No, impeachment isn’t when Aunt Betty puts up the fruit preserves for the winter in the Mason jars. It’s a different thing all together.
Michael Conway [Former counsel, U.S. House Judiciary Committee]/NBCThink:
If William Barr continues to defy subpoenas, Watergate offers House Democrats several options
In this fight, not acting to preserve its powers as a co-equal branch of government could relegate Congress to subservience in perpetuity.
Embracing its unique constitutional role to check an out-of-control executive branch by using its impeachment power against either President Donald Trump, Barr or both will be the sole way to guarantee that Congress can enforce its subpoenas.
Only by instituting an impeachment proceeding will Congress be equipped to act on the evidence that Mueller intended to convey to it. And by not acting, a dangerous precedent will be set, relegating Congress to subservience to the president as a forever-unequal branch of government…
Recognizing in 1974 the impracticability of arresting Nixon, the staff report offered a second option: seeking a court order to enforce compliance. However, the co-equal nature of the executive, legislative and judicial branches raised a constitutional problem with seeking relief in court, suggesting, “it may be thought inappropriate to seek the aid of the judicial branch in exercising these powers.”
And, the staff added, seeking either criminal or civil relief for presidential noncompliance would “pose a number of problems for this inquiry, including delay, the uncertainty of relying upon the executive branch to prosecute the chief executive, and doubt whether an incumbent president may be prosecuted for a criminal offense before his impeachment and removal from office.” (This would certainly be applicable today, as any effort to compel compliance could well be tied up in court beyond the 2020 elections.)
The staff finally noted that noncompliance itself might be evidence in an impeachment proceeding.
So today’s pundit round-up is a bit long but there’s a lot going on.
Fred Wertheimer/NBCThink:
Nancy Pelosi has set House Democrats on a road that may lead to Trump's impeachment
Today’s House investigation of Trump mirrors the initial approach taken by the Senate Watergate Committee — with a few key differences.
Pelosi’s position recognizes that the American people must be fully informed about the specific abuses laid out in the Mueller report. It also recognizes that public support currently is not there for the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
Polls taken after the report’s release show that only 34 percent and 37 percent of the American people support moving to impeachment.
The need for the public to be educated on the Mueller report’s analysis of Trump transgressions became all the more clear with Tuesday’s stunning revelation that, in a March 27 letter, special counsel Robert Mueller challenged Attorney General William Barr’s misleading summary of the report in Barr’s March 24 letter to Congress.
Leonard Pitts Jr/Miami Herald via Aberdeen News:
By January of this year, my ardor for that remedy had cooled somewhat. I wrote that while Trump surely deserves impeachment, the politics of the moment would make that futile, as Senate Republicans are unlikely to vote for his removal. Besides, I noted, the process would “fracture an already fractured union” while failing to address the core sickness that made Trump’s presidency possible.
I still believe all that. But I am here to change my mind yet again. Blame the Mueller report. It has given me clarity, helped me appreciate something I didn’t appreciate fully enough before. Namely that, in allowing all of this to be framed solely around questions of what is politic and pragmatic, we miss something.
There is a moral imperative here, a stark question of right and wrong. These people keep doing things government officials are simply not supposed to do.
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
The White House’s latest attack on Mueller reveals an ugly truth about Trump
Because the Mueller report disclosed his conclusion that he could not conclusively determine that Trump hadn’t committed criminal obstruction of justice, the letter argues, the investigation is hopelessly tainted.
What’s more, it argues, Trump fully cooperated with that tainted investigation. But now that it’s over, he retains the right to exercise executive privilege to prevent his advisers from testifying to Congress — that is, to resist all efforts to further flesh out Mueller’s conclusions.
The argument is ludicrous but revealing. It shows in a roundabout way that Trump’s real position is that he should be beyond the reach of accountability entirely.
Tierney Sneed/TPM ($$$):
Sorry House Dems, There’s No Capitol Jail For You To Detain Defiant Witnesses
No evidence suggests that any room in the Capitol was ever designated for use as a jail,” the Historian’s Office said.
According to the Historian, in the rare instances that inherent contempt was used in the 19th century, the detainees were held in a committee room, or, occasionally, a nearby hotel.
There was, however, at least one instance the Historian could find in which a witness — a real estate speculator named Hallet Kilbourn — was held in an actual jail. In that case, it was the District of Columbia’s Common Jail. Kilbourn ultimately filed a lawsuit challenging his detention that went to the Supreme Court, which ultimately imposed some limits on Congress’ contempt powers. There was also separate litigation over his habit, while in detention, of ordering lavish meals from the House Restaurant and the refusal by the Sergeant-at-Arms to pay the tab.
Even without an actual Capitol jail, there is still a process of inherent contempt — albeit one that hasn’t been used in nearly a century. Read more about inherent contempt in these Congressional Research Service reports here and here.
Piece included because of the two excellent Congressional Research Service links at the end. Get used to the concept of “inherent contempt”. That’s when Congress acts (referral to Justice is depending on the executive and going to court is, of course, Judicial) all on its own as a co-equal branch.
RCP:
Whom the Democrats Nominate in 2020 Matters -- a Lot
If only a small number of unattached voters are up for grabs, the emphasis of campaigns naturally has shifted to the “base.” Feed them red meat and maximize their turnout.
We have been skeptical of this newfound conventional wisdom. One of the reasons many voters seem more set in their partisan voting inclinations is that today’s parties are much more homogeneous than in the past, nominating the same types of candidates from office to office. For example, liberal antiwar candidate George McGovern in 1972 differed far more from moderate Jimmy Carter in 1976 (“a respectable alternative to George Wallace”) than Barack Obama in 2012 and Hillary Clinton did in 2016. For that reason, we would expect more voters to change their decisions between 1972 and 1976 than between 2012 and 2016. The question takes on heightened importance in light of the crowded field of candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Many Democrats consider Donald Trump such a flawed president that they believe any Democrat can defeat him. If so, the party has an opportunity to elect a president closer to the views of the base than it would with a more positively regarded Republican incumbent. Some data support this view. One recent poll included trial heats pitting eight potential Democratic candidates against Trump. All eight won.
Is it really the case that any Democrat can beat Trump? On closer inspection, that outcome looks less certain. For starters, history shows that one shouldn’t put much faith in trial-heat polls 18 months ahead of a presidential election. Moreover one recent survey experiment by YouGov indicates that a surprisingly large proportion of the electorate – about 40 percent -- reports that the choice between President Trump and a Democratic challenger depends on the identity of the Democrat. These voters are “in play” or “up for grabs.” There are more of them than there are completely committed Democratic or Trump voters.
Alex Pareene/TNR:
Judging by all available polling, though, Harris is not even close to the frontrunner. (And Cory Booker’s campaign seems to be utterly foundering, suggesting that counting up endorsements may not be the best way to measure the viability of a candidate from a state, like New Jersey, with a powerful, old-fashioned party machine.) Most national polls put her in a distant third or fourth place, frequently trailing South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a relative neophyte who was polling at basically zero a month ago.
This doesn’t render “the invisible primary” obsolete as an explanatory factor. The seemingly overnight rise of Buttigieg is in fact evidence of the concept’s durability: People have heard of him, and tell pollsters they support him, because his press is managed by Lis Smith,a well-connected Democratic operative who formerly worked for Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, and Politico’s big donor analysis shows he is extremely popular among former Obama and Clinton bundlers. The energy around Mayor Pete is partly a reflection of the political press translating its knowledge of his advisers’ records and his popularity with the donor class into stories about his candidacy that create a sort of aura of “viability.” The new frontrunner, the former vice president, has, as you’d expect, even more institutional support behind him, especially among Democratic mega-donors and longtime elected officials.
So, what has, thus far (there is a lot of election left to go), prevented Harris’s campaign from breaking out? And for that matter, how is Elizabeth Warren receiving so much glowing press for her transformative policy agenda, but still polling just as poorly as Harris?
As the horserace quants at FiveThirtyEight explained, both are victims of the Democratic electorate’s fixation on “electability.” Polling broadly shows Democratic voters thinking Joe Biden has the best chance at winning the general election. That is exactly what Biden would like everyone to think, and that belief practically constitutes the sole argument for his candidacy.
This refers to Joe Biden saying the problem is Trump and not Republicans:
It’s like impeachment: you don’t always need to say the quiet part out loud.
NBC:
'Hung jury': Public remains divided over Mueller probe in new NBC/WSJ poll
Sixty percent of Americans say President Donald Trump has been dishonest in the Russia investigation, but it's a mixed bag on impeachment hearings.
And on the question of impeachment, the public remains split: 48 percent of Americans — including eight-in-10 Republicans — believe that Congress shouldn’t hold impeachment hearings and that Trump should finish his term as president.
That’s compared with a combined 49 percent who say that Congress should begin impeachment hearings now (17 percent) or should continue investigating if there’s enough evidence to hold them in the future (32 percent).
Among Democratic respondents, 30 percent want impeachment hearings now, while 50 percent prefer to wait for more evidence.
“We see a divided country with Republicans saying move on, Democrats saying dig in and independents in the middle saying hold on,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates.
Do it in sorrow not in anger, but do it. Hold hearings, go where they take you, says Nancy Pelosi, NY Times, but do it deliberately:
When asked whether Mr. Biden would pay a political price for his grilling of Anita F. Hill during the 1991 confirmation hearings for Justice Clarence Thomas, Ms. Pelosi shook her head in the negative and waved a hand dismissively.
More than anything, Ms. Pelosi is focused on pursuing center-left policies she thinks will help her party out in 2020 — a focus on pragmatic improvements to health care, ballot access, clean government, immigration and infrastructure, one that emphasizes beating Mr. Trump politically without obsessing over Mr. Trump personally.
In her mind, that means grinding away at initiatives that she hopes will help re-elect new members in battleground districts, even if it risks delivering some achievements for Mr. Trump, and angering some critics on the left.
Policy section today is on something we don’t talk much about (well, I haven’t, anyway)— rural and farm policy, focusing on Iowa. Back in March, Elizabeth Warren (article in Des Moines register) laid out farm policy including pushback against corporate interests:
The Democratic presidential candidate's plan, released exclusively to the Des Moines Register before it was unveiled Wednesday, would address consolidation in the agribusiness industry, "un-rig" the rules she says favor its largest players, and elevate the interests of family farmers.
Yesterday, Bernie Sanders (article in DMR) had a major policy speech, calling for
"radical" changes to the American agricultural economy that would transition the nation's food system away from the big agribusinesses that dominate much of the sector today toward a model built upon small, family farms.
During a 50-minute speech at the Mitchell County Fairgrounds in Osage, Sanders introduced new policy approaches to farm subsidies, supply management programs and rural investments. While his speech and the simultaneously released policy proposals focused largely on agriculture, Sanders called for a rejuvenation of rural America with new investments in long-declining communities….
During his speech Sunday, Sanders identified the food production system as a matter of national security, and he pledged to restrict foreign ownership of American farmland. Since the 1970s, Iowa law has prohibited foreign ownership of farmland.
The agribusiness consolidation is a common theme here in both Sanders’ and Warren’s approaches. And there are some major players, including Tyson Foods, Inc., JBS S.A., Cargill, Inc., and National Beef Packing Company, LLC recently named in a class action suit by American ranchers and farmers for using their market power to depress prices. The DMR link suggests Warren had Tyson and Bayer-Monsanto in mind when unveiling her policy. JBS SA, interestingly, has a history of political corruption in Brazil (owners Joesley and Wesley Batista were arrested, imprisoned and paid a $3.2 billion fine. Bribing the last three presidents is one way we got to a right wing government there). Tyson’s takeover issues appear to go back a ways as well.
The theme of foreign ownership runs through all of this, from the class action suit to the policy proposals. DMR says over 32,000 farms have been lost in the last three decades in Iowa alone. Look for more of defending family farms against Big Ag as the campaign heats up (and by the way, I learned there’s an Iowa law preventing foreign ownership of the land but not the product. A bit of populist sentiment on this issue is not unexpected.)
If you’re a farmer, these things matter (and corruption is never contained in a neat box). If Democrats want to compete in rural areas, they’ll need policies that address rural needs, including the broadband expansion that Bernie highlighted, as well as a focus on rural hospital closures. It’s good to see the above, which has not been a focus as much as health care and college loans. Stay tuned for more.