The district court judge at the center of this story is 54. That alone means she’s not going to be a SCOTUS nominee, no matter what else she has going for her.
Influential members of Congress can pitch their preferred names all day long but sitting right by POTUS is a VPOTUS from a state where its highest court houses a 44yo black female justice who cut her teeth in the US Solicitor General’s office after clerking for Justice Stevens
And while Breyer could pull a Kennedy and put his thumb on the scales for his own former clerk, I think KBJ is more likely to get elevated to Garland or Tatel’s seat on the DC Cir than skip straight to SCOTUS
Seems to me if nothing’s gonna get you the votes to convict, might as well get it over with and have Committees call witnesses as part of 1/6 investigation so Senate can pass COVID relief on schedule, then quickly get GOP to block voting rights bill to prompt filibuster nuke.
The trial was about seeing the impeachment process through to its finish. The evidence already presented was overwhelming. Most Republicans had already committed to “doesn’t matter, trial’s unconstitutional” as failsafe escape. Witnesses wouldn’t change that.
If the point is accountability, committee hearings can do that. Especially if they’re to factfind for the purposes of, say, a 14th Amendment Section 3 resolution against Trump, which would only require a majority vote:
Note that this case only exists bc people got mad when SCOTUS OK’d execution of a Muslim without an imam by his side in a state that only provided Christian pastors so SCOTUS stopped a state with similar rules from executing a Buddhist, and so those states just barred all clergy
Ambitious Senators' greatest refuge is also their worst fear: no one will ever remember them or what they do unless they become President.
And should they become President, no one will ever remember what they said or did as Senators.
All's to say: how any Senator votes on this impeachment trial won't haunt their historical record because, well, history will forget them. Instead, they will vote based on present political considerations and/or personal sense of right and wrong.
"The voters, the courts, and the states have all spoken. They've all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our Republic forever."
McConnell: "The election actually was not unusually close. Just in recent history, 1976, 2000, and 2004 were all closer than this one. The electoral college margin is almost identical to what it was in 2016."
Trump on his SCOTUS noms: "They rule against me so much. You know why? Because the story is I haven't spoken to any of them since virtually they got in. But the story is they're my puppet...they hate that it's not good on the social circuit..."