As Americans prepared to get on with Super Bowl Sunday and completely zone out from the madness going on in Washington, DC, the Senate took a final blow to House Democrats’ attempts to remove President Donald Trump from office.
It took just two weeks for the Senate to decide to close the case brought forward by the Democrat House impeachment articles which, for the first time in American Presidential impeachment history, did not list any accusation or evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
In an upset Friday afternoon vote January 31, the Senate voted not to bring forward any additional witnesses after days of hearing from the President’s legal counsel and Democrat House members names as the House managers of the impeachment trial by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) released his own statement on the Senate’s decision to “end” the trial, which began finally after Pelosi decided to send the impeachment articles weeks after the vote was held in the House.
“There is no need for the Senate to re-open the investigation which the House Democratic majority chose to conclude and which the Managers themselves continue to describe as ‘overwhelming’ and ‘beyond any doubt,’” he stated.
Polling has largely shown that the impeachment proceedings have only deepened Americans’ allegiances to their respective political party, and in fact has proven to bring more sympathy from independent voters to the President. As the Senate finally put the nails in the coffin of the Democrats’ impeachment saga, Americans turned their attention to the Super Bowl and to the Iowa caucuses that took place on February 3.
The timing of the impeachment trial meant that Joe Biden was able to get a head start on his ground game, as opposed to his more openly progressive opponents such as Bernie Sanders who were stuck in the Senate for the trial. And perhaps that is what Nancy Pelosi had planned all along.