Pelosi can commit political suicide or help heal partisan rift

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has acted wisely in not immediately transmitting the Trump articles of impeachment to the Senate to jump start the President's trial.

Her stated reasons at her weekly press conference however are certain to only produce more confrontation between Democrats and Republicans:

I – just to get this off the table right away, if we impeach the President immediately, everybody moves on to the next thing. The next thing for us will be when we see the process that is set forth in the Senate, then we'll know the number of managers that we may have to go forward, and who we would choose. That's what I said last night. That's what I'm saying now.

Pelosi will be waiting a long time. She is in no position to dictate how the Senate conducts the trial.

The Senate will not do anything until the impeachment articles are delivered to the Senate.

Pelosi was doing nothing to end the widening Democrat-Republican rift with this terse answer to a reporter:

I heard some of what Mitch McConnell said today, and it reminded me that our Founders, when they wrote the Constitution, they suspected that there could be a rogue President. I don't think they suspected that we could have a rogue President and a rogue Leader in the Senate at the same time.

On the other hand she could - on further sober reflection - well decide to call it a day – because the condition of bipartisanship laid down by herself for impeaching Trump has not been met.

Pelosi would then remain true to her principles.

Pelosi warned against continuing highly partisan impeachment proceedings last March:

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...

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler expressed the identical position on 10 December 1998:

The effect of impeachment is to overturn the popular will of the voters as expressed in a national election. We must not overturn an election and remove a president from office except to defend our very system of government or our constitutional liberties against a dire threat. And we must not do so without an overwhelming consensus of the American people and of their representatives in congress of the absolute necessity.

There must never be a narrowly voted impeachment or an impeachment substantially supported by one of our major political parties and largely opposed by the other. Such an impeachment would lack legitimacy, would produce divisiveness and bitterness in our politics for years to come. And will call into question the very legitimacy of our political institutions.

The House heard the evidence and voted on party lines with the exception of three Democrats who did not support impeaching the President - one of whom has left the Democrats and joined the Republican Party.

One Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard,  who voted present, sounded this warning:

I also could not in good conscience vote for impeachment because removal of a sitting president must not be the culmination of a partisan process, fueled by tribal animosities that have so gravely divided our country...

The House vote to impeach Trump has clearly failed to meet Pelosi and Nadler's test of bipartisanship.

The choices facing the Democrats now are:

• Abandoning bipartisanship by putting Trump on trial - ensuring probable electoral defeat in 2020 on a scale just seen in the British elections; or
• Promoting bipartisanship to achieve outcomes that will benefit all Americans.

This is the moment of truth and reckoning for the Democrats' leadership.