Impeachment Marathon Thoughts

It's 8:45 pm and they're still at it - since 9am this morning (Alaska Time).  

In addition to listening, I got a couple of kitchen shelves cleaned out, I shoveled the driveway in the morning, and then swept the newly accumulated powder in the evening.  I sorted out the pile of mail that arrived after our being away.

I also got wiped out as a reaction to yesterday's shingle shot.  A little fever, and a lot of impeachment in the background as I dozed on and off.  

So, I listened to a lot of this and here's my takeaway.

1.  The Senate, under the direction of Majority Leader McConnell,  wants this to happen as fast as possible and they want no additional information or witnesses.

2.  Given that, the Democrats have essentially put into the record as close as they can get to the testimony the witnesses would have given.  Or at least they explained the details of the House testimony and how the requested witnesses and documents would fill in the holes.  They did a pretty good job.  Nadler - around midnight in DC time - outlined the details of the Ukraine shakedown and how Bolton would add to our understanding.

[John Roberts is admonishing both the House impeachment managers and the President's men to be civil.]

3.  The Republicans are doing two things:

A.  Not really addressing the facts the Democrats detail, but rather make sweeping narratives about executive privilege, about how there is no case here, how the Democrats are abusing the impeachment process, etc.
B.  Preventing any new documents or witnesses.  

I would say that the Democrats are talking to the American public, knowing that they are unlikely to win any of the procedural votes.
The Republicans are simply blocking any new information from coming to the attention of Senate.

I would add, that the senate's control of the media - including using Senate cameras, not C-Span's
- means the public does not get as good a view of things as in the House Impeachment process.  For instance, during roll call votes, in the House, we saw a close up of each committee member and could hear how they voted.  Today, we simply saw the whole chamber during roll call votes.  At best, some of the Senators stood up when they voted, and some shouted out their vote loud enough for me to hear.

Of all the Republican counter arguments, the only one that made some possible sense at all was that the House didn't actually follow through with subpoena of Bolton.  The Democrats response was that his attorney said he wouldn't respond to a subpoena and that he would sue them.  They argued that if they went through the courts, it wouldn't be resolved until after the 2020 election.  I can't really judge this.  Since so much is of today's hearing was simply performance, I'm inclined to assume this is also performance.