When the Democrat Speaker of the House of Representatives (and I use the word “representatives” very broadly here. God knows they’re more about representing themselves and their own interests than the voters in their districts) has lost CNN, you know she has messed up. Tremendously. Epicly.
In a new piece for CNN.com, Editor-at-Large Chris Cillizza explains to his readers — 99% of them progressive Democrats, of course — that Speaker Pelosi has truly botched her impeachment gambit. Her announcement that she’d send the impeachment articles to the Senate this week, Cillizza writes, “amounts to a stark concession that her plan to delay that action for nearly a month failed.”
“Pelosi’s goal was simple: To try to force Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s hand. Pelosi wanted to use her possession of the articles of impeachment to yield promises and/or compromises from McConnell — most notably on the issue of witnesses being allowed to be called in the Senate trial,” he continues.
However, there was one minor problem: “Except that McConnell wasn’t playing ball.”
“The leverage she imagined she possessed to get McConnell to accede to her wishes didn’t exist,” the CNN editor continues. “McConnell was perfectly happy waiting while Pelosi held on to the articles of impeachment, probably believing rightly that these sorts of delaying tactics would look like just more Washington funny business to the average person.”
Pelosi’s mistake, he concludes, basically boils down to her underestimating “the extent to which the Senate, by its very nature, resists being told what to do in any way, shape or form.” The Senate, he goes on to write, “has never liked being told what to do by the House,” regardless of which power is in power. “Each body views itself as an independent fiefdom, governed by its own rules and codes of conduct. The idea of one chamber telling the other what to do is simply anathema — no matter which party is in charge of each.”
When Pelosi refused to send over the articles of impeachment, progressives everywhere — but especially in the old, corporatist and radical leftist Media Cartel — hailed her for being a master strategist. Oh yes, she was showing Mitch McConnell how it was done. Pelosi was Girlboss. Awesome. Fantastic. Majestic. She was the new and improved Sun Tzu.
Only there was one issue with that talking point: Pelosi is, as Mark Levin frequently explains on his radio show, a horrible strategist. She may not be stupid as such — I highly doubt anyone with an IQ of, say, 65 would become Speaker of the House — but an Intellectual Heavyweight she is not.
Everybody could see that McConnell can do whatever he pleases. The House doesn’t dictate to the Senate how it should approach an impeachment trial. And if the House refuses to send over impeachment articles, well, guess what, the Senate can simply dismiss the impeachment altogether and inform the House that it’s game over. Or the Senate can just wait, and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait… until the end of time. After all, as long as there is no trial, the president remains firmly in the driver’s seat.