an extended trial and are basically insisting that you won t have witnesses that could really take this in a very strange direction like for example calling hunter biden. so you have that small group.
based on their election. but if they vote for the president to remain in office, that will provide more likely a situation where people will not vote for them again because they are violating their trust after they have been elected to office. rick, i want to go back to what you were saying about the way the senate trial plays out with the debate to what witnesses to call, if they call witnesses, how long they think the trial should be. according to the washington post reporting, senate republicans are coalescing around the strategy of holding that short impeachment trial in january that would include no witnesses, a plan that could clash with the president s desire to stage a public defense of his actions toward ukraine, that would include testimony the white house believes would damage its political rivals. what do you think would be the best way to go about this? well, that is a different question. let me tell you what i think that they will do. i think that is right. they wil
want to have any ability for democrats to say that the vote to impeach him had republicans with it. so we know that there will be a lot of pressure from republicans on those members not to defect and to stick with their party to show a united front in support of the president. but on the other side of the aisle, the house whip is not going to try to campaign for yes votes. not in any formal sense. they said we can have some defections and we ll still get our impeachment vote because remember they need 17 democrats to defect in order for the vote to fail. and that is not going to happen. and democrats are also key on not putting too much pressure on some of their members that could help some of them lose next year s. so we don t think that democrats will do a formal whip operation to try to get their members in line on this. and as we look ahead to the senate trial, i know you ve been covering mitch mcconnell and his indications, lindsey graham as well as making the indication tha
i think that they will keep it relatively short and hopefully relatively painless for them so that they get this on and off the senate s agenda in a week or so. and last question here for both of you. liz, there is a poll that is following the house judiciary hearing. it shows support for the president s impeachment, but pretty much unchanged since september when all of this of course ramped up with the public display and the tell sizevised hearings. are voters minds already made up on this? it does appear that views are hardened on this even going into the trial. this was a bit of movement after the news first broke of the phone call away from trump, his approval ratings dipped a bit and then it sort of bounced back a little bit and just stayed steady, which after so many weeks of proceedings, a new revelation is coming to light is pretty surprising, but i think it just goes to show how in two
two articles of impeachment, a big decision macing tfacing t. and there a new york times survey and it finds that 166 supporting the articles, 159 expected to vote no. only one democrat by the way jeff van drew said he won t vote for them. 19 house members are undecided or unclear how they stand. and no answer yet from 87 members. joining me now, liz and josh. and welcome to you both. so two critical things to look forward to. you have the full house vote expected on wednesday. you have the senate trial sometime in january. so i want to start with the house, liz. the focus appears right now to be on how those modern democrats will vote on impeachment. 31 hold seats in trump districts, 17 say that we are