38 United States The EconomistJune 1st 2019
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ancy pelosiappears to be in a somewhat contradictory posi-
tion. In her second stint as Speaker of the House of Represen-
tatives, the 79-year-old Californian has won plaudits for keeping
the enlarged Democratic House caucus united, passing over 100
bills in five months, and intimidating Donald Trump as no other
politician has done. Remarkably, given that the Republicans have
spent a decade pinning her face to a metaphorical dartboard, the
president has largely refrained from badmouthing Mrs Pelosi. He
is said in private to express admiration for her grip on her party.
Meanwhile, Mrs Pelosi is denying a growing minority of Demo-
cratic lawmakers and more Democratic voters what they most
want: Mr Trump’s impeachment. This balancing act is likely to get
harder after Congress reconvenes next week.
Ever since six Democratic House members drafted impeach-
ment proceedings against Mr Trump 18 months ago, Mrs Pelosi has
claimed to be open-minded on the matter, while manifestly
against it. A witness to Newt Gingrich’s effort to oust Bill Clinton,
which led to a wave of sympathy for the president, a boost in his
ratings and his acquittal by the Senate, she fears impeaching Mr
Trump—a politician whose entire modus is based on grievance—
could have the same effect. It would almost certainly not lead to his
removal, given his own control of his party.
Hence Mrs Pelosi has offered a series of reasons to avoid press-
ing the button. After Robert Mueller refrained from accusing Mr
Trump of the obstruction of justice that his report describes (sim-
ply because Justice Department guidelines forbade him to do so,
the enigmatic prosecutor suggested on May 29th) Mrs Pelosi said
that further House investigations were required. After the presi-
dent began defying the Democrats’ subpoenas—and last week
promised to end all bipartisan co-operation while they continued
their probes—she claimed Mr Trump was so obviously goading
Democrats to impeach him that they must not take the bait. Yet
some House Democrats have had enough of this.
Around 40 are committed to launching an impeachment inqui-
ry into Mr Trump, the preliminary step to impeachment. As an in-
dication of which way the party is moving, around half of the
Democrats sitting on the House Judiciary Committee, which has
borne the brunt of Mr Trump’s obstruction, are among them, in-cludinga senior Pelosi lieutenant, David Cicilline. Pro-impeach-
ment groups, such as Stand Up America, which has recruited over
2m members in the past two years, are planning a media blitz in
Democratic districts. At a town-hall meeting in Michigan this
week Justin Amash, a Republican congressman, gave them addi-
tional encouragement by arguing that Mr Trump’s “incredible dis-
honesty” made impeachment necessary. “I think you have to have
proceedings to deter this kind of conduct,” he said, before a crowd
of outraged Republicans and grateful Democrats, in a state that Mr
Trump won by a narrow margin.
This is liable to get ugly. Not least because most Democratic
proponents of impeachment are on the left, which sees Mrs Pe-
losi’s reticence on the issue as part of a broader want of conviction.
“I think that, at a certain point, this is no longer about politics,”
says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But that is not true. Impeachment
is almost always about politics. And Mrs Pelosi, as her standing in
her party indicates, is a better judge of its interests than her critics.
The decision to impeach is a political one informed by legal
precedent. In other words, even when it is obvious, as in Mr
Trump’s case, that an official has met past impeachment stan-
dards, the Speaker is under no compulsion to impeach. Indeed, if
Mrs Pelosi believes impeaching a malfeasant president would
make him stronger, she is entitled to argue that her constitutional
duty is not to do so. When Mr Amash accused her of “trying to play
it both ways”, in seeking to hold Mr Trump to account while pro-
tecting Democratic interests, he was in a sense merely describing
her job. Only if Mrs Pelosi had downplayed Mr Trump’s wrongdo-
ing, in order not to impeach him, would she be failing in her duty,
and she has not. She says Mr Trump is so obviously committing
impeachable offences that he is becoming “self-impeachable”.
Whether they know it or not, most of her Democratic critics are
also making political calculations. Most Democratic voters—rep-
resenting around 45% of Americans—now say Mr Trump should
be impeached. And Ms Ocasio-Cortez represents one of the safest
Democratic districts in the country (which, to boot, she has vowed
to represent by putting a firecracker up the sort of Washington
consensus-building Mrs Pelosi is engaged in). Yet to win a majority
in the House, and probably also the presidency, Democrats need
over 50% of the electorate, because of the uneven distribution of
their votes. And Mrs Pelosi has that margin, of flakier Democrats
and independents, who are much less likely to consider impeach-
ing Mr Trump warranted or important, strongly in mind. That is
why she has taken more pains to promote and mollify the con-
cerns of the many new Democratic members elected in competi-
tive districts last November than lefties such as Ms Ocasio-Cortez.
The torrent of bills House Democrats have passed has been de-
signed to honour promises, on health care, fighting corruption,
and so forth, that these majority-making Democrats made on the
trail. So far, few of them have said they want to impeach Mr Trump.A marginal voter decision
This may well change. The Mueller report has had little impact on
public opinion mainly because hardly anyone—even in Congress,
according to Mr Amash—has read it. Yet in his frenzied effort to
shut down legitimate congressional probes into his affairs, Mr
Trump is threatening to re-enact, in plain sight, the obstructive be-
haviour it describes. If that starts to interest marginal voters in im-
peaching him, expect Mrs Pelosi to do so. But don’t try second-
guessing her. The Democratic Speaker knows her caucus better
than her critics do. 7Lexington Nemesis Pelosi
The House Speaker is the best judge of whether to impeach Donald Trump