Dems pressuring Pelosi to push impeachment of President Trump

By: Mary L.

The Mueller report leaves Democrats in a bind: pursue the impeachment of President Trump to please the progressive base, or lay off and infuriate their most passionate partisans?

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is under pressure to follow the lead of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who became the party’s first 2020 presidential candidate to push for bringing charges against Trump.

“There are some things that are bigger than politics,” Warren told a crowd at a campaign event in New Hampshire on Saturday. “I have called on the House to initiate impeachment proceedings.”

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and others in the party’s brash left flank have joined Warren’s call.

“Doing nothing when we are seeing blatant disregard of the United States Constitution, to our ethical norms, is dangerous,” Tlaib—who publicly promised to “impeach the motherf-ker” when she was sworn in three months ago—said Thursday.

But an impeachment push, doomed to fail in the Republican-controlled Senate, would endanger moderate Democrats who won midterm elections in Trump-voting districts last year, leaders worry.

That could shatter the fragile party unity Pelosi has been desperate to maintain.

Pelosi was a member of the House in the 1990s when its Republican majority impeached President Bill Clinton—sparking a voter backlash that drove GOP Speaker Newt Gingrich out of power. She is loathe to repeat their mistake.

“I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country,” Pelosi said last month. “And he’s just not worth it.”

Initial polling in the wake of the report’s Thursday release supported that decision.

Only 31 percent of liberal and moderate Democrats say that impeachment is worth pursuing, according to a Business Insider poll released Friday.

But the same poll found that almost 50 percent of those who call themselves “very liberal” want to see House Dems prosecute the president.

That split could weigh heavily on the party’s presidential candidates, because Democratic primary turnout is often dominated by its liberal wing.

And the flames are being fanned by activists like Tom Steyer, the billionaire hedge-fund manager who has been spending big on ads and outreach to boost public support for impeachment.

For now, House leaders are resisting the call. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Thursday that impeachment is “not worthwhile at this point” —and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), whose panel would be in charge of producing articles of impeachment, will only hold hearings on the investigation.

“Where it’s moving toward, I don’t know,” he told WNYC on Friday. “The idea is not to decide whether to debate articles of impeachment; we may get to that point.”