we do have michael gerhardt with us. michael, your view of this vote that's being taken, right now one thing to keep in mind is that it's a point of order and according to the senate rules a point of order is not debatable. >> that's why you saw the chair, the presiding officer, senator murray, sort of caution senator cruz basically. okay. stop debating stop me. sort of engaging in a long speech and one arguable advantage of a point of order is it cuts off debate and then it goes straight to a vote. so that's, so right now, we're having to vote on senator cruises point of order right after that. we don't know if the presiding officer may go right back to senator schumer, who may make another point of order but we're going to have this sort of process now with one or the other side trying to make points of order. but keep in mind a point of order is not debatable. so the votes will happen pretty quickly. >> yeah that will be as mani was just telling us, there's no hard and fast rules here it kind of can veer and swerve. an

let's bring back and gloria borger and ron brown stein and michael gerhardt, michael, i want to go out to you because i was interesting in a bit, but striking is during trump's first house impeachment, many republicans definitive their defensive him was essentially he didn't commit a crime. he can't be impeached. and this time, the republican impeachment managers are arguing the opposite that impeachment quote, this is their quote, impeachment does not require the commission of indict able crimes. so which one is it well it is in fact true that officials such as the president or secretary of homeland security may be impeached for non criminal offenses. >> it's also true that maybe felonies that are so serious that they could serve as a basis for impeaching. so they're grounds that can be found either in terms of felony or in terms of something really bad and an abuse of power that the person who's being impeached has done i do want to point out for our viewers just for the sake of clarity, what's happening now is that alphabetically in members of the senate are being called in groups o

. >> michael gerhardt is still with us and michael two man whose point, if democrats eliminate this first article of impeachment, how likely is it that then republicans tried to delay a vote to potentially eliminate the 2nd article of impeachment well, i think we can expect that they'll do what they can or something very similar in response to this first attempt to kill an article of impeachment. >> but one thing i think we should keep in mind, and we're kind of seeing this lie live that is in is particularly true for the republicans. if you live by the sword, you die by the sword the senator mcconnell said, not too long ago, while there's an obligation to hold a trial, keep in mind back in 2016, when president obama nominated merrick garland has supreme court democrats pleaded with mcconnell to have a hearing and allow for a vote. and mcconnell didn't allow for anything well, that's coming back now in a sense to haunt him there's no obligation that the majority has to do anything more than it's doing. it is not obliged to conduct a full trial like republicans want instead, they can consi