Dogs don’t bark because they’re brave, they bark because they’re scared. The same can be said for the current House Speaker. Afraid of a revolt among the even more left wing of her party, afraid of a president her party looks increasingly unlikely to defeat in November, afraid of domestic and international American success via an approach that does not comport with her more liberal views and achieved without her consent, Speaker Pelosi has entered the twilight of her political career barking at all she fears. Enacting symbolic measures, absent any import, launching an impeachment, replete with hyperbole and hyper-gesticulation, yet devoid of any impeachable offense. In doing so she has both exposed and cemented her legacy, that of a barking dog with no teeth.
This past week, the Speaker spearheaded a largely symbolic effort to limit the President’s war powers, coming of course after a string of international successes that defied her adopted strategy of symbolic talk and no action. Her chosen action itself is wholly bark, with absolutely no bite, a non-binding resolution with no practical effect. Yet, more importantly, is how the feckless maneuver underscores her general philosophy of empty howling over substantive action.
In October, Mrs. Pelosi had, what many would call, a White House meltdown of Chernobyl proportions when President Trump altered the U.S. strategy in Syria. She, of course, preferred the Obama Syrian strategy of ever shifting but never enforced “Red Lines”, an empty bark with no bite. Days later, the Trump administration killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, in Syria. Over a weeklong period in late December and early January, Iranian backed forces killed an American contractor and attacked a U.S. embassy. Days later the Trump administration killed the Iranian mastermind of the attacks, Qassem Soleimani, leading the Speaker to call Trump’s actions “needless provocation” and initiating the empty war powers resolution. The Speaker was revolted, or scared, by a plan of substantive action and thus chose to hit back with symbolic barking.
Following three years of Democrat obsession, fueled by conspiracy theories and predicated on false narratives, Speaker Pelosi, to the elation of her liberal base and at the expense of Constitutional dignity, finally impeached the President. Yet the impeachment itself is nothing more than an empty symbolic gesture. Garnering no bipartisan support, and failing to delineate even a single Constitutional justification, such as bribery, treason, or a high crime or misdemeanor, the Speaker used her position to do nothing more than howl one very loud but ineffectual bark, and one that is Constitutionally guaranteed to fail in the Senate. Scared to disappoint her base and fearful of a revolt within her own caucus, she ran straight towards an empty symbolic, if ineffectual, measure.
Mrs. Pelosi admitted as much on ABC’s This Week, when she said, “Ten months from now we will have an election if we don't have him removed sooner. But, again, he'll be impeached forever.” If Mrs. Pelosi believes that President Trump will in fact be “impeached forever”, she is all but admitting that her impeachment gambit is nothing more than a baseless attempt to put an asterisk on Trump’s thus far successful presidency. Nothing more than a formal declaration that she does not like the President, but afraid she cannot remove him or prevent his reelection. Again, all bark, no bite.
It has now been over three weeks since the “urgency of the situation” compelled Speaker Pelosi to hold her partisan vote, and it appears that she is finally ready to send the crime-free articles of impeachment to the Senate. For three weeks she held the articles so that she could bark at Mitch McConnell in a vain attempt to get her way. Yet without any bite, she has now resigned herself to the Senate’s authority, and the trial must go forth based on the articles the House, under her control, put together.
Speaker Pelosi will hold the procedural vote in the House, and they will transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate. She will assign her team and they will carry her work product to the trial. And the sheer emptiness of the culmination of her three-year vendetta will be laid bare. When all is said and done, the President will be exonerated. She will have extracted nothing from the Senate for all of her barking. She will have produced nothing from her three-year, fear precipitated quest to unseat Trump and prevent his reelection. And she will cement her legacy as nothing more than a barking dog with no teeth.