Nancy Pelosi is still holding all the Senate impeachment trial cards. Now she has to play them right.

| 8:00 pm EST January 21, 2020
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Today we saw Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell back down from his plan to hold twelve-hour-per-day impeachment trial sessions, just one day after he claimed he had the votes for it, making clear that he was lying about having the votes. It’s the latest reminder that McConnell isn’t holding any of the cards when it comes to this trial. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is still holding all the cards – but now she has to play them right.

Holdout Republican Senators like Mitt Romney, Joni Ernst, Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, and Lisa Murkowski can’t be trusted to do the right thing, but they can be trusted to selfishly do whatever they think is in their own personal best interests. They’re clearly nervous about how to proceed with the trial, for fear voters might punish them personally for how it plays out. Without them, McConnell doesn’t have a majority.

So once the trial gets fully underway, those holdout GOP Senators will look at how the wind is blowing, and they’ll decide whether or not to force witnesses to be called. They’re collectively driving the impeachment trial train, each with one hand tepidly on the wheel, all of them waiting for media reaction and poll numbers before deciding which way to steer things. This is where Nancy Pelosi comes in.

If the holdout Republican Senators force Mitch McConnell to call witnesses like John Bolton and Lev Parnas, then Nancy Pelosi doesn’t have to do anything. But if those witnesses aren’t called, then Pelosi will have to decide how to play her cards. She can reopen House impeachment hearings and have those witnesses testify during the Senate trial. Or she can wait for the GOP Senate to stake itself to an acquittal, and then one-up them by reopening hearings on new articles of impeachment. Pelosi has all the cards. How will she play them? We don’t know, but neither do the Republican Senators.