Susan Ferrechio of the Washington Examiner reports on the congressional Democrats who don’t want to proceed with impeachment of President Trump.
While a few dozen House Democrats are clamoring to begin impeachment proceedings against President Trump, a faction of party moderates are quietly dampening the enthusiasm for trying to oust the president and could ultimately serve as the wall that protects him from impeachment.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has informed rank-and-file Democrats her goal is to keep control of the House in 2020, which requires protecting the 40 lawmakers who put them into the majority by winning seats previously held by Republicans.
Constituents in those districts tend to favor Trump and have little interest in an impeachment inquiry, which has prompted Pelosi to steer the caucus away from impeachment and instead toward oversight investigations of the Trump administration. …
… Other centrist Democrats from safe districts are also lukewarm about launching an impeachment inquiry.
Rep. Charlie Crist, who is the former governor of Florida, serving initially as a Republican, told the Washington Examiner constituents in his St. Petersburg district call him about healthcare and the environment and “not much” about impeachment.
Reps. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., and Collin Peterson, D-Minn., are among many other relatively safe centrist Democrats who aren’t eager to rush into an impeachment inquiry. Though Peterson’s district, straddling the western side of Minnesota along its borders with North Dakota, South Dakota, and Canada to the north, went for Trump in 2016 62-31%.
The number of lawmakers who favor impeachment within the Democratic Caucus has been slowly increasing, however.
