Nancy Pelosi’s got this

| 9:09 am EST December 22, 2019
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When Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House, she openly spoke about not wanting to impeach Donald Trump unless she had to. Most pundits took this to mean she wouldn’t do it. In reality she knew she’d have to; he was in the midst of an ongoing crime spree. Her gameplan was to do her moral and constitutional duty in the kind of smart and strategic way that didn’t help hand Trump a second term.

Even as Pelosi was carrying out the impeachment process, she gave no indication that she had a gameplan what she was going to do after the process was over. This led most pundits to presume that she was just going to hand off the articles to the Republican Senate, and then watch helplessly as Trump was gifted a rigged trial by his own party. But it turns out Pelosi had a plan, because she always has a plan – and now Trump is fuming about not getting to have a trial any time soon, even as McConnell now wishes he weren’t involved in any of this.

We don’t know what Nancy Pelosi will do next. She has numerous options, in terms of sending the articles of impeachment sooner or later, in terms of what specific concessions about the trial she might be looking to get from McConnell, and whether she might bring additional articles of impeachment before or after the Senate trial. She is, after all, fighting numerous court battles right now over evidence and testimony, and she’ll do something with whatever new evidence she ends up getting her hands on, whenever she ends up getting it.

All we know is that Nancy Pelosi clearly has a gameplan for how to continue playing impeachment, and for how to continue dismantling Donald Trump. She always does. She can’t tell us what it is yet, because she can’t tip it off to Trump and McConnell, and because the plan likely depends on a number of still-moving parts. But thus far she’s handled impeachment just about perfectly. Whatever the rest of her plan is, it’s probably a lot better plan than any of the advice that’s being kicked around on social media right now. Pelosi has been a few steps ahead of everyone else throughout this process, and that’s unlikely to change.