Moderate Democrats warn Pelosi against impeachment obsession

One day before the Judiciary Committee of the House took its greatest step toward impeachment last week, moderate Democrat Anthony Brindisi expressed his frustrations directly to President Nancy Pelosi.

At the closed meeting, the rookie told Pelosi and other leaders that he feared, according to several people in the room, to talk about the removal of President Donald Trump.

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"It's very frustrating for me – someone from a district that was one of the districts that helped put us in the majority – to focus so much on things such as dismissal or other issues that are divisive, "said Brindisi in an interview, adding that he has spoken with other freshmen from Swing District who have similar concerns concerning the autumn program. "We should focus on kitchen table problems."

At the same meeting, Representative Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) In the room pointed to alarming polls from the Democrats' electoral branch, which showed voters believe voters believe the party "favors the implementation of accusation in relation to other problems ". an internal summary obtained by POLITICO.

Pelosi responded by saying that she was very aware of their concerns and reiterated that the caucus did not have 218 votes for dismissal. And she stressed that only the plenary of power had the power to prosecute – a statement that seems to contradict the position of the Judiciary Committee that it is currently engaged in a dismissal investigation.

Brindisi and Murphy's comments are the last sign of the growing frustration of the small, but powerful, moderate wing of the Democratic caucus. Since their return from the summer period, centrist Democrats, Steny Hoyer, Speaker of the House majority and Jerry Nadler, President of the Judiciary and Judiciary, have escaped from each other and directly on Pelosi. in 2020, several lawmakers and collaborators said.

Pelosi Efforts to calm the impeachment discourse, voiced in private and in public, have so far not appeased the centrist wing of the caucus.

Another vulnerable first-year student, Rep. Max Rose, gave the same warnings about the impeachment at a private meeting with Nadler. A few days later, Rose publicly expressed her frustrations with an editorial in her hometown newspaper, warning that the Democrats "risked losing the confidence of the American people," which was relentlessly focused on Trump.

"I do what I think is the right thing to do," Rose said in an interview, adding that no incidents had prompted her to write. "I want to see this party – and I know it contains it – get to work by passing important infrastructure and health care bills by the end of the year." # 39; year. "

However, the centrists 'dislike of impeachment is as strong as the Progresses' insistence on Trump's lack of indictment – a direct confrontation that will only further divide the caucus and put the leaders to the test. Democrats in the 2020 elections.

"We have to do our job," Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters last week. "I want to see all the Republicans recorded in the minutes and knowingly vote against the removal of this president, knowing that he is corrupt, so that all Republicans retain their identity."

Many moderate Democrats claim to recognize that Ms. Pelosi and her deputies have tried to contain the fury of the impeachment that no longer has any place on Capitol Hill.

But as momentum picks up – partly because of Nadler's vote to approve the guidelines of its investigation – some legislators privately wonder if Democratic leaders have a strategy to get them out of mess mess in which they intermingled.

Pelosi has been working to end debating talks, both at press conferences and at some of this week's private meetings, focusing instead on ongoing caucus bills.

But Hoyer, his main deputy, made headlines after having to retract his remarks after telling reporters that the House was not yet on trial, thus putting it at odds with the phrasing. from Nadler.

It was exactly the kind of media circus the Democrats were trying to avoid in their first week of the long summer break.

Democrats of fierce sieges, including the 31 districts controlled by Democrats that Trump won in 2016, say they fear that the investigations will exceed their work on other issues.

For example, the same week the Judiciary Committee voted to advance the House's Trump investigations, the panel also approved some of the most stringent firearms measures in a generation since the series of shootings. murderers this summer.

Hoyer also heard about some caucus moderates who fear that House investigations will cover their work health care and economic issues throughout the fall, according to a senior democrat assistant.

"The fear is that you focus exclusively on that, excluding everything we need to do in the US Congress," Hoyer told reporters last week.

Several House centrists, particularly members of the Blue Dog Coalition, have tried to move from the speech on Trump's alleged corruption to a much less controversial element of the Mueller report: election security.

The Blue Dog Coalition proposed a kind of counter-programming last Thursday – just hours after the Judiciary Committee vote – with a dozen members taking part in interviews, speeches on the ground or social media messages to help dispel the narrative of impeachment and safeguard the elections.

"I certainly think that the Mueller report's electoral security elements have not been sufficiently covered and sensitized," Murphy told reporters Thursday, questioned about the event coinciding with the vote of the judiciary.

For months, the moderates avoided the slow march for removal from their caucus. But the number of members of the Democratic Party has decreased and less than 40% of the caucus members are now opposed or undecided, much out of deference to Pelosi.

This only complicates the democrats' struggle to communicate their goals to the public.

An internal poll conducted for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in August found that 54 percent of voters nationwide believe the party at the center of the party is investigating Trump – although 10 percent believe this should be the priority.

Good news for the party, the poll found that Democrats had an 8-point advantage in the congressional poll in 2020, with unprecedented enthusiasm ahead of the next election.

Nevertheless, he said voters' perceptions "do not fit with the issues that voters said were the most important to be dealt with by the Congress," which has remained unchanged for months, according to a Democratic official familiar with the issue. ballot.

And some Democrats say they can not blame the public for this perception.

"If I get up every morning and go to bed every night, and watch TV during the day, we see impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, investigation. So what will the American public think? Representative Tom O'Halleran, co-chair of the House Blue Dog Coalition, said in an interview.

"It's a kind of Beltway process here. "It's all about the impeachment," said the Arizona Democrat, highlighting other House business on items such as the recent two-year budget deal. "Maybe this message is not being delivered properly. I know I can not do it. "

Laura Barrón-López contributed to this report.