Even After Articles Are Introduced, Some Democrats Still Prefer Censure to Impeachment

The indecisiveness of the Democratic Party is back on display this week, as a seemingly unified front announced that two articles of impeachment have been drafted against President Donald Trump.

Number 45 is going to be saddled with obstruction of Congress and abuse of power:  Two broad and vague charges that could very well drag the entire impeachment fiasco into a whole new level of asininity.

And that doesn’t even take into account the fact that impeachment is set to fail in the Senate already.

With all of this working against them, the Democratic Party is already showing some signs of defection on impeachment, despite today’s announcement.

A small group of vulnerable House Democrats is floating the longshot idea of censuring President Donald Trump instead of impeaching him, according to multiple lawmakers familiar with the conversations.

Those Democrats, all representing districts that Trump won in 2016, huddled on Monday afternoon in an 11th-hour bid to weigh additional — though unlikely — options to punish the president for his role in the Ukraine scandal as the House speeds toward an impeachment vote next week.

The group of about 10 Trump-district lawmakers included Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), Anthony Brindisi (D-N.Y.), and Ben McAdams (D-Utah.).

“I think it’s certainly appropriate and might be a little more bipartisan, who knows,” Schrader said Tuesday when asked about the possibility of a censure resolution. But he acknowledged: “Time’s slipping by.”

The shaky nature of the left’s case against Trump, combined with the fact that the Republican-controlled Senate will undoubtedly bring a new spin to the proceedings in the coming weeks, tends to bolster the case for abandoning impeachment altogether, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see more and more Democrats shying away.