While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced Thursday that the Democrats are officially moving forward on drafting articles of impeachment against Donald Trump, three among the Democratic ranks have signaled that they’ll vote against it, while the only Republican that Democrats hoped would allow them to label the effort “bipartisan” has signaled he will likewise reject the effort. In other words, the Democrats appear poised to ram through an entirely partisan and increasingly unpopular impeachment against bipartisan opposition.
“After weeks of hearings, hyperbole, and histrionics over Ukraine-Gate, have House Democrats advanced the case for impeachment?” asked Ed Morrissey. in a piece for Hot Air published Thursday night. “Not only have they not moved the polling, they may have lost ground — in their own caucus. CNN’s Manu Raju caught up with the two House Democrats who voted against authorizing the inquiry to find out whether they support Nancy Pelosi’s call to advance articles of impeachment. Not only do they remain unconvinced, a third Democrat has begun throat-clearing on potential opposition.”
In his piece on the Democrats potentially losing ground after their much-maligned hearings, Morrissey highlights a series of tweeted reports by CNN’s Raju, who presents some unwelcome news to Democrats hoping to solidify their own ranks and win over anyone on the other side.
“Rep. Jeff Van Drew, one of two Democrats to vote against formalizing the impeachment inquiry, told me he plans to vote against all the articles of impeachment ‘unless there’s something that I haven’t seen, haven’t heard before,'” Raju reported Thursday. “Van Drew warned Democrats to ‘be careful what you wish for’ and he added that impeachment ‘is tearing the nation apart. … And I want to bring people together.’ Van Drew said he would have preferred a censure vote so they could ‘move on.'”
Raju also spoke with Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, the only other Democrat who opposed initiating the impeachment inquiry. Asked if he will vote to impeach Trump, Peterson told Raju, “I don’t have an idea what they’re doing.”
Peterson, Morrissey notes, is “running for re-election in an R+12 district that Donald Trump won by thirty points in 2016.”
So the two Democrats who voted against the inquiry to begin with appear to be standing firm in their opposition to impeachment. That’s bad enough, but losing another one is obviously worse. That might be happening with Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee (MI), Morrissey notes. The Michigan Democrat told Fox News Thursday that most of his constituents don’t want him wasting time on impeachment.
“Mostly I hear they want us to work on issues like the prescription drug prices and trade, and the economy,” Kildee told Martha MacCallum. “Mostly the American people want us to work on the issues that affect them at the kitchen table every day.”
“I’m really going to withhold judgment on any of that,” he said of impeachment, though he noted his concern about some of Trump’s Ukraine requests and potential “obstruction” allegations.
“This is a moment we have to be very clear, but also cautious to not get ahead of ourselves,” he added. “I want to see what those articles include.”
As for the lone Republican Democrats have been eyeing as a potential “yes” vote, Florida Rep. Francis Rooney, Raju also spoke with him and found some similar skepticism about the partisan impeachment. Rooney slammed the Democrats for their “rush to judgment” on the issue and said they should have “gone to court to fight for first-hand witnesses,” as Raju put it.
“You have all these people, the John Dean types, who are in the room with the president,” Rooney told Raju. “We ought to hear from them. That bothers me, I gotta say.”
That failure alone “might be” enough for him to vote no, he said.
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