Well done. You get 150 kaylasdad points for using the term “reins” rather than “reigns.” If this was Quidditch, you’d have just ended the match, and come that much closer to winning the House Cup.
Look at it this way:
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If Trump is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, should he be removed from office? YES.
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If Pence is also guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, should he also be removed from office? YES.
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If 1 and 2, does the office of POTUS rightfully belong to Pelosi? YES.
The Overton Window doesn’t change that- to say it does just gives Pence and the pubbies a licence to commit high crimes.
Do ignorant rednecks believe a lot of bullshit? Um, is the Pope Catholic? Just because people have been propagandized up to their eyeballs does not mean the rest of us have to accept a bunch of crap. Look, if 1 and 2, yet Pelosi does Not become POTUS, that right there is the real coup. That would be a complete usurpation of our legal system, thrown away because of, what? Learned helplessness in the face of GOP corruption?
I feel like once you start rolling over like one of Epstein’s teen prostitutes, it can become a way of life. Let’s not let the sheer volume and brazenness of GOP crime and corruption lend it a legitimacy it does not possess. If he is guilty, we CAN’T allow an international election rigging Pence to be POTUS. Doesn’t anybody remember America? Democracy? Free and fair elections? Rule of law? We’re going to throw that all away for a bunch of dumb excuses to acquiesce to the highest crimes?
Jesus. If we can’t have real justice, at least make some noise. Don’t just surrender.
Ford was the veto king - he vetoed everything!
Trying not to fight the hypothetical.
OK, wave a magic Democratic wand and tomorrow Trump and Pence are both impeached and removed from office. I assume it would have to be Pence first, so that Pelosi is next in line when Trump is impeached and removed. (Neither will happen, but let’s pretend).
Now it’s President Pelosi. She can declare “our long national nightmare is over”. But she doesn’t pardon anyone. She immediately declares that she is going after all the corrupt Republicans and get them all indicted and sent to Gitmo or something. The more she does that, the more it looks like a coup and the less legitimate her Presidency looks. Plus, she has only a year or so until 2020 and the elections - how much prosecution will she be able to get done while trying to get a VP confirmed and a new Cabinet and new Attorney General and new people in all the political positions? What’s she gonna do, investigate Republican Senators? Congress does not take well to that kind of thing, even from their own - Congress is rather jealous of its own power and perks.
The last President who gained the Oval Office was Jerry Ford, and he lost his re-election bid, albeit narrowly and mostly due to his own mistakes. If the economy goes to hell, either because of the turmoil in Washington DC or just in general, Pelosi is toast in 2020. And half the country, not affected by the Democratic magic wand, is going to be peeved at Pelosi - her negatives are going to be sky-high, and she has very little by way of charisma to overcome that. I can recall another Presidential candidate with high negatives and no charisma who did not make it to the White House either.
If she just says she wants to be a care-taker President, and holds off on major initiatives until after 2020, she will cheese off the progressives, who will believe “God has given us the [del]Papacy[/del] Presidency - let us enjoy it”. They will want, not only revenge on the GOP and Trump and Pence and everyone else, but also free college and free health care and an end to global warming and a revamping of the economy (and lower taxes and more services and better governance and a strong foreign policy and less military spending and a stronger military and more affordable housing but maintaining home values and etc., etc.). And if all she can say she delivered was to grab the Presidency away from Trump, well…
Regards,
Shodan
…hey, guess what? Just because you started a thread that appears to be based on fundamental misunderstanding of what impeachment is doesn’t mean we aren’t out here “making noise.” Just because we’ve pointed out that your OP is essentially a fantasy that is never going to happen doesn’t mean “we have surrendered”. Pretending Pelosi has a chance of becoming President doesn’t make us fight any harder.
With Moscow Mitch running the senate, she would not even be able to get a cabinet approved. Pursue a progressive agenda? Hah!
Ms Pelosi can take the White House only if and only if Trampster and Pencil-dick are removed simultaneously – peacefully or otherwise. What could happen? A sharp reveal leading to both losers resigning and running for refuge in Riyadh; terrible accident(s) and/or medical mishap(s); actual military coup, with much collateral damage; or worse.
We can HOPE a presidency remains for Pelosi or others outside Trampland to conduct. I am not optimistic.
Plus she will have thrown away the biggest advantage the Democrats are going into 2020 with - she wouldn’t be running against Trump.
A-HFS?
I understand impeachment. The nub here is that people in his base will have to turn on OG for him to be removed. Same with Pence. Thing is, it looks like they might both be guilty of impeachable offenses. Big, serious ones. Maybe the pubs won’t listen to anyone outside their group, but then again the crimes speak for themselves, and the law was written down a long time ago. If Pelosi is not installed as POTUS*, it will be one more example of willful, bad-faith malfeasance by the GOP. If one believes one’s integrity rating goes on their eternal soul scorecard, being so relentlessly and willfully ignorant of the laws, and relevant precedent, and let’s throw in empirical findings and formal logic and debating in good faith instead of hiding in apologia is going to leave a mark.
Which says nothing about how much noise some people are making. Sorry.
You’re saying, “The intended outcome of the law* is never going to happen.” But, the third in line to the presidency is the Speaker, no? And the first two are guilty*, no? So who becomes president in that circumstance?
The Speaker.
That everyone is just writing off the result of applying the law is absurd. Yeah, maybe the pubbies will once again prove corrupt and defend crime, but we don’t know that yet and I want to talk about how Pelosi should go about it if the laws are applied as intended.
For instance, I always assumed she would retire in 2020. Others assume she’d run for another term. That’s just the tip of the iceberg of different perspectives on how a Pelosi presidency would (and really, I want to look at should) play out.
*The process has to play out before anyone is found guilty, obviously. Some of what has come out looks damning, but we can’t jump to conclusions at this stage.
…I think you understand it now. But based on your OP I don’t think you understood it then.
That both Trump and Pence both are probably are guilty of impeachable offenses should come as no surprise to anyone. The crimes do speak for themselves. This has nothing to do with your OP.
Again, this is true, and pretty bleeding obvious, but not relevant to your OP.
I don’t even know what you are talking about now. I don’t believe in eternal souls. I don’t believe in “eternal soul scorecards.” Nothing is going to “leave a mark.”
So why did you bring it up in the first place?
Nope.
I’m saying what I said.
Yep.
In my personal opinion? Abso-fucking-lutely. But my opinion counts for jack-shit.
The speaker is third in line of succession. But Pelosi had to be dragged kicking and screaming to be bought to the point to be able to start impeachment against Trump. This very messageboard had to be dragged kicking and screaming towards supporting impeachment. If the “left-wing-liberals” that populate this messageboard thought that impeaching Trump was a bad idea then they will fight tooth-and-nail against a Pence impeachment. And we aren’t even talking about the trial yet.
But that isn’t what everyone is doing, and to imply that we are is simply absurd.
You are currently in the middle of what some would call a “Constitutional Crisis.”
The norms have gone out the window. The norms got shredded when Trump got elected. We are talking about a bunch of people that in their first weeks in office couldn’t figure out how to turn the lights on and off. This Ukraine thing? Its a fucking nothingburger compared to every-fucking-other-thing this administration has done that has been ignored, downplayed, or simply forgotten about. You’ve got an openly white-supremacist moron setting and running immigration policy. You’ve got Sebastian-fucking-Gorka accompanying the Secretary of State on his trip to Italy. The Attorney General is acting as the Presidents personal lawyer and the Presidents personal lawyer is acting on behalf of the administration.
Everything is fucked up. You are loosing the courts. You have ICE snatching people off the streets. You’ve got concentration camps. And here’s the thing.
Now that impeachment has started, things are about to get worse.
The administration has already ramped up the propaganda. We can see that. But they have been quietly ramping up the propaganda that we can’t see, the micro-target social media posts, email harvesting, all the tactics that turned the tide during Brexit and the last US election, that’s all going on but almost nobody (except the people that are being targeted) is noticing. They are going to scale up the voter suppression efforts.
They are going to keep redrawing the lines in the sand. They will break the law right in front of you and dare you to do something about it. And the Dems and everyone who opposes them are woefully ill-equipped to deal with any of this. So "yeah, “maybe the pubbies will once again prove corrupt and defend crime.” But we are so beyond worrying about what the pubbies will think or do and if you are still in that mindset then its time to reassess your priorities.
This is a battle on multiple fronts, but one of those fronts is not going to be one lead by President Pelosi.
The best approach for the Democrats is to leave Pence where he is. There is some small chance that some Republican senators with a spine will come around and vote to remove Trump. I don’t think that’s high, but it’s non-zero. Assuming that Pence is the one to step into the role. If Pelosi were the one to step in, that non-zero becomes zero.
Let Pence get in there, and then weaken the hell out of him by revealing his complicity and then trounce them at the ballot box in 2020.
Great points, Fiveyearlurker.
But if Pence turns out to be truly, deeply guilty of initiating something really bad (not merely complicit), it would be mildly hypocritical of Democrats to fail to initiate impeachment proceedings, after having said clearly in recent days that (regarding Trump) they have little choice but to uphold the Constitution, even if this (debatably) might cost them politically.
But I think your larger point would override this minor one.
I’m memorizing this comment, as it explains the inexplicable.
Essentially, Republicans either don’t care, don’t believe, or don’t know.
(In any case, it’s probably a moot point…While he is clearly complicit to some degree (maybe a lot), I doubt Pence has been enough of a driving force behind anything to rise to the level I outlined).
The removals from office would not have to be simultaneous. If either of them is removed in any way, there would be a vacancy in the position of Vice-President. That vacancy can be filled only with the approval of both houses of Congress. At which Pelosi could then take a page from McConnel’s playbook, and refuse to approve any candidate the President (whichever one of them it is) proposes.
Well…OK.
Say that Trump is removed from office. Then Pence is president, no matter what Pelosi might say. There might be no VP, though, due to Pelosi’s stonewalling. Then the Secret Service had better do a *good *job of protecting President Pence through January 2021.
Or let’s say it’s Pence who is impeached and removed, but Trump is not (I can’t fathom how that would work, but let’s roll with it.) So then it is Trump as a veep-less president? Same scenario as above.
I beginning to think we need a forum named “Reality” so some of us can avoid these threads.
Yup, as I acknowledged right from the start, it’s unlikely for both to be removed from office before January 2021. It’s just not quite as unlikely as some are saying, because it doesn’t have to be simultaneous.
Of the eight scenarios that would result in both leaving (either one first, and leaving either dead or alive), I think that the most likely is that Pence leaves office while still alive (via impeachment or resignation), and that Trump at some point after that dies. I think that this is most likely because it’s probably more politically achievable for one of them to be removed alive while the other is still in office, and of the two, Trump is the more likely to die, given his known poor health.
How likely is this? Well, for a back-of-the-envelope estimate, out of 45 presidents, we’ve had one who was forced out of office by scandal (and yes, I know he wasn’t impeached, but the net effect is the same). And we’ve had 8 who died in office. For both to happen (assuming they’re independent), we’re looking at about 1 in 250, or a 0.4% chance.
Yes, that’s unlikely. And yes, that’s a highly simplistic estimate. But Euphonious Polemic’s estimate of “0.0000001% chance” is clearly hyperbole.
Why would a Republican-controlled Senate vote to remove the last Republican standing between Pelosi and the presidency while she’s stonewalling a VP pick?