What do you think the message to a Republican is that articles of impeachment were voted simultaneously to giving Trump a trade win with USMCA? It's not-"boy those Dems are great, they can walk & chew gum at the same time, hold the president accountable & do the people's work."
It's: "We're winning. The Dems witch hunt is window dressing and will die in the Senate and Trump is going to keep the economy humming and be re-elected next November." The power of a strong stand on accountability and fighting corruption was undercut.
The narrowness of the impeachment push seems to validate the argument that the Mueller Report exonerated Trump. (The opposite of the truth.) And it looks like the Dems felt like they had to pay some kind of social rent for doing the right thing--by throwing in USMCA.
It is not a balanced message. It is a mixed message that gains not one vote and energizes the opposition. Sorry. That's the fact of this morning's events. You may disagree. High powered folks in DC disagree. Dem saints we can never question and their supporters may disagree.
But it's the truth. And we'll be the weaker for it. (And I say all this while fully supporting not just these articles of impeachment but more and also supporting passage of the USMCA...although I think it amounts to less of an upgrade than many suggest. It's kind of NAFTA 1.1)
