House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called President Trump “a very dangerous person who should not continue in office.”
Pelosi’s talk of an unhinged president, and her rush to impeach on Wednesday, may expose the first fissures in her party as total Democratic control looms. Even the president-elect has refused to endorse a second impeachment. When asked, Joe Biden said, “What the Congress decides to do is for them to decide.”
Pelosi’s own behavior has raised concerns about her judgment — from the ripping up of the State of the Union speech to what some see as over-the-top talk of denying Trump access to nuclear codes to her nod to trendy campus priorities, changing House rules to bar the pronouns “he” and “she” to gender-neutral language.
Analysts have often noted it’s a short step from the “Big Tent” of the Democratic Party to the “circular firing squad” of the party. Democrats lost 10 seats in House. Republicans won 11, narrowing Pelosi’s comfort margin.
And in the Senate, a 50-50 deadlock that would give Vice President Kamala Harris a tie-breaking vote does not ensure a rubber stamp of Pelosi’s priorities.
Among Senate Democrats is a newly empowered bloc of centrists. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has repeatedly said that she opposes removing the filibuster. John Tester of red-state Montana told the Washington Examiner last week that “bipartisan legislation tends to stand the test of time.”
This was a sentiment echoed by Arizona’s Mark Kelly, who told the Washington Examiner, “It’s important to the future of our country that Democrats and Republicans can work together.”
Michael Bennet of Colorado opposes ending the filibuster, as does conservative Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia. He opposes much of the progressive agenda, saying, “I will not be the 50th Democrat voting to end that filibuster or to basically stack the court and all of the other things you’re hearing about, defunding the police. I don’t know of any Democrats in the caucus that are for defunding the police. We’re not for that whatsoever. And when they talk about basically ‘Medicare for all’? We can’t even pay for Medicare for some.”
It all suggests that talk of a Democratic legislative steamroller after Jan. 20, may be, like so much in Washington, hot air.
