Speaker Pelosi’s Delaying Articles of Impeachment May Benefit Biden: Sen. Cornyn

Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden visits a campaign field office in in Waterloo, Iowa on Jan. 4, 2020. Patrick Semansky/AP Photo

U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) said Monday that Speaker Pelosi’s refusal to send Articles of Impeachment to the Senate benefits Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden and hurts the many Democratic U.S. Senators running for president.

“Can you think what Senator Warren, Senator Sanders, Senator Klobuchar, Senator Bennet, and Senator Booker—until this morning—who are all vying for the chance to be president, what they’re thinking about the desirability of sitting here in the Chamber six days a week while the Iowa caucuses are coming up on February 3, the New Hampshire primary, South Carolina, Nevada, among others? The Iowa caucuses are happening just three weeks from today, and New Hampshire’s primary is the week after that,” Cornyn said.

The Iowa caucuses are widely regarded as an important indicator of the presidential candidate’s likely success and are scheduled for the start of February.

The Monmouth University Poll published Monday shows Biden is ahead with 24 percent support, up 5 points from the same poll in November. Bernie Sanders is in second place with 18 percent, almost tied with Pete Buttigieg at 17 percent, and with Elizabeth Warren at 15 percent.

It shows that Joe Biden is leading in Iowa, as more voters say they have “firmly decided” on their choice.

During the Iowa caucus, party members will gather to make decisions on which candidate to vote for. Particularly in the U.S. presidential nomination system, caucuses are local partisan gatherings at which delegates are selected to go on to the national convention. Basically, deciding which presidential candidates the state supports.

More recently, it has become that states hold primaries rather than caucuses. The New Hampshire primary is scheduled for the beginning of March.

Primaries differ from caucuses because they are administered by state election officials rather than party officials. In primaries, any party member (and sometimes even those outside the party) can show up at voting stations just as in a general election.

Cornyn pointed to the fact that the longer Speaker Pelosi takes to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate, the more of a chance it is that the trial will overlap with the Iowa and New Hampshire events.

“Even a short two-week trial could mean literally dozens of events we won’t be able to go to,” he said. “And the only people who seem to gain anything from this are the Democrats who are running for president but who are not United States Senators, and thus aren’t going to be tied up during the impeachment trial.”

“If you’re Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, or any other candidate who isn’t a member of the Senate, you’ve got to be glad the Speaker sat on these articles for nearly four weeks. Having your competitors stuck in Washington, literally in their seat, while you’re hitting the campaign trail? Well, that seems like a pretty good advantage to me.”

Biden has been at the top of most Iowa polls, though Sanders had the lead in a Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll released Friday.

The Monmouth poll showed 43 percent of respondents are “firmly decided” on their top choice, up from 28 percent in November.

The Monmouth University polled 405 likely caucus-goers and was conducted Jan. 9-12 (with a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points).