Democrats, as is their wont, can interpret this as a reason to give up, which is exactly what Blunt hopes they do, or they can interpret it as an invitation to send articles over and spend the next 12 days making Republicans pay a political price for doing nothing.
If I could impart one non-obvious thing to youngs about Congress it’d be that its famed gridlock isn’t obligatory. Its powers are awesome. Starting from scratch, a concerted House can impeach a president over your lunch break. A concerted Senate can remove him before dinner.
The gridlock stems from trying to get large numbers of people to agree to a course of action. But when a majority reaches consensus, as it has over the view that Trump should be impeached, it can move like lightning.
If it doesn’t then the leadership is choosing a slow pace for its own reasons.
I wrote about this in a bit more detail in the newsletter, but legal consequences aside, Trump’s attempt to overthrow the government makes the democratic reform agenda and the Trump accountability agenda a single agenda.
There were obviously points of overlap before, but now it’s just one thing. Joe Manchin can’t kill the former without leaving the government exposed to the next coup attempt: The most unpatriotic thing a senator could do.
DC statehood, voting rights, court reform etc. All require abolishing the filibuster. But they're not such abstract ideas anymore. They're insurance against the next attempt to seize control of government illegitimately, through corruption or force or both.
This is true. It’s also true that the mob sacked an institution whose leaders have insisted on pretending, in the face of all indications to the contrary, that everything is normal.
If you know days in advance, as I and everyone with functioning senses did, that the president was trying to incite a violent mob in the nation’s capital to stop the certification of his defeat, it should trigger both a security AND a political response.
When the latter doesn’t materialize, when the people under threat essentially say “what’s we’re witnessing is actually not happening, it’s an illusion” why wouldn’t that bleed down into the operations of the people charged with protecting them. Just another protest.
My guess: Neither of them will concede. I don’t know if refusing to concede will become the Republican norm or just very commonplace, but it’s not just a Trump thing, and Trump isn’t gonna go quietly anyhow.
Would be shocked if he ever did. People with no grace or integrity don’t tend to find it in defeat.