NO SURPRISE

| 8:15 pm EDT October 24, 2019
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House Democrats have found the key witnesses they need to dismantle Donald Trump, and they’ve succeeded in getting those witnesses to testify, despite Trump’s best efforts to stop them. They’ve managed to say and do enough in public to keep impeachment poll numbers rising, even while conducting the testimony behind the scenes in proper fashion. Trump’s House GOP allies have taken their best swing in response, and completely missed.

There’s no easier way for the media to score cheap and easy ratings than to paint the Democrats as losing. It keeps conservatives pumped up and tuned in, because they love being told they’re winning. It keeps liberals tuned in out of fear. “Dems in disarray” is the narrative that every major news outlet pulls out of its backside when it needs to spice up a slow news day.

But impeachment is going so well for the Democrats, no one outside of the Fox News prime time hour can possibly try to spin this as somehow going poorly for them. So today we’re seeing multiple major news outlets suddenly pushing the narrative that they’re surprised the Democrats aren’t screwing up impeachment. Okay, that’s one way to spin it. But there’s no reason whatsoever to be surprised about this.

It’s not as if the House Democrats screwed up the Mueller report. The sad reality is that for whatever reason Robert Mueller wasn’t doing his job behind the scenes, and Bill Barr committed a felony in the name of burying what little Mueller did find. That’s not on House Democrats. And prior to that, they didn’t even have the majority. There’s this bizarre false notion out there that the Democrats should have started impeachment two years ago, when in reality they didn’t even take majority control until earlier this year. You literally can’t start an impeachment inquiry when you’re not in the majority; it’s not a thing.

Based on her track record over the past many years, there’s no reason to doubt Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Based on how he more than held his own the House Intelligence Committee as minority ranking member during Trump’s first two years, there’s no reason to doubt Adam Schiff. These people are smart, savvy, highly competent, and they’re better at this than Trump is. It’s no surprise they’re succeeding. This won’t go perfectly for them, but yeah, the House Democrats are overwhelmingly winning the impeachment battle thus far.