Nancy Pelosi lost the impeachment standoff

We always knew it would come to this

Nancy Pelosi.
(Image credit: Illustrated | SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images, ElizabethNYC/iStock, Miodrag Kitanovic/iStock)

After nearly a month of dithering, Nancy Pelosi is finally accepting defeat in her standoff with Mitch McConnell over impeachment. Despite insisting as recently as Thursday that she would wait to transmit the articles of impeachment against Donald Trump to the Senate until she was confident that the trial in the upper chamber would proceed on terms favorable to her party, she quietly backed down on Friday morning. Her letter to Democratic colleagues in the House announced that the articles would be sent next week even though McConnell has made it clear that none of her demands — testimony from additional witnesses, for example — would be honored or even considered.

Is anyone actually surprised by this outcome? How likely was it that Pelosi was ever going to change McConnell's mind? All of the leverage has been on his side from the beginning. He would be the one to decide how the trial would proceed, when it would begin, and how long it would last. Having to surrender the fate of judicial proceedings to the opposing party was how this was always fated to end.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.