Buying Impeachment: Nancy Pelosi-Aligned PAC Spends Millions to Help Swing District Democrats Breitbart, Dec 16, 2019
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s rush to impeachment is receiving an assist from the millions of dollars at least one PAC aligned with her has already spent on House Democrats who currently represent swing districts.
Those financial incentives appear to be increasingly relevant as the final vote on the two articles of impeachment is scheduled to come to the House floor this week.
Pelosi needs 216 ‘yes’ votes to pass each article (there are currently four vacancies in the 435 member House), and at least two Democrats have already announced they will vote no, barring any unknown developments, leaving Pelosi with a potential 232 yes votes (231 Democrats and one independent, Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI)), 16 more than the majority she needs.
But when Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN-7) told the Globe, a newspaper in his district, on Saturday that he would be a ‘no’ vote “barring new developments,” he also said that four to five other Democrats might join him.
“This is dividing the country for no good reason because he’s not going to be thrown out of office. Why are we doing this?” he told the Globe.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (D-NJ-2), who announced earlier he would be a no vote amid reports he would then switch parties to the GOP, is presumably one of those five.
If Peterson is right, and the four additional Democrats who he believes are ‘no’ votes join Van Drew and Peterson, the tally would drop to 228 ‘yes’ votes and 203 ‘no’ votes, just 12 more than the 216 needed to reach a majority.
Pelosi and her allies appear to be taking no chances. “NEW … HOUSE MAJORITY FORWARD — an arm of House Majority PAC, which supports House Democrats — is spending $2.5 MILLION thanking HOUSE DEMOCRATS for voting for the Democrats’ most recent bill aimed at lowering the cost of prescription drugs for Americans,” Politico reported on Friday: [...]