General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: John Dean says don't send Impeachment to the Senate! [View all]onenote
(42,602 posts)Schumer already has written to McConnell suggesting a trial schedule for early January. Before doing so Schumer almost certainly consulted with Pelosi.
The idea of adopting articles and then not sending them to the Senate is both a bad idea and one that would be all but impossible to pull off (primarily because it is such a bad idea).
It is a bad idea because the Democrats chose to move expeditiously to adopt articles instead of continuing a lengthy and open ended impeachment investigation in the Judiciary Committee. Whether or not that was a good idea can be debated, but it was clear that the Democratic leadership felt that an open-ended process would be a mistake.
But once the decision was made to act expeditiously to adopt articles, the option of then sitting on the articles went out the window. The Republicans (and the media) would have a field day with what would be an unprecedented action. The message would be that the impeachment was just sham, that the Democrats are afraid of giving the President his "day in court," blah blah blah. And that message would drown out the Democrats message that the Republicans in the Senate are the ones about to hold a sham trial. Sooner or later there would need to be a trial and at this point there is every reason to believe the Republicans in the Senate are going to continue to stand by Trump no matter what.
Finally, as a matter of House procedure, Pelosi cannot just sit on the articles. Any Republican can offer a resolution directing the House to name managers and send the articles to the Senate. That resolution would be considered "privileged" under the House rules and would have to be put to a vote. While that vote might simply be a motion to "table" the resolution, even that vote would be, correctly, understood as a vote to stonewall the Senate trial. And Democrats in the House who just voted to adopt articles of resolution because, as Pelosi indicated, it was a a constitutional imperative to do so, aren't going to want to spend days and weeks (including the holidays) explaining why they were in a rush to impeach but are refusing to allow a Senate trial.
Pelosi has proven that she knows how to count votes. The fact that every indication is that the House will follow the regular order and send the articles to the Senate promptly after they are adopted is pretty strong evidence that there isn't support for holding them among the Democratic caucus.