https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-impeachment-democrats-11558565156
President Trump walked out of a meeting with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer at the White House Wednesday over their accusations against him, and all of Democratic and media Washington is appalled. Doesn’t this President understand that he is supposed to take a daily beating on his way to impeachment while also giving Democrats some policy victories?
Mr. Trump turned what was supposed to be a meeting about infrastructure spending into a display of Trumpian pique. “Instead of walking in happily into a meeting, I walk in to look at people that had just said I was doing a cover-up. I don’t do cover-ups,” he told reporters after the meeting.
He was referring to Mrs. Pelosi’s comments earlier in the day that “we believe that the President of the United States is engaged in a cover-up.” The remark is part of her now-daily act of political cognitive dissonance in which she accuses Mr. Trump of committing impeachable offenses to appease her anti-Trump ultras while opposing impeachment lest it jeopardize swing-district Democrats in 2020.
Mr. Trump has decided to call her bluff and offer a choice—impeachment or bipartisan progress. He probably realizes by now that Democrats don’t want to give him any political victories before 2020 even if they could also take credit. And that may be just as well given that most of the potential compromises—on drug prices or financing for public-works spending—would be bad policy.
But Mrs. Pelosi is facing a momentous choice. If she opens a formal impeachment inquiry, the momentum toward a vote would be hard to stop. Her moderates would be squeezed to take a vote that could cost them re-election. The process would consume media attention for as long as it lasts and well into next year. Forget about what Mrs. Pelosi calls “our agenda for the people.” The new House majority will define themselves as the Impeachment Democrats.
