PLEASE CALM DOWN! Raskin's move was absolutely perfect. This was a win

[DonaldsRump]

195. Nite! It's early still in the West Coast, so I will keep it going from my side

Remember, as Speaker Pelosi pointed out, the Ds had no choice: (1) they impeached before trump left office (i.e, a lawful impeachment); and (2) the then-Senate Majority Leader McConnell refused to cause the Senate to accept the impeachment. I am taking Speaker Pelosi for her word. That doesn't mean the impeachment was premature; instead, it means that the trump mal-adminstration would have refused to cooperate as it always has done and there was no other way to hold him accountable. trump would never have allowed any one of his people to testify, much less the Secret Service etc. That changed at 12 noon on January 20, 2021 and, most especially, the moment the Ds became the Senate's majority party.

I do not believe, under the peculiar circumstances of the way trump operated as ersatz-POTUS, that the impeachment was premature. Indeed, if you analogize impeachment to a grand jury indictment, impeachment simply means that an offense is chargeable, not that it is convictable. The conviction phase is where the real evidence comes in (in other words, during trial).

In other words, there was no other way for the Ds to do this. They impeached the monster while he was still (allegedly) POTUS, tried to get the Senate to act on it, which it refused, and then started this trial at the earliest possible opportunity. Under these circumstances, a Senate Select Committee, suspending the hearing indefinitely, would, IMHO, be exactly what McConnell would have done had the tables been turned.

The Ds have to fight fire with fire. Watergate and Benghazi are perfect examples of how effective elongated proceedings can be used (1) in the former, to find the truth; and (2) in the latter, destroy a dangerous opponent.

Here, we had both. CNN said we "blinked". Did we? I really am not sure.