By Max McAuliff, Opinion Editor
Whether you support the impeachment of President Trump or not, one thing that is for sure is that it is a lengthy process.
The House of Representatives officially announced an impeachment inquiry into President Trump in September because he allegedly asked the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate the son of political opponent and former Vice President Joe Biden. In November, public impeachment hearings began and lasted several weeks before the House voted to impeach Trump. Instead of immediately sending the articles of impeachment over to the senate, however, the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, held onto them for more than three weeks. While Pelosi claimed that it was because she wanted more information on the rules of the trial in the Senate, many believe there is a different reason. One possibility is that Pelosi wants Biden to win the Democratic nomination for President.
There are a couple of reasons to why Pelosi may have held onto the articles for so long. Holding onto the articles for three weeks aligns the current senate trial up with the Iowa caucus. Iowa is the first state to hold a primary or caucus for the 2020 Democratic Presidential nomination. The caucus is this coming Monday, Feb. 3. Instead of being on the campaign trail, Senators Sanders, Warren, and Klobuchar are sitting in on the senate’s impeachment trial. Sanders and Warren have a far better chance at winning the nomination than Klobuchar, but she’s nevertheless still a candidate. But guess who’s not sitting in on a Senate impeachment trial, Biden (yes Pete Buttigieg too although he has recently taken a tumble in the polls). Biden has been able to stay on the campaign trail in the weeks leading up to the Iowa caucus while three of his Democratic opponents have been stuck in the senate.
Why exactly Pelosi would want Biden to win the nomination over Sanders or Warren is the question. Perhaps she, along with apparently Sanders, does not think a woman can win the Presidential election and therefore does not want to see Warren win the nomination. Maybe she thinks that Sanders is too far left and would not stand as great a chance against Trump as the more moderate Biden would. That being said, Sanders has seen a steady uptick in his poll numbers since early January.
Politicians always have secret agendas and the fact of the matter is that we will probably never know exactly why Pelosi held onto the articles for as long as she did. In all actuality, she probably just wanted to know the rules of the Senate trial. But the three weeks that she held onto the articles raised a lot of questions and had a lot of people asking, what is Pelosi up to?
mcaulimr18@bonaventure
