The Atlantic
February 9, 2021
AP / Bloomberg / Getty / The Atlantic
One casualty of a moment in American life when politics seems to pervade everything is an inability by many prominent people to tease apart what is and is not a matter of politics.
The second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, which gets under way today, offers several prime examples. As the refrain went during Trump’s first impeachment, in 2019 and early 2020, the impeachment process is political and not legal, even though it resembles a criminal trial. Yet in both the Democratic House managers’ case for prosecution and (more seriously) the defense brief from Trump’s attorneys, there is a confusion between matters that are appropriately legal or factual, and those that are political.
gallup and it just over a month. the percentage of people who support impeachment has been dropping and not among the partisans. democrats still want to impeach the president but the change has largely been among independent/swing voters, the presidents that will decide the number november 2020 election. and this gambit by a speaker pelosi to now hold the major and be unclear about how rapidly is moving over the senate strikes me as another tactical failure on the part of the democrats and it certainly makes it look more political and more partisan and less serious. dana: i was also thinking that undercuts the message on fairness. absolutely. we won t move this until the senate agrees to do certain things. remember under the constitution, the constitutions of the house hasn t sole power of impeachment and it says the senate has the sole power to