Before attacking the Dems for not including an Article of Impeachment on Bribery, consider this:

[StarfishSaver]

(I posted this in a response in another thread)

After listening to the Democratic press conference, especially Chairman Schiff's remarks, it became clear to me why they did not include a separate article alleging Bribery. It's the smart move.

"Bribery" is a very complicated and charged allegation and is very difficult to prove when it comes to a president. Everything Trump did in his interactions with Ukraine, he's allowed to do and has the power to do under his office, at least when looking at it at face value.

Quid pro quos are a common part of diplomacy and occur all the time. A president has the power to withhold money from another country in return for things he wants them to do - they do it all the time.

The issue here is not that he asked for something in return for something. The issue is what he asked for and his motive for asking for it: Trump withheld the money in order to get a political advantage for himself. The political advantage is something of value to him, like money or goods, so the transaction can be defined as bribery.

That's all pretty clear to us. But that takes a lot of explaining to the average person - lots of "this and then this and then this and therefore this." And when you're explaining, you can easily get stuck in rabbit holes.

I think the Democrats escaped that rabbit hole by charging Abuse of Power. What makes Trump's action not just a simple and permissible "quid pro quo" that all presidents do is the fact that he used his power to get something he wanted for himself personally - i.e., he abused his power. No other person in America has the power to get another country to help them smear a political opponent by withholding hundreds of millions of dollars government funding from them. That kind of power is awesome and sacred and should not be used for individual political gain, which is exactly what Trump did. People can understand that.

In short, I think they actually DID charge Trump with bribery - the abuse of power is the bribery and the bribery is the abuse of power. But doing it this way, they haven't given the Republicans any opening to spend endless hours arguing about the definition of bribery, why looking into the Bidens was justified, etc. They laid out what he did, which is undisputed, and can now cut straight to the chase of proving that Trump abused his power by using government money to pressure a foreign government for help in his political campaign. And since the facts of that are undisputed and there is no precedent in recent American history for such an act (I'm sure they've researched this out the wazoo to make sure), they've set up an easier and much stronger case for the American public to understand and accept.