Photo, above: Sen. Charles Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are stubbornly refusing to accept the possibility of Senate acquittal of President Donald Trump. (Screen snip, YouTube, Fox News)

By Dave Workman

Leading Capitol Hill Democrats are apparently drifting toward delusion as Fox News is reporting that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer will “simply refuse to accept (President Donald Trump’s) all-but-certain acquittal because his “sham” trial lacked proper witnesses and evidence.”

The report came as Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Friday she will oppose extending the Senate’s impeachment trial in order to hear more witnesses, a move that essentially dooms the year-long effort by Democrats to remove Trump from office. According to the Washington Times, with Murkowski’s announcement, Senate Republicans “believe they have at least 51 votes to close the trial down and move to a final vote acquitting the president.”

But that will not sit well with Pelosi, who declared, “You cannot be acquitted if you don’t have a trial, and you don’t have a trial if you don’t have witnesses and documentation and that.”

And Schumer, quoted by Fox News, insisted, “The president’s acquittal will be meaningless, because it will be the result of a sham trial. If there are no witnesses, no documents in this trial, there will be a permanent asterisk next to the acquittal of President Trump written in permanent ink.”

Democrats have reason to panic, as CNBC is reporting that Sen. Bernie Sanders has “jumped into a virtual tie with Joe Biden nationally,” citing an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Friday.

Sen. Bernie Sanders has taken the lead nationally among Democratic presidential candidates. (Screen snip, YouTube, CNN)

Sanders has the support of 27 percent of Democrat primary voters, according to the story, which is up 6 points since December. Biden, meanwhile, trails slightly at 26 percent, which is down two 2 percentage points since last month.

This is shaping up like the perfect storm of politics, with the president’s State of the Union address coming up on Tuesday, in the House chamber with Pelosi having to sit directly behind Trump as he could easily talk to the nation about the impeachment “sham,” as he has called it. Democrats have been talking about impeachment virtually since the day after Trump was elected in 2016, and it was one of the talking points in the 2018 elections that saw several new Democrats come to the House, shifting the majority and putting Pelosi back in the Speaker’s chair.

With a strong economy, low unemployment and increasing anger in middle America about impeachment, extremist gun control efforts, and the widening gap between conservatives and the radical left, Pelosi’s Democrats have much to think about with the national elections just 10 months away.

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