Swing State Dems Warn Pelosi Fixation Over Trump Impeachment Could Hurt Them

According to a new article from Politico, multiple swing state Democrats have voiced their concern over the “obsession” many in the party appear to have to impeach Trump, despite 2020 elections being only a year and a couple months away.

Politico reports, a day before the House Judiciary Committee took its biggest step yet toward impeachment last week, moderate Democratic Rep. Anthony Brindisi voiced his frustrations directly to Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The battleground freshman told Pelosi and other leaders at a closed-door meeting that he and other centrists feared that talk of impeaching President Donald Trump was threatening to swamp the Democratic agenda, according to multiple people in the room.

“It’s very frustrating for me — someone coming from a district that was one of the districts that helped get us into the majority — having so much focus on things like impeachment or other issues that are divisive,” Brindisi said in an interview, adding that he’s been talking to fellow swing-district freshmen who have similar concerns with the fall agenda. “We should be focusing on the kitchen table issues.”

In the same meeting, another moderate in the room, Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), pointed to alarming polling from the Democrats’ campaign arm, which showed that voters think the party is “prioritizing impeachment over other issues,” according to an internal summary obtained by POLITICO.

Pelosi responded by saying she was keenly aware of their concerns, and reiterated that the caucus does not have 218 votes for impeachment. And she stressed that only the full House has the power to launch proceedings — a statement that seems to conflict with the Judiciary Committee’s position that it is currently engaged in an impeachment investigation.

The comments by Brindisi and Murphy are the latest sign of the mounting frustration among the Democratic caucus’ small, but mighty, moderate wing. Since returning from the summer break, centrist Democrats have been venting — to each other and directly to Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler — about what they fear the public sees as a fixation on impeachment that could undermine their reelection prospects in 2020, multiple lawmakers and aides said.

Another vulnerable freshman, Rep. Max Rose, gave the same warnings about impeachment in a private meeting with Nadler. A few days later, Rose unleashed his frustrations publicly with an op-ed in his hometown paper, cautioning that Democrats are “in danger of losing the trust of the American people” with its unrelenting focus on Trump.

“I’m doing what I think is the right thing to do,” Rose said in an interview, adding that no single incident propelled him to write the op-ed. “I want to see this party — and I know it has it in it — get to work passing substantive infrastructure and health care bills by the end of the year.”

Nothing terrifies this corrupt president more than the idea of Congress upholding the rule of law.

We must open impeachment inquiries against Trump *and* Kavanaugh immediately. It’s our constitutional duty. https://t.co/OVjBDWSqZT

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) September 15, 2019

GOP House minority leader Kevin McCarthy has stated multiple times he believes the Democrats impeachment push is “imaginary.”

Two things I didn’t hear much about at last night’s Dem debate:
1. Impeachment
2. The economy

Probably because:
1. Their imaginary impeachment is going nowhere.
2. It’s an inconvenient fact that this is the best economy America has had in 50 years. pic.twitter.com/xTX1i2gCVy

— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) September 13, 2019