Nancy Pelosi is holding all of the impeachment cards, and Mitch McConnell is holding none

| 9:50 pm EST December 16, 2019
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Nancy Pelosi is an extraordinarily savvy political operative. It’s why she’s managed to survive at the top all these years, and she’s won most of her battles. Mitch McConnell is also quite the savvy political operative. It’s how he’s managed to spend decades prospering as an openly corrupt politician. They’re at the complete opposite ends of the morality spectrum, but they’re both unusually skilled at what they do.

So when I say that Nancy Pelosi is holding all the cards when it comes to impeachment, and that Mitch McConnell is holding no cards, I’m not saying it simply because I like her and despise him, even though I do in fact like her and despise him. I’m saying it because it’s true. Consider the impeachment options that Pelosi now has in front of her.

Pelosi can have these two articles of impeachment ratified against Donald Trump, and then sit on them until she thinks it’s politically advantageous to suddenly send them to the Senate, thus catching McConnell off guard. Or she can send these articles to the Senate right away, and leave McConnell guessing about whether she might send more articles in the new year, based on the impeachment evidence that she’s still battling in court to collect. What if McConnell rubber stamps Trump’s acquittal on these two articles, and then in the springtime, Pelosi sends over articles based on Mueller grand jury dirt and/or tax fraud? Senate Republicans would look terrible for having already announced he was innocent.

McConnell has a number of options for the Senate impeachment trial, but none of them are any good. If he tries to mount a dishonest defense of Donald Trump, he risks painting Senate Republicans as being complicit in his crimes when they have to run for reelection in 2020. If McConnell simply holds an open and shut trial with no witnesses, he risks painting Senate Republicans as not doing their jobs. No matter how McConnell handles the trial, he and the Senate Republicans will be worse for wear for it – and that’s before getting to the ways in which Pelosi can screw with him.

Just because Nancy Pelosi is holding all the cards on impeachment, it doesn’t guarantee she’ll win; she still has to play them correctly, and this is a tricky game with little precedent. Just because Mitch McConnell is holding no impeachment cards, it doesn’t mean he’s suddenly a hapless idiot. But the reality is that – no matter how much noise to the contrary we might be hearing from mainstream media pundits right now – Pelosi has the entire deck up her sleeve.