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Promoted from the diaries by streiff. Promotion does not imply endorsement.
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While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gives faltering press conferences and speeches (NOTE: The Internet is full of Pelosi craziness without doctoring videos), she now questions the mental health of President Trump.  Before pointing fingers, perhaps she should consult the therapist’s couch given the enormous pressure she is under.

Pelosi and her deputies have tried everything under the sun to get her caucus under control and stop talk of impeachment.  In a further sign of her descent into madness, she suggested that impeachment is actually yet another Trump conspiracy.  She warned her colleagues that “Trump is goading us to impeach him.”  By doing this, she taps into the Trump hatred within her party to try to convince them that this is exactly what Trump wants.  It’s sad to watch, but also entertaining.

Pelosi’s Democrats won back the House in 2018 thanks to the Trump haters.  Midterm years are notorious for low turnout, particularly for Democrats.  But, 2020 will be different with higher turnout and even though she can thank the Trump haters for 2018, they will be the downfall of the Democrats in 2020.  And here’s the political rub and Pelosi knows it: the loudest voices for impeachment hail from districts Democrats cannot lose.  It has made obscure nobodies like Ted Lieu, Maxine Waters and Adam Schiff television news mainstays.  It even convinced an even bigger nobody- Eric Swalwell- to run for president in 2020.

All the noise emanating from the House comes from the Congressional Black Caucus and members primarily from California and New York.  They come from strong Democratic districts where Republicans cannot win.  The more noise they make, the more funds they raise and the more television appearances they receive.  Instead, these noise-makers in the party have more to fear from the Left than they do the Right, or even independents.  Alienating a fellow Democrat or infuriating a Republican makes no difference to this group.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was the warning.  What those calling for impeachment most fear is another DSA-backed progressive crawling from under a rock and challenging them.

The proof is in the numbers.  In 2016, Schiff raised less than $1 million, but over $6 million in 2018.  The same trend was seen by others like Waters, Swalwell and Sheila Jackson-Lee.  Every incumbent Democrat in 2018 who was on the record for impeachment saw their fundraising figures increase.  With numbers like that, there is no incentive to stop the talk of impeachment.  Further, where Democrats did pull off surprise victories, one can trace a large portion of the financial backing for those candidates from out-of-state sources.  This is the conundrum Pelosi faces.

A NPR/PBS/Marist poll at the end of April is telling.  Only 16% of respondents were in favor of impeachment while 42% wanted an end to the incessant investigations.  Even among Democrats, support for impeachment was only 27%.  Metropolitan areas favored impeachment while rural and suburban areas did not.  Pelosi knows she has the metropolitan districts sewn up in 2020.

In 2018, according to exit polls, support for impeachment was highest in New York and California.  That is why you see people like Nadler and Schiff all over the news.  It is also the two states from where most of the money comes.  California and New York donors financed the campaigns of many challengers in red and purple districts throughout the country.  But, perhaps only Pelosi realizes that the rest of America is, thankfully, not New York or California.

Democratic donors are telling Pelosi and Schumer one thing while their electorate is telling them something opposite.  Thus, Pelosi and company are caught between a rock and a hard place- a victim of a con job by donors promising something they knew they could not deliver- impeachment.

Further, with the Mueller report mainly a dud (there was no collusion and no obstruction), the media now needs something to keep their tanking ratings from further swirling down the toilet.  Pelosi is faced with two choices:  money and the media, or win elections.  She cannot have both.  So, she has to walk that tightrope and walking a tightrope in cut-throat Washington would place obvious pressure on anyone.

It explains her now convoluted reasons to avoid a push for impeachment- it is what Trump wants.  This is an attempt to string along donors and the media until the elections in 2020 in an attempt not to alienate the independent voters she needs to keep districts won in 2016, and to pick up a few more.

But, what if the strategy fails and Trump is reelected in 2020?  That sound you will hear will be the earthquake caused by Pelosi’s fall.  It is also why the Democrats will likely play it safe in 2020 and nominate Biden to oppose Trump.  If he loses, then the AOC wing will blame Pelosi for playing it safe and not being more radical.  A Trump victory tears apart the donor game con and Pelosi retires in the minority in disgrace.  A Biden win and she does one last “I told you so” victory lap.

With each passing day, keeping the donor class and her unruly caucus at bay is becoming harder and harder.  Her failures to reign in rogue voices like AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Nadler, and Ilhan Omar indicate cracks in the Pelosi veneer.  When you think about it, the Mueller report took some of the pressure off Pelosi, perhaps more than it took the pressure off Trump.  Instead, the strategy of never-ending hearings, subpoenas, and investigations are a safe bet.  They are designed to play out the Pelosi waiting game, trying to run out the clock and maybe catch a few Trump associates in something while nevertheless not alienating independents or riling up Republicans.  And, incidentally, talk of Republicans supporting impeachment WILL rile up Republicans (with all due respect to Justin Amash and Susan Wright).

Americans care less about impeachment than they do about a do-nothing Congress.  Pelosi’s pre-White House meeting statement that Trump is involved in a cover-up of something seems to be, in retrospect, by design.  In effect, she laid the precursor to an unsuccessful meeting on infrastructure spending- one thing Trump and the Democratic leadership agree upon.  It was not Trump who torpedoed that meeting; it was Pelosi.  She could have easily told waiting reporters: “It was a productive meeting.  Now excuse me…I have a meeting at the White House.”

The Democrats have become a singular issue party despite the ridiculous proposals coming off the campaign trail that will never come to fruition and are the fantasies of the Left’s wet dreams, and that issue is hatred of Donald Trump. The haters have poured manpower and money into a fractured party making the fissure even wider.  It is not Pelosi or Schumer’s party now- its the party of the haters who will settle for nothing less than destroying Trump.  And they will persist even if destroys them too.

There is always a silver lining.