Yes! The impeachment is very loosely akin to an indictment, which is where the decision is made to bring charges. The House is very roughly like a grand jury in this analogy.
Next, managers from the House will act effectively as prosecutors for a trial in the Senate.
Next, managers from the House will act effectively as prosecutors for a trial in the Senate.
https://twitter.com/C_Weynerowski/status/1349471806441271296
The Senate can vote to convict and will, in the event of a conviction, vote for the penalty. The two things we're looking for are removal from office (likely moot by that point), and barring him from holding office in the future.
It takes a two-thirds "supermajority" to convict and so the magic number we are looking for is 67, which will mean (if all Democrats hold the line) at least 17 Republicans crossing the line. This is far more likely to happen if McConnell comes out for conviction.
McConnell has semi-privately spoken in favor of impeachment, on the grounds that he wants to blaze a trail for the Republican Party post-Trump. Liz Cheney, in my analysis, has given him a lot of cover for doing so.
But I don't know that McConnell will see the point in showing his hand publicly for a while, especially when we're in such uncharted territory and it is possible for outside events (further violence, further actions by Trump) to shift the political winds.
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