Trump is not on the House Democrats Task List at the moment



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WASHINGTON (AP) – What happened in trying to overthrow President Donald Trump?

As Democrats in the House begin to expose the vision of their new majority, this element is clearly missing from the list of things to be done and remains on the sidelines.

The agenda at the moment includes expenditures for public works projects, a reduction in health costs and increased supervision of the administration.

This is the balance that the Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi is trying to create in the new Congress between the members of the left flank of her party who ardently wish to confront the President and her instinct to give priority to the promises made by the Democrats to the voters who elected them. Office.

"We should not dismiss the president for political reasons and we should not do it for political reasons," Pelosi told The Associated Press recently.

The California legislator, which hopes to lead the Democrats in the House next January, qualifies the indictment of activity "division" to be approached with bipartisanship. "If the case exists, then this should be self-evident for Democrats and Republicans," she said.

Those pushing for impeachment recognize that they are not expecting action from the first day of the new majority, but they want the Democrats to start laying the groundwork for the proceedings.

"We are waiting for recall, we are not in favor of an early vote," said Kevin Mack, chief strategist for billionaire Tom Steyer's Need to Impeach campaign. "Our argument is that the Constitution describes a process to remove a lawless president."

In a new advertisement, Steyer said that Democrats "only need the will" to act. He says he's calling on Americans to join the 6 million people who have already joined his group to "give Congress the courage to act."

"Americans are tired of having to wait," said Mack. "Our argument in Congress is that you are a branch of government on an equal footing, it is time to do what is morally right."

Twice in the last two years since Trump's election, Democrats have tried to force votes on impeachment proceedings, winning the record of more than 60 supporters, far from the 218 needed.

Republicans are counting on, if not hoping, a fervent impeachment to overtake Democrats, diverting them from campaign promises or negotiations with Trump.

"We know the Democrats have a plan: they want to disrupt, they want to try to defeat," Republican Representative Kevin McCarthy of California said after winning the GOP internal elections to serve as a minority leader in the new Congress.

Pelosi said the new majority would not engage in what it calls a "scattershot" approach to investigate the administration.

Instead, the new Democratic House committee leaders will oversee the president's affairs and relations with the White House. Democrats are also striving to ensure that special advocate Robert Mueller finishes his investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. They might try to add a law to protect this investigation from the essential spending bill in December to help finance the government. They want Mueller's findings to be made public.

"You must be very reluctant to make an indictment," Jerry Nadler, D-NY, outgoing chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the House, told ABC. Nadler, who sat on the committee during the dismissal of President Bill Clinton, spoke of "the trauma of a destitution process."

Democrat leaders also know that quickly proceeding with the indictment would not please their newly elected members, who helped the party win a majority in the House in recent mid-term polls. Many come from areas of influence where dismissal could prove to be unpopular.

"I have not worked for 18 months listening to people in my district engaging in political back and forth over the next 18 months," said Elissa Slotkin, Michigan representative. "People want to talk about health care – it's not a coincidence that most of us who have won in difficult districts have won because we talked about problems, not because we have talked about internal problems in Washington. "

For the moment, outside liberal groups largely adhere to Pelosi's approach, insisting on pushing Democrats to set a bold agenda for national portfolio concerns that convinced voters.

Pelosi has some experience of impeachment, acting as a more recent legislator when Republicans led the impeachment proceedings against Clinton. When she became Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies in 2007, she resisted pressure from her Liberal flank to launch impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush over the war in Iraq.

Pelosi thinks that if the Democrats had tried to remove Bush when she was president, voters may never have elected Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008.

Politically, the Democrats may be right. According to a Pew study, the Americans only reached an agreement in 1974, on the eve of his resignation from President Richard Nixon. Voters responded to Clinton's removal by electing more Democrats to the House.

"If we had taken this route, I doubt we would have won the White House," she said. "People must see that we work for them."

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Follow Lisa Mascaro on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lisamascaro and Mary Clare Jalonick at https://twitter.com/mcjalonick and AP Politics at https://twitter.com/AP_Politics

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