UPDATED: Impeachment: Democrats afraid to take the next step?

Those readers (especially foreigners) who think that anything major happened in Washington yesterday are advised to review "How the impeachment process is supposed to work", WWW 24/9/19. What you witnessed yesterday [Walt was watching "Judge Judy". Ed.] was merely the end of Act I of the pantomime. Donald J. Trump is still President of the Excited States of America, and likely to remain until 3 November 2020... and likely for another four years after that!

That the House of Representatives voted to impeach the President is hardly news. What is interesting is Speaker Nancy Pelosi's statement at a presser this morning that before raising the curtain on Act II -- the trial in the Senate -- she will wait to see what procedures will be adopted for the trial. Ms Pelosi (D-CA) said this was because she fears that the Republican-controlled Senate may be incapable of holding a "fair trial".

That's a loaded term that she and her Dumbocrat colleagues in both housess have been throwing around a lot lately. On Wednesday evening she was noncommittal about whether she would ever transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate. After last night's vote, she told the meeja, "We'll make that decision as a group, as we always have, as we go along. So far we haven't seen anything that looks fair to us."

A "fair trial"??? What a steaming load of horseshit. The real reason for Ms Pelosi's reluctance to get on with the next act of this farce was stated by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who denounced the impeachment vote and blasted the Speaker for being "too afraid" to send "their shoddy work product to the Senate."

Speaking on the floor of the Senate, Mr McConnell said, "The framers built the Senate to provide stability, to keep partisan passions from boiling over. Moments like this are why the United States Senate exists." Mr  McConnell is meeting today with his counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), to establish the parameters for the trial in the upper chamber.

Nancy Pelosi, Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA), and Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) have now all floated the idea of freezing the House vote where it is, rather than sending the impeachment articles to the Senate, where President Trump would undoubtedly go down in history as being vindicated.

This morning, President Trump took aim at Ms Pelosi for not sending the impeachment articles to the Senate right away. He tweeted, "The Senate shall set the time and place of the trial. If the Do Nothing Democrats decide, in their great wisdom, not to show up, they would lose by Default!"

UPDATE ADDED at 1710 (scraped from Breitbart News): During a press conference on Thursday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) stated that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is "admitting defeat" by not sending articles of impeachment over to the Senate.

McCarthy said, "Now, we have the own speaker of the House who is so embarrassed that she admits the failure of this impeachment that she will not even send it to the Senate.… She's admitting defeat by not sending it, by refusing to send the impeachment over, she knows this outcome is not good. She knows the facts are not there. There's no basis for it."