Nancy Pelosi: ‘The Times Have Found Us’

The retaining wall has collapsed. The straw that is Ukraine has broken the camel’s back. And Nancy Pelosi, the battle-hardened political veteran and speaker of the House of Representatives (the third most powerful position in the country), has succumbed to congressional pressure to launch impeachment proceedings, something she has always considered to be a strategic blunder that was doomed to fail and that she felt had the added potential of scaring off moderate voters.

She managed to curb the anxieties of the most enraged Democrats after the presentation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, which found no conclusive evidence against Donald Trump and his alleged collusion with Moscow in the 2016 presidential election. In a Sunday magazine interview with The Washington Post, Pelosi said, “Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.” However, today, the woman who has been fighting for more than 30 years in the Washington jungle is of the opinion that “something so convincing and overwhelming and bipartisan” has arrived.

“The times have found us,” Pelosi said, paraphrasing Thomas Paine, one of America’s Founding Fathers. “And they have found us today,” she added, before solemnly announcing the opening of the political inquiry.

On this occasion, the avalanche of Democrats asking to start the process – including many moderates who had, like her, resisted going down this path in the past – was unstoppable. And the skillful Pelosi decided to take the initiative, arguing that there was no other choice than impeachment. “The actions of the Trump presidency revealed dishonorable facts of betrayal of his oath of office and betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections,” she said.

But why are things different now? Perhaps it is because this time, the veteran politician has found something that will persuade moderate voters (if not Republican senators), who have been suspicious of hurting the country with a painful process such as this. The new accusations, unlike the 448 pages of the Mueller report, can be summed up in a blunt phrase: the president used his influence to pressure a foreign government in order to air the dirty laundry of a political rival in public, and he sought to use the taxpayers’ money to do it. In short, it might be a result of the seriousness of the accusations. Or it might simply be that Pelosi was no longer able to contain the fury of her party.