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Occasionally, I like to take a look far down the road in an effort to see long-term political dynamics that others may be missing. I'm often accused of taking too long a look when I do. But I have to admit, a story today in Politico brought forth the same reaction from me, because it is concerned with the dynamics of Joe Biden's re-election effort, in 2024. I'll pause for a moment while you digest that one.
Today, House Democrats unveiled two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. This is a historic development, since it has only previously happened on three other occasions. Somewhat surprisingly, the Democrats opted to only focus very narrowly in the charges they brought, limiting them to the fallout from Trump's attempt to get the Ukrainian government to do opposition research on a political opponent. Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership made a decision in drafting such narrowly-focused articles, since they had the option of including other obviously-impeachable offenses, but in the end chose not to.
The impeachment train is rolling right on down the track, and nothing's going to stop it now. That was the big news this week, without question. This has all been happening at breathtaking speed, when you consider the usual glacial pace of things getting done in Washington. Just this week, the House Intelligence Committee put out its report on impeachment, handed it off to the Judiciary Committee, who then held their first hearing, and by week's end Nancy Pelosi was calling for articles of impeachment to be drafted so that the House could vote on them in time for the Christmas break. That all happened in one week.
We haven't formally taken the pulse of the Democratic campaign for a month now, so we thought it was time to dive back into the numbers.
In the intervening time, we've seen the total Democratic field (everyone who has run, even if they've subsequently dropped out) grow to a record-setting 29 candidates, although, thankfully, the number of active candidates is now down to "only" 16 left in the race. With so many left to still cover, let's just move right along and break them down one by one.
That title comes from Fiona Hill's testimony before the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment hearings this week. When Hill confronted Gordon Sondland over the quid pro quo Trump was forcing Ukraine into, she angrily told him: "This is all going to blow up." To which she added, to the congressmen questioning her: "And here we are."
I'm veering away from the impeachment hearings today to write up my reactions to last night's fifth Democratic presidential debate. This morning's testimony was pretty powerful, and Adam Schiff's closing statement was one for the history books, but it'll all have to wait until tomorrow.
The Democratic field now has 18 people in it, as Wayne Messam formally dropped out but Michael Bloomberg formally took his place. Other than Bloomberg, the candidates who are still running but who didn't appear last night are: Deval Patrick, Michael Bennet, Steve Bullock, Julián Castro, John Delaney, Joe Sestak, and Marianne Williamson. The ones who did appear on last night's debate stage: Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, and Tom Steyer. Hopefully, by the next debate, that entire list will have shrunk a bit more, but these days you never know -- maybe it'll even get bigger!
In the midst of all the impeachment-mania, there have been several recent interesting developments in the Democratic presidential primary race in the past few days. We've now got one-and-a-half more candidates in the race, a major candidate either backed off (as her detractors would have it) or clarified (as her supporters will tell you) one of her main policy positions, and a poll out of Iowa has shaken up the frontrunner status in that state. So let's dig into all of these developments in an effort to see where the race stands, two days before the next nationally-televised debate.
Rather than our usual weekly roundup, we are going to focus today solely on the public impeachment hearings. This is due to them being the most important thing that happened politically during the week, as well as the fact that we're admittedly more than a little frazzled sitting down to write this, after getting up at 6:00 A.M. and staring at the television for over six hours straight. Normally we would have used a good chunk of that time to sift the news stories from the past week, but that's simply not possible today. Nor is it all that important, because as mentioned everything else really pales in comparison to what is being witnessed right now by the American public.
Democrats have always been the masters of a rather dubious skill: second-guessing themselves. For any idea, proposal, or candidate for office, Democrats are continually seeking the perfect, sometimes (as the saying goes) at the expense of the good. Nowhere is this more evident than in Democratic presidential primaries. In fact, it's actually a general rule for Democrats, and it seems to be playing out once again this time around.
After a record-setting number of candidates has been battling it out for voter support for almost a full year now, some in the Democratic Party have now decided that what the race really needs is a few more candidates. This is pretty insane, obviously. To date, by my count, a whopping 27 Democrats have previously announced a bid for the presidency. These range from the well-known to people who are so obscure that few can even remember their names now, whether they've already dropped out of the race (Richard Ojeda) or are still running (Wayne Messam). Out of this incredibly wide field, 17 are still in the race. And yet this week we've seen the entry of the 28th candidate (Deval Patrick) and serious consideration by a man who would become the 29th Democrat to run (Michael Bloomberg). Maybe Democrats should go for an even 30? At this point, why not? Maybe Hillary will run again!
Republicans, it seems, are just never satisfied. First, they howled for a full House vote on impeachment. When the Democrats gave them one, they were not happy for some unfathomable reason. Then they demanded the end to "secret hearings" with no public transcripts. This week, Democrats began releasing all the transcripts to the public. When the first two were released, Republicans complained that the transcripts released were "cherry-picked." By week's end, all the major transcripts were released, putting the lie to this notion. Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham, in a snit, said that he wouldn't be reading the transcripts, for some unfathomable reason. Next week, public hearings will begin. So of course now Republicans are decrying the very idea of public hearings, for some unfathomable reason (President Trump: "They shouldn't be having public hearings."). It's almost as if Republicans don't care what they're complaining about as long as they get to complain about something. Hey, it's easier than trying to defend the indefensible, we suppose.