House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 79, called Trump's bluff and rammed through Congress ON Thursday ground rules for an impeachment inquiry against the President after months of her painstakingly calibrated, go-slow strategy when she maintained she would not rush impeachment until there was a fairly simple set of facts pointing to impeachable offences.
The House impeachment probe vote passed 232-196 on party lines, setting the stage for many more public fights that will spill into election year 2020. All voting Republicans opposed the package. Every voting Democrat but two supported it. Both sides are preparing for the most bitter political duel in a decade. The impeachment inquiry centres around Trump allegedly withholding nearly $400 million in aid for Ukraine in exchange for dirt on Trump rivals.
By going all in with 12 months to go for the next US presidential election, Pelosi has taken on the highest stakes gamble in American politics. Pelosi's goals speak to Republicans' worst fears: Getting Trump out of the White House in 2020 and Democratic control of both chambers of Congress.
Pelosi is being hailed as a "badass", "amazing", "maverick", praise is pouring in from well beyond the political circles of Washington DC.
"She's a badass. She is everything you could want, in a way, out of a strong, vulnerable, powerful woman," House of Cards stars have said of Pelosi, in Hollywood today.
Pelosi, with a lingering half smile and zero fear on her face, has tirelessly confronted Trump in ways that have often left his own playbook in shreds. There is always the suggestion, when Pelosi and Trump face off, that she knows his weakness. She says that in as many words: "When he calls people this or that, this and that, I think he's projecting. He knows the argument that could be made against him-at least I think he should, or does-so he projects it onto somebody else. And you think, there's his weakness. He knows."
Trump's mocking photo tweet of Pelosi pointing her forefinger at him swiftly became her Twitter profile picture. When Trump referred to himself as an "extremely stable genius", she used his own words against him time and again and has finally taken the fight several notches higher, into the ring that Trump believes he knows best: prime time television.
The Democrats' eight-page impeachent resolution is written out to give maximum talk-time to witnesses in the impeachment inquiry, elicit a lot of information and play to the gallery. The resolution authorizes questioning witnesses for up to 90 minutes. That's a lot of time American voters tuning in to soak it all in.
"Think about how polling might change," warns Guy Smith, former Bill Clinton impeachment advisor.
"Today's vote wasn't about the underlying actions. It was just about how we need to go ahead with the investigation. What we're going to see now is the shift towards what actually happened and that's when things can change," says Joe Lockhart, former Clinton press secretary.
Since September end, when the anonymous whistleblower's complaint first came out, Trump's approval ratings have been going south.
Pelosi's next fight is clear to see: If she couldn't get a single Republican to vote even for the rules of the inquiry, how will she get 20 Senators to flip if the impeachment inquiry ends up in a Senate trial.
With the impeachment show moving to saturation coverage on prime time television, a potential shift in public sentiment could be all that Pelosi and team are looking for.
( With inputs from IANS )