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The final debate before Democrats caucus in Iowa might have been the most boring debate of the 2020 primary cycle, excepting the feud between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Also, new revelations about Rudy Giuliani’s conduct and the Senate GOP’s apparent willingness to entertain new witnesses throws a new wrench into the impeachment process.
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Using the strategically delayed impeachment trial to tie up Sens. Sanders, Warren and Klobuchar in the Senate and off the trail is, for Pelosi & co., a feature not a bug. Looked to me like they all knew it (“as if the debate didn’t really matter”) but what could they do? Except maybe Bernie; not the good party soldier Warren and Klobuchar are, Sanders had to be double-dispatched, once in the debate by Warren and CNN and then again with the others by Senate jury duty scheduled by Pelosi for exactly the time most critical for the ‘challengers’.
I came here to say the same thing. Most commentators I’ve seen have been wondering how Pelosi thinks the delay will help the impeachment effort, but I think they are working with too narrow a focus.
Pelosi hates the way the progressive left has been boxing her in and pushing untenable and unpopular policies; she presumably also believes that Sanders and Warren have far too small a chance of defeating Trump in the general election. And she’s probably already come to terms with the fact that impeachment and removal cannot possibly succeed.
So her delay of the proceedings until just before Iowa was not actually part of a struggle against McConnell (as she has been pretending) – it’s actually a sneaky way of kneecapping Senators Sanders and Warren at a crucial moment, with the intent of smoothing Biden or Buttigieg’s path to the nomination.
To piggyback a bit off of Abe, I’ve come to the conclusion that people are afraid of angering the Bernie base, and people can’t go after Biden because they’d have to criticize the Obama administration, which would turn off the black vote.
So they come with these glancing blows but to not seem negative they prop up their personal positives. The problem is all the energy on the left is they want a killer and not technical fighter that will outpoint Trump