I didn’t “declare Pelosi”. I said she was the smartest politician in the room and her moves agree with public opinion. That has a lot more weight than your unnamed authoritarianism expert.
Thanks, I do feel better now.
I’m not sure how I am “unable or unwilling” to defend Bernie’s argument (actually the argument I had formulated on my own before he offered his opinion, but he said it better). I thought I had been defending that all thread.
Let me spell it out:
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our main priority needs to be ensuring the defeat of Trump in 2020, because
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getting him out of office before then isn’t realistically possible.
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winning the 2020 election is more likely if we focus on bread and butter issues rather than on Trump’s personal awfulness.
Which of those do you disagree with? IMO reasonable people may disagree on #3, but not on the first two.
Impeachment is both a legal and a political process. And contrary to your assertion, I don’t believe that even in straight-up criminal law, anyone argues that prosecutors have an ethical obligation to charge anyone they believe to be guilty, regardless of the likelihood of obtaining a conviction.
Much as I hate Trump, Obama was right; elections have consequences. Presidents shouldn’t be impeached unless a large majority of the public supports the impeachment, and that condition hasn’t been met.
Bill Clinton lied under oath. Did Congress have a duty to impeach him? IMO, no, because he lied to a corrupt prosecutor conducting a partisan witch hunt about something which was unrelated to his Presidential duties and had no relevance to the matter which the partisan witch hunter was supposed to be investigating. It was a crime, but not a significant enough one to justify overturning an election result. The majority of the people agreed with me, and the system worked in that case; the outcome which most people wanted occurred.
Your argument appears to be that Congress is ethically obligated to impeach Trump if there is compelling evidence that he committed a serious crime. With that in mind, did you support the Clinton impeachment, and if not, what do you see as the relevant differences?
I don’t disagree about the effect of the overall economy.
The reason I posted that polling data point was:
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Only 28% have read any of the report. And that number struck me as being WAY too high - have 1 out of every 4 people you know read any of the report? I think it’s actually probably closer to 1/10th that.
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So, Congress, read the report to 'em, it’s both clinical and lurid at the same time. Everybody has a TV in their pocket now, right?
If doing that doesn’t move the number, then it’s a harder decision for sure. And a pretty ominous situation.
…no you can’t frame it like this. Lets put it this way:
The first two things you said aren’t in support of your argument. They are things that I think everybody in this thread would accept no matter what side of the debate you are on. As you can see by simply changing number 3 I instantly re-contextualize 1 and 2.
So that only leaves us with number 3. And if you believe that number 3 to be true, then I’m going to ask you to prove it. What metric have you used to determine “likelihood?” What empirical evidence did you use to determine that that focusing on “bread and butter issues” is more likely to result in Trump being defeated? Why have you conflated “impeachment” with focusing on “Trump’s personal awfulness?”
I haven’t asserted this.
Yeah they do.
Can you point out where this is spelled out in the articles of impeachment? No seriously, where does it say this? This isn’t a condition as far as I’m aware. And if it were a condition how exactly would you go about assigning metrics and determining support?
The President would start campaigning on “don’t impeach me.” He’d make quite the song and dance about it. Fox news would join the campaign trail. "Text “DON’T IMPEACH to our hotline, number down below.” If you relied on “public opinion polls” then they would game the polls. You would turn the impeachment process into a popularity contest. I can’t imagine any circumstances where what you suggest would be a good idea. The idea quite frankly terrifies me.
This is not a decision you can outsource to public polling. Either you hold a referendum or you allow the people you elected to represent you to do their jobs. Elections have consequences.
Why are we talking about Bill Clinton?
What is it, do you think, impeachment exists for?
Why are we talking about Bill Clinton? Despite your assertions about me being a “Clintonista” I really don’t give a fuck about Bill Clinton. I honestly don’t know enough about the case to give you an informed answer. And it doesn’t have anything to do with anything I’ve said. Just another distraction.
…I named them and quoted from them in my very first post in this thread. Sarah Kendzior. And IMHO I’d put much more weight into her opinion than Pelosi’s partisan opinion, even though I respect Pelosi’s position.
But prosecutors are always making the decision to prosecute or not based not only on evidence but on whether they think there is enough evidence to convince a jury that this individual committed a crime. That’s one reason why Bill Cosby got away with his rapes all these years. As early as 2005 a prosecutor in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania considered criminal charges based on a complaint but ultimately decided that he didn’t have what it took to convince a jury of this superstar’s guilt, and don’t think for a moment that his celebrity wasn’t a factor - it almost certainly was.
Moreover, with impeachment, we’re not talking necessarily about a group of 12 men and women considering infractions of the law; the jury in this case is the millions and millions of voters who participate in our democratic system, warts and all. If the prosecution in this case wants to prosecute Donald Trump, then their calculus is one of whether or not they believe there is enough evidence to persuade tens of millions of voters, including many of whom who voted for or once supported Trump even tacitly, that he needs to be removed from office. Impeachment does not exist as a mechanism to remove a politician any and every time they potentially break a law. It exists in cases where there is overwhelming evidence that a strong majority of citizens in this country can agree to varying degrees that the president is simply unfit for office and needs to be removed. We may get to that point, but we’re not there yet, and I don’t think we’re anywhere near there.
I don’t see the value in initiating impeachment in the House when almost everyone knows it won’t go anywhere in the Senate. All we would accomplish is hyper-partisanship. It’s not even clear at this point of Mitch McConnell would even fulfill his Constitutional obligations to take up the trial portion of the impeachment. In short, it would be a waste of time.
But as others have already said, the investigations themselves absolutely should continue. Keep putting the facts out there. Keep letting people see the evidence not only about what Mueller saw with respect to Russian interference but also with regard to Trump’s finances. Let people get to the truth about the person who won the presidency by less than a hundred thousand total votes. And let them contextualize whatever is revealed with their perception of the overall state of their country and their perceptions about how he’s contributing to their collective well being. And then talk about issues, and provide real alternatives that voters can embrace. That’s how we win.
Those of you who think the media will ever focus on health care, raising the minimum wage to a living wage, combating climate change, sexism and racism and homophobia, haven’t been paying attention to the media since 2015 that can’t get enough of Trump’s craziness. And with good reason. But Trump’s ability to say something or do something outrageous and shift the media focus to him will not change between now and November 2020.
I think Democrats are ignoring a huge swath of 2018 voters who were inspired by Trump to vote for the D. If they turn out to be insipid cowards, I doubt think turnout for the Ds will be so great. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, you won’t fool me again!
Nope, political only. There certainly was, however, an effort by the Republicans during their Clinton vendetta, in an attempt at vindicating it, to get the view accepted that it’s just how the criminal system works for Presidents, and some (like you) believe it now; alas, the Constitution says otherwise. Article 1, Section 3: “… the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgement and Punishment, according to Law.”
…my friend 
If they didn’t prosecute back in 2005 because they didn’t think they could convince a jury then they were as wrong as Abelino Reyna when they allowed Jacob Walter Anderson to cop a plea. Of course they can choose not to impeach. They are almost certainly very likely not going to impeach.
No that isn’t the point. As I quoted in my first post in this thread:
The situation *is *this dire. Most Americans are still living in a fantasy land where Trump is going to get voted out and everything will go back to normal. But that isn’t where we are at. We are in uncharted territory. Chaos. We are in the nightmare scenario that Steve Bannon envisioned. The Trump regime is a crime syndicate. They are openly committing crimes and they are getting away with it. I talked about this a couple of years ago. Federal departments are being purged. Who is running FEMA? Who is running the Department of Homeland Security? Who is running the FDA? Who is the UN Ambassador? Its a rudderless ship. And that instability is leading to chaos.
In a normal world nobody would be questioning impeachment here. And that is why I support impeachment going ahead. Because we have to slow things down. We need to use everything within our power to bring things back to normal. Slow the pace. Disrupt. We all said we can’t normalise this regime. Yet here we are, not even three years later, shrugging our shoulders. Impeachment is an entirely normal and appropriate remedy to use here. So lets use it.
No that isn’t what impeachment is. There is no mechanism for the majority of the citizens to cast a vote on whether or not to impeach.
We can’t get there. Its an impossible standard and its a standard that is not required to be attained. This simply isn’t how it works.
We are in a state of hyper partisanship now. One side has declared all-out-war. Mitch McConnell said a few days ago “If I’m still the majority leader of the Senate after next year, none of those things are going to pass the Senate,” the Kentucky Republican told a small crowd during an event in his home state Monday. “They won’t even be voted on. So think of me as the Grim Reaper: the guy who is going to make sure that socialism doesn’t land on the president’s desk.”
That’s where we are at. We’ve got one side declaring that they are going to reject any progressive legislation out of hand and we’ve got the other side too scared to even talk about impeaching because people might think they are being too “hyper-partisan.”
This is exactly what they want you to do. McConnell is laughing his fucking head off.
When David A. Fahrenthold broke this story last month about how Trump and Trump businesses were inflating their worth he lamented on twitter “All day long, this story has been just baaarely out-performing another Post story, about a Notre Dame student’s mom who objects to women wearing leggings.”
Do you really think a few oversight hearings will have the same impact as the House bringing impeachment proceedings? That the eventual revelation of Trumps financials will help people contextualise something more than “HOW DARE THAT WOMAN WEAR LEGGINGS TO CHURCH!!?”
We can talk about the issues now. Wanna talk about student loans? Only Warren wants to have that conversation, and if you look at the GD thread on it its a great big dumpster fire. What other issue do you want to talk about? The New Green Deal? Are you going to get a better reception from the Republicans if you don’t impeach than if you do?
I don’t get what difference impeachment will make. The same conversations will play out exactly the same way. The Republicans will continue their dominance over the news cycle. They will continue to set the agenda. Impeachment won’t change this.
Dem candidates are already putting forward alternatives that voters can either embrace or reject. Nothing needs to change here. Warren is the only candidate (I’m aware of) that has called for impeachment. She is also continuing to release new policy ideas and she is continuing to push her agenda. And there is no reason why that would change if they decided to impeach.
To borrow from the Washington Post: this is how democracy dies.
Oh, FFS. Here’s the summary of H.Res. 803, February 6, 1974:
You apparently are more expert than I am at questionnaire design, that’s all I can say. :rolleyes: :dubious: :rolleyes:
But I would appeal to your superior :rolleyes: knowledge :dubious: to suggest that that question is going to be read by many respondents as, “should we start impeaching Trump?” rather than “should we start figuring out whether we should?”
I would answer the first question in the negative, myself. And I’m pretty pro-impeachment, as I think you’ve noticed. So I’d say we don’t know public opinion on the second question. If you think we do, that’s your problem.
Polling has consistently shown (to my endless frustration) that the hoi polloi don’t really care that much about the Russia story. They want to focus on healthcare and other typical political issues, which forces strategic Democrats to act like this is a normal time and that Trump is a normal Republican opponent. But this headline on the front page of the Fargo Forum (the city and region’s daily newspaper of record) made me wonder if this is the angle that could change that somewhat. As I say in the tweet, the smart money is always to bet “no”, but I still think it’s interesting–particularly because we normally hear mainly about Russians as online trolls, not as Americans-style flesh-and-blood spies as is the case here.
One thing I really have no sense of is whether this is a flukey story that happened to occur in this news market, or if there is stuff like this going on across the country (or, more to the point, in battleground states).
ETA: Click the image to see it zoomed out a bit, including the mentions of the NRA and Trump.
I’m in support of impeachment because it’s the moral thing to do. “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” is the standard, and it has been met. Plain. Pure. Simple.
I don’t care that it’s hard. What trial is ever easy?
I don’t care that there is “an election around the corner”. There’s a fuckin’ election every 2 damned years. Let these hearings be the background noise for 2020.
I don’t care that it’s not 100% supported by 100% of Americans. Unlike Trump, Nixon was actually popular - he won 1972 in a 49 state landslide with 60% of the vote, for Chrissakes. Trump is no Nixon.
It’s time to get to work, ladies and gentlemen: Get off the pot and support the Constitution and stop worrying about how “hard” this is, how it “plays in Peoria”. It’s time to go all-in and demand that this shit will not stand. Because to demand otherwise is to say to the world, and to future Presidents, that the corruption we’ve seen, corruption not even Mueller-related, since 1.20.2017 (and before) is just fine with you.
Well, it’s not right with me. And I sure as fuck don’t need some goddamned poll to tell me when it’s time to do the right thing.
And if we should lose this fight, we will die knowing that we fought it. But if one sits it out, they will die knowing they didn’t take a stand when it was needed.
This Mueller shit isn’t even half of it, but it’s the best road map we have. Let’s use it, and now.
#Impeach.
If only there had been a blowjob involved …
I can only guess your lack of cites shows that you can’t find a pollster who has asked your perfect question? Interesting.
I haven’t made a claim, so I don’t need a cite.
This is kinda Doper 101 stuff, you know.
Yeah, you’re just flat out denying that “should we start impeachment?” is the right question to ask about whether we should start impeachment. We should ask some question that mysteriously no professional pollster has apparently asked. How could you cite such nonsense?
This bickering is getting super-tiring even for an Elections thread, y’all.
Look, RTFirefly says we don’t know jackshit about how impeachment would affect the election so we might as well impeach. I pointed out that we do have jackshit, polling shows its not a popular move. Now he’s dancing around trying to say that’s meaningless. In fact, both of you made generic “depends” comments without reading my cite. Sorry I got dragged into bickering over nonsense.
The problem with declining to open an impeachment investigation is only partly what Trump’s already done. The other part is what he’ll do if the Dems just sit there and do nothing. Which we’re already starting to see.
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He and his people are talking about investigating those who investigated him. He’s got the Federal government apparatus, and a pliant AG, at his disposal.
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He’s told one witness to not comply with a Congressional subpoena, without bothering to give any grounds for it. Any reason to think he won’t just turn that into a wholesale refusal to comply with Congressional requests?
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He’s suing Rep. Elijah Cummings for having the temerity to investigate him. Sure, such a suit is frivolous, but it’s going to require more of Cummings’ attention than Trump’s.
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He will continue to degrade and weaken whole swaths of the U.S. government, reducing the government’s ability to carry out its responsibilities for years after Trump leaves office. And he’s got pliant Cabinet secretaries, confirmed or acting, pretty much across the board now.
The House can…hold hearings. Trump will likely refuse to allow anyone to testify, even after they’re subpoenaed. The House can hold the witnesses in contempt of Congress. And Congress enforces this…how? (It’s a question that actually came up during the Bush years, in 2007-2008. There didn’t appear to be a good answer at the time.) Unless they come up with evidence that Don Jr. or Ivanka or Jared has committed crimes, that’s not much of a cudgel.
One can debate just how much of a cudgel an impeachment proceeding amounts to. But the threat of one was clearly enough to give Trump a fair amount of anxiety, given his tweets over the weekend. That’s better than nothing. The more he feels he’s on the defensive, the less effective he’ll be at making things worse for the nation. That’s enough reason for me.