When Robert Mueller comes to Congress next week to field questions — "answer" is too optimistic — about what he learned in his investigation of Russia and Donald Trump, it’ll be his and our last chance to get it right; to inform the American people of the enormity of Trump’s offenses and our sacred duty to impeach him. If he doesn’t want to, or can’t be made to, we may all say, in unison with Mitch McConnell, “case closed” as all hope of impeachment will have died.

...We’re arrived here for two reasons. One is that Mueller, without telling anyone, took it upon himself to limit the scope of his mandate in a way no one foresaw or even imagined. Having accepted the idea — enshrined not in the Constitution or a law or a Supreme Court ruling, but only in a department memo — that no president may be indicted while in office, not even under seal for later prosecution, Mueller decided it would be unfair to the president even to mention that he’d committed multiple felonies. Till Mueller said it, no one, not even Bill Barr, had thought it.

The second reason is that Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic political and media establishments bungled their jobs from the first. That’s true not only of impeachment but of all matters pertaining to corruption. The media doesn’t know how to cover it; Congress doesn’t know how to investigate it; neither grasps its centrality to our politics or to the sad condition of our middle class, our democracy and our country.

...It is a poor tactician who thinks only of tactics. The job of Pelosi and her caucus now is to focus on duty. If they do, I think they’ll be rewarded politically, but they must put that consideration aside, because other considerations so outweigh it. First is the magnitude of the crimes. Altogether, the crimes of Johnson, Nixon and Clinton don’t equal Trump’s. He’s the most corrupt president in history. He plotted with a foreign power to steal an election, which meets most Americans’ definition of treason. He obstructs justice, which violates his oath of office. His incessant lies shred democracy’s very fabric. Loyalty to country, the rule of law and the truth aren’t just "norms." They are core values. We must defend them.

Second is our need for a public record of Trump’s crimes. When Pelosi says she’d rather see Trump jailed, she’s kicking the same can Mueller kicked to her. At least Mueller knew to whom he kicked it. For all Pelosi knows, a President Biden may decide bipartisanship means letting bygones be bygones. In an earlier column, I talked about the price we paid for our failure to investigate the lies that led to the Iraq War and the 2008 global financial meltdown. Deep down, we know if we fail to impeach, we may never know what happened, and that a democracy that can’t look itself in the eye may not be long for this world. Most important is that these crimes are all ongoing. This isn’t Whitewater, a look back at a failed real estate deal. Our democracy is under siege. While Trump and Putin laugh out loud, our next election is being stolen right out from under us. If you say we can stop it without resort to impeachment, you must say how.

More at https://www.salon.com/2019/07/16/last-chance-for-impeachment-next-week-robert-mueller-will-shape-history-but-how/

LAST FALL, WHEN Speaker Nancy Pelosi led Democrats back to a majority in the House of Representatives she was showered with praise for her political acumen.

But less than a year later, Democrats are increasingly seeing the downside of having their most powerful elected official more focused on protecting moderate House members than looking out for the broader health of the party — and the country.

...The speaker is seemingly doing everything she can to avoid getting in public fights with the Trump administration — even as she finds time to pick needless battles with prominent liberal members of her Democratic caucus.

...As the most prominent elected Democrat in the country, Pelosi alone has the power to challenge Trump and the GOP by ramping up investigations and even impeaching the president. Yes, House committee chairmen are regularly sending out new subpoenas — subpoenas which the White House consistently ignores. But there is an unmistakable sluggishness surrounding the House’s investigations.

Pelosi has the power to go after Trump and his administration aggressively — a move that could pay political dividends by raising the partisan temperature in Washington a year-and-a-half before a presidential election that could turn on Democrats’ ability to mobilize their core voters. Pelosi seemingly has smaller fish to fry. She has shown herself to be a creature of the House of Representatives, stubbornly refusing to act like a national Democrat and broaden her gaze beyond the three dozen or so moderate-leaning House districts that are essential to her remaining speaker.

More at https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/07/12/nancy-pelosi-failing-her-party/Sk7pzo653rXaDveUB2DELJ/story.html%3foutputType=amp

An internal battle among House Democrats took on new life Thursday as lawmakers turned against each other over questions of race, with the latest flare-up ignited by controversial comments from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her chief of staff. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants tried to move on but Democrats from several different factions within the party dug in, refusing to set aside lingering tensions that first broke into the open two weeks ago during a massive blowup over a border funding package.

...After weeks of squabbling, some Democrats are concerned that the rift could have lasting implications. The caucus is gearing up to navigate through three weeks of tricky issues, from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony to new immigration legislation.

...But members also recognize they’re caught up in a defining moment — the movement versus the matriarch. “The lesson is that we are in a very different world right now. And a freshman doesn’t necessarily have to sit back and mind their own business,” said Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.). “When you have 4 million followers on social media, you are a force that has to be respected. But if you have that power, you also have to understand what you want to do with it, and if it’s to blow things up, that’s not helpful.”

...Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal said she plans to raise her concerns with Pelosi in an upcoming meeting about broader issues — specifically how singling out freshman women of color like Ocasio-Cortez works to “diminish progressive power” in the caucus. “I don’t think the speaker is used to having a group of members who has bigger Twitter followings than her. I don’t think most of us are,” Jayapal said in an interview Thursday. “God, it totally resonates with me, absolutely,” Jayapal said when asked if she agreed with Ocasio-Cortez’s comments about being singled out as a woman of color. "We women of color have faced this for such a long time... We are in a body of mainly old white men. You don't get to be here without having dealt with that, most people."

...Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.), a progressive and member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said he was shocked when one of his colleagues brought up Ocasio-Cortez’s comments while they sat on the floor earlier Thursday and asked how he felt about it. “Seriously? It’s just not an issue in the larger caucus, it just isn’t,” he said, calling it “a distraction” from policy wins like this week’s massive defense bill, which he said is the most progressive in decades. “The caucus is working, and sometimes it’s not pretty, and it gets a little heated and tense,” Brown said. “What we’re doing right now is an example of the caucus is actually working.”

More at https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/11/nancy-pelosi-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-feud-1407292

Amid the relentless focus on Washington and presidential politics, a liberal political action committee has ranked the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates on something much lower on the political food chain — what they are doing to help Democrats win state legislative seats.

The idea is that rebuilding the party nationally depends on the hard work of winning seats in state legislatures around the country. With that in mind, the two-year-old Future Now Fund, working with the progressive think tank Data for Progress, is trying to apply pressure to the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates by ranking them in terms of who is doing the most to help Democrats win state legislative races.

A ranking released Thursday shows that Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas are currently the most engaged with candidates for state office. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. are also ranked in the top 10. Senator Kamala Harris of California is ranked in the bottom 10, according to the analysis, which has her slightly ahead of Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York and tied with the self-help author Marianne Williamson.

...Future Now Fund and Data for Progress ranked the 2020 Democrats using a point system that assigned different values to a range of actions taken. For instance, candidates earned one point for boosting a state legislator through social media, two points for citing a state legislator or candidate in emails to their national campaign list and three points for appearing in person with a state legislator at a public event. Those points were doubled if a 2020 Democrat showed support for a candidate or lawmaker outside the early-voting states of Iowa or New Hampshire.

The groups started tracking candidates’ activities May 1, and officials say they will release updated rankings each month until the Democrats select a nominee for president.

More at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/us/politics/2020-democrats-future-now-fund.html?searchResultPosition=2

On Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi reminded her caucus who the real enemy is, telling them that they needed to present a united front in the fight against Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. “Without that unity, we are playing completely into the hands of the other people,” Pelosi said, according to the Associated Press. “We’re a family and we have our moments,” Pelosi continued. “So, again, you got a complaint? You come and talk to me about it. But do not tweet about our members and expect us to think that that is just OK.”

It’s advice that Pelosi may have needed more than any of her colleagues. A Maureen Dowd New York Times column on Sunday quoted the Speaker sniping at a quartet of progressive first-term congresswomen. “These people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi said, in between boasting about hanging out with Bono and discussing her Napa vineyard. “But they didn’t have any following.” The representatives Pelosi was referring to—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley—had all recently voted against a version of a border funding bill that provided billions of dollars to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), but did so without any of the oversight most House Democrats had originally sought.

...Pelosi’s approach to impeachment is probably the clearest example of this schism. Fearing that opening impeachment proceedings will distract from—and undermine—the 2020 campaign, she has put the brakes on many measures to hold Trump and his administration accountable. Instead, she has made opaque and confusing public statements, claiming that Trump is “just not worth it” and that he “self-impeaches” every day. She has similarly declined to go after other Trump officials. Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, most recently, has been rightfully attacked for his shameful handling of a plea deal with billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein while serving as U.S. attorney for Florida’s southern district. Pelosi could launch impeachment proceedings against Acosta. Instead she launched a petition—attached to a fundraising ask. While Pelosi has a well-earned reputation for whipping votes and retaining loyalty, thanks in large part to her ability to dole out the huge sums she rakes in from donors, she has also consistently wielded power in this cautious manner.

...(Since 1980) the Republican Party has embraced a completely opposite approach to politics. While Democrats have long seen power as something to accrue and wield responsibly, they typically do little more than hoard it. The GOP, meanwhile, seeks power at all costs and wields it with abandon. No figure in contemporary politics sums up this approach better than Mitch McConnell, who has gone to extraordinary lengths, particularly when it comes to the federal judiciary, to use his power to reshape the government. The kinds of bold gambits on which McConnell has embarked—blocking Merrick Garland from the Supreme Court is a particularly galling example—are based on the idea that not only should power be used to the fullest extent possible, but that Republicans will more likely be punished for not acting than they will for taking aggressive action.

And in response, more often than not, Democrats are reactive, almost apologizing for what power they have. Leaders like Pelosi contort themselves to appear moderate and eager for compromise. They are terrified about any approach that looks like open, unabashed advocacy for the rights of undocumented immigrants, or restoring some degree of economic equity by (gasp) raising taxes on those who can most afford to pay them. They fear being called tax-and-spend socialists, more than they desire progressive results. And so they retreat, again and again, fearing that doing much of anything could cost them campaign contributions, and, ultimately, cost them seats. Looking over the barren landscape of recent American politics, it’s easy to see that this is not a particularly rewarding strategy.

More at https://newrepublic.com/article/154464/nancy-pelosi-abdicates-power