…today in Fox News:
It really is time to stop allowing Trump and Fox and the GOP to control the narrative. They will spin the narrative if the Dems do impeach and they will spin it if they don’t. Its how propaganda works.
Yes.
And yes. So well said.
Let the Republicans try and defend against the actual facts. Frankly, I think they’re shit scared of having to do that. There are no reasonable defenses, and they know it. I see desperation in every narrative they’re trying to advance.
My best understanding of the main reason Speaker Pelosi and others have been reluctant to proceed with impeachment is their very real concern that it will leave the nation divided for a generation or longer. I’m afraid that has already happened. It won’t be better or worse because Dems roll over and refuse – again – to go on the offense.
…I haven’t made any argument about “emotional need.” My argument is entirely based on what I consider is best for the United States of America.
Here is what Elizabeth Warren has said about impeachment:
That isn’t righteous indignation. That is a statement about what she considers to be her constitutional duty. If you want to argue with people expressing righteous indignation then go find those people and argue with them. Because that isn’t the reason I’m in favour of impeachment.
Its of paramount consideration to me as well.
This is lame. Implying “Kendzior is in this for the money.” That she doesn’t really want to “oust the autocrat” because that will cut off her income stream. Do you really believe that? You claim you follow her, but you think her abject terror at what many more years of Trump will do to America is all pretend?
Of course Fox et al are perfectly willing to make stuff up. Of course they are in the business of saying ugly things, and will never cease doing so for any reason whatsoever.
But the ugly things will have some basis in truth if Dems put all efforts into a doomed show trial, and that’s bad for Democratic turnout in 2020. Why should voters turn out for pols so stupid that they threw away their chance at victory for a self-indulgent exercise in futility?
Impeachment makes sense in one and only one circumstance: if twenty GOP Senators start to fear they will lose their seats if they vote to protect Donald Trump.
And this is not impossible.
What it will take is NOT:
[ul]
[li]Democratic posturing about Doing What’s Right[/li][li]Democratic posturing about If We Don’t Impeach This Guy, Who WOULD We Impeach?[/li][li]Democratic speeches about how unprecedented Trump’s conduct is [though it is][/li][li]Democratic speeches about how awful Trump is [though he is][/li][li]Lengthy hearings emphasizing Trump’s lies and evasions[/li][li]Lengthy hearings emphasizing Trump’s attempts to save himself from accountability[/li][li]Lengthy hearings emphasizing Trump’s bullying[/ul][/li]
None of those things bother the voters who put those GOP Senators into office in the least. It is utterly pointless to prioritize messaging on these points. Mention them, sure—but expect it to change the minds of the voters we need to reach–the GOP ones who need to call their GOP senators and say ‘deep six this guy if you want my vote’? No.
What Democrats SHOULD do, to get 20 GOP senators to start to fear for their seats if they vote to acquit Trump, is:
[ul]
[li]Emphasize Trump’s servile, fawning, subservient, obsequious, and groveling relationship to Vladimir Putin.[/ul][/li]
The voters we need calling their GOP senators to tell them “do not acquit this guy” do NOT care that Trump welcomed Putin’s help in the 2016 election. They like Putin. They admire his ruthlessness (and his whiteness). They don’t care that Trump likes Putin.
But they DO care that Trump is Putin’s bitch.
So far they’ve been able to ignore this clear fact. FoxNews never mentions it, of course, and the few pieces of evidence they’ve been exposed to can be rationalized away.
But Mueller’s report contains evidence that should be emphasized and pounded and shouted and repeated and explained and reiterated by Democrats. Hit those pieces of evidence hard. Make graphs. Show the videos: Trump’s sheepish entry into the press conference room on 16 July 2018 in Helsinki, eyes down, hangdog—clearly Vlad had just given him a dressing down (probably over Trump’s failure to get rid of sanctions). Trump beaming like a 5-year-old in the receiving line at the Paris WWI memorial when Putin appeared. And most of all, the ‘can you believe how we are totally in control?’ greeting between Putin and Saudi Arabia’s defacto leader Mohammad bin Salman, at the December 2018 G20 at Buenos Aires.
This is the theme that will bother enough GOP voters, to make it worthwhile to impeach Trump.
Because if you don’t get those twenty GOP Senators, you are just wasting the opportunity to make a real difference in this world.* An impeachment effort that is certain to lose is the purest kind of self-indulgence there is.*
Putin & MBS celebrate their ownership of a US President:
Trump’s just-been-scolded entrance into the Helsinki presser is about a minute 50 seconds in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRiSbybC9yI
Trump’s creepy smile, November 2018: https://www.toledoblade.com/opinion/columnists/2018/11/18/vladimir-putin-uses-president-donald-trump-paris-to-help-his-cause-at-home/stories/20181117003
Interesting on the body language of Trump, Putin:
Yes, they are if all that cable news carries 24 hours a day is impeachment.
Now you’re the one who making binary assumptions. The House will hold hearings every week for eighteen months. They are not normalizing any behaviors. They can go far beyond the narrow impeachment issues. This is far superior a route for getting the truth out to the public.
In short, we can have the investigation and castigation of Trump while at the same time not interfering with the apotheosizing of the Democratic candidates. Win/win instead of lose/lose.
…you say this like its a bad thing.
You’ve already made this claim. I’ve asked for the schedule, you haven’t provided it.
“Superior” is a subjective, not an objective claim. You haven’t made a case that following the route of “holding hearings every week for eighteen months” is superior to impeaching. I’m prepared to change my mind: I’ve already changed it once. But preparing and holding 72 hearings over the next 18 months instead of 1 impeachment and several other related hearings sounds like an absolute nightmare to me.
Contextualizing this as “win/win” or “loose/loose” is the problem. We don’t know what the fuck the end game is going to be. I’m not going to predict that by impeaching Trump it will result in him loosing in 2020. But conversely you can’t predict that by not impeaching you guarantee Trump is going to loose. So we have to take that off the table. And we have to examine the decision on whether or not to impeach or not entirely on the merits of whether or not we think what Trump has done is impeachable. The decision not to impeach because it will “damage the Dems chances in 2020” is a partisan decision. And IMHO it isn’t the best decision for America.
Got it. Your opinion is an opinion, but my opinion has to be proven or it’s not worth anything.
Fortunately, I’m not taking this too seriously. I don’t want to loose my mind.
That’s just it. Much of their exposure of awareness to Trump’s obsequiousness toward Putin that lives in their memory banks has been due to
- homophobic cartoons depicting Trump and Putin
- homophobic memes depicting Trump and Putin
- homophobic artwork depicting Trump and Putin
- homophobic jokes about Trump and Putin
- homophobic rants about Trump and Putin
What of it is supposed to reach FOX viewers? If the Democrats hammer it and behave themselves, Tucker Carlson will just talk about someone in the media who is being or was homophobic.
…that is, quite literally, the opposite of what I just said.
Given that there is 0 chance of Republicans voting to remove Trump from office, the discussion really hinges on what impeachment is going to to do voters in 2020.
Broadly speaking there are three groups. The Republicans, the Democrats, and the mealy mouthed middle.
The Democrats, want blood and are going to be disappointed if Trump is allowed to skate. However I think that the displeasure is most likely to make itself apparent the in the primary. This is why Warren and all of the other Dem candidates are lining up behind it. BUt as for the general, if you are rabid enough that you want a useless vote to remove Trump from office, you are probably also motivated enough to cast that vote yourself. The protest voters of 2016 have learned their lesson. If its a choice between a wimpy Dem who may as well be a Republican on one side and evil incarnate on the other they will make the right choice.
As for the Republicans, Trump is their guy, but a fair number of them realize that he’s not their ideal candidate, and so may have midling enthusiasm to vote for him in November. The one way to galvanize that enthusiasm is with a partisan witch hunt in which the Dems refuse to accept the complete exoneration of the president as contained in the Mueller report and try to remove him anyway. We must defend him from this partisan coup.
As for the mealy mouthed middle. They are smaller than they were but they still exist and can swing the election. They haven’t been paying too much attention, but disdaining both sides equally they can demonstrate their superiority over either side. One side says Trumps innocent, one side says he’s guilty so the answer is probably somewhere in the middle. In any case it’s all politics as usual. A set of hearings where one side is chanting witch hunt and the other side is presenting scads of evidence is just going to be tuned out in favor of speculating about Beyonce’s album. What this country needs is to get rid of all of this partisan bullshit on both sides and fix whats wrong with this country. As such, bringing for the impeachment hearings that everyone knows aren’t going to lead to actual impeachment is just the thing to prove that the Dems are just as much party before country as the Republicans.
So given that hearings will have little effect on one group and a generally negative effect on the other two it seems poor strategy.
Another disadvantage of running further investigations as part of an impeachment process, is that it is time limited, and inevitably ends with a victory of Trump. Since it makes no sense to impeach the president in October 2020, the hearing will have to be wrapped up long before then and after it inevitably fails to remove Trump from office, it will be really hard for the Dems to justify yet more investigations. So by the time the election rolls around they will be old news with the only thing people remembering is that it failed in the end. Far better to just continue the slow trickle of investigation and sandal coming bit by bit throughout the next 18 months. With the Democratic leadership indicating their desire to leave it up the wisdom of the American people rather than usurping that authority for themselves.
Rather than impeachment, I’d like to see several investigations, each with narrower scope: Kushner’s security clearance, campaign finance violations, perjuries by several top Administration officials, Trump finances, etc.
I’m gonna have to double down on my ‘oh noes,’ I’m afraid. I also disagree with your characterization of impeachment as a ‘show trial’ if the Dems have the goods on Trump.
Wikipedia on ‘show trials’:
IOW, where the outcome of ‘guilty’ has been prearranged.
So you say. But I say the opposite is true. Who knows?
I want to meet these voters. I don’t believe they exist.
It’s like saying Dem voters stayed home in 2016 because they were mad at Dems for throwing away the 2016 election by nominating Hillary. I remember doing the time warp… 
Brian Beutler makes a case for impeachment hearings here.
As a matter of duty, public safety, etc.:
And on how this intersects with electoral politics:
Look, I want a president 46 who is good on policy and can manage a bureaucracy and not alienate foreign leaders and all those happy, positive things. I would like to see someone win this campaign “talking about the issues.”
But there is just about no way that the election next year is not going to be overwhelmingly a referendum on Trump. He is impossible for the media to ignore, and I don’t think Obama himself, or Mayor Pete with twenty extra rescue dogs, or frickin Oprah could draw their gaze away. He won’t allow it, and the media can’t help it. And the media’s presentation is how persuadable – i.e., low-information – voters will see it.
TLDR: ITMFA. He deserves it, and the politics are a net win (if only because avoiding impeachment is worse).
I agree with those who say that impeaching him now would only increase his chances of re-election (by allowing it to be used as a campaign point after his acquittal in the Senate).
However, I wouldn’t be surprised if, assuming he loses the election, they start impeachment hearings the day after the election. What would they have to lose?
If impeachment won’t fly, could we try an exorcism?
So…
How many people cared about climate change before the most recent spate of disasters, protests, and more?
We’re making the mistake here of chasing politics, not leading it. Why yes, right now, Mueller isn’t seen as a big deal. That’s fucking shameful! The most charitable interpretation of the Muller report (that isn’t flat-out lying like Barr did) involves a president who sees himself above the law treating a hostile foreign plot to intervene in our election as an opportunity for his campaign, then doing everything in his power to cover it up, up to and including several things which are probably obstruction of justice. If people don’t care about that, we need to figure out how to make people care about that. Trump may be Teflon, but past a certain point it gets fucking ridiculous. Either people legitimately do not care about any scandal he’s involved in (ergo we’re basically just fucked as a country no matter what), or we need to do a better job messaging this shit.
And if we can’t, well, guess who will? Here’s a recent Fox News headline: “Kayleigh McEnany: Mueller probe was a politically motivated act against an innocent president”. Hmm. I see no way that could go horribly wrong. Oh, and of course it’s Clinton’s Fault. If you think that if we just let them control the narrative like that, this isn’t going to turn into “let’s go after those who went after Trump”… well, I think that level of optimism is downright dangerous and shows a serious lack of basic pattern recognition skills.
In a sane world, the Mueller report would be the end of Trump’s presidency (and probably the end of his life as a free man). The fact that we live in a world that has gone batshit bonkers just means we need to work a little harder to make people grasp that. The fact that people don’t care about it right now doesn’t mean they won’t if there’s a good reason to care about it. A good reason like… Oh, I dunno… impeachment hearings.
This is the other thing. If we cannot impeach Trump, then there is no possible purpose for impeachment to be part of the constitution*. There has never been a better argument to use this tool in the history of our republic.
*I just remembered that given the opportunity Mitch McConnell would absolutely impeach the president, vice president, and however many other people it’d be necessary to impeach to put a republican back in power so this isn’t technically true.
Excellent point about some large volume of references to Trump-and-Putin being based in homophobia.
That should be pointed out to all who want to see Trump gone, and they should take a pledge to lay off that stupid and counterproductive (and ugly) approach. Trump’s subservience to Putin IS a security issue.
It’s nothing to do with sexuality, and people on the left need to realize it.
There’s the problem. Dems do NOT have the goods on Trump so far as Republicans are concerned. Republicans see nothing wrong with lying, obstructing, and bullying.
Democrats need to talk about what DOES bother Republicans, and stop being so intent on preaching to the choir.
Not a bad idea.
I also favor Democrats moving forward with focused hearings, as septimus suggested. Stick it to Trump on the security issue, and the servile-to-Kremlin-wishes issue. Call for a vote of censure and get Republicans on the record as being fine with Trump’s security and servility issues.
Why? The remaining NeverTrumpers will vote against Trump anyway, and the 40% are unreachable.
There I disagree. We’re in a polarized world where even Presidential elections are more about turning out those on your side than about reaching the vanishing ‘median voter.’ There’s a lot of marginal voters out there who are sure D’s IF they vote. Being the Scared Rabbit Party yet again isn’t the way to give them a reason.
Then there’s the matter of Trump himself. The guy loves attacking, but he’s lousy at playing defense. Here’s an opportunity to have him playing defense for the rest of the year, and the Dems are going to piss it away.
The Republican Senate is not going to vote to remove him based on the Mueller report. Therefore, going through an impeachment trial would be a waste of time and energy. It would make us no better than Newt Gingrich.
Keep hammering away at him with Congressional investigations, and force the Republicans to cast votes on strongly worded resolutions of censure. But unless one of those investigations turns up some huge smoking gun, it would be irresponsible political showmanship to go through the motions of an impeachment proceeding when the outcome is predetermined.
Of course, if you can make a case that an impeachment trial would improve the Dems’ chances of winning in 2020, that would be different. But so far I’m not hearing anything that’s convincing me it wouldn’t be better to focus on issues rather than on just bashing Trump. I don’t think a trial would be likely to move public opinion much; after all, Mueller didn’t find any solid evidence of collusion, and although we all know that legally it is possible to convict for obstruction of justice even if there was no underlying crime, politically that’s a huge deal.
I don’t mean to equate Trump’s offenses against democracy with Clinton’s personal sleaziness, but this argument that “He really, really deserves to be impeached, and if we have a trial, all those people who don’t currently agree will HAVE to see that we’re right!” is exactly the same line of thinking that Gingrich et al used.
I’m sorry, but I can’t agree. In re: your last point, “Because it’s the right thing to do,” would NEVER have been Gingrich’s rationale.
Impeach him. Even if the Senate won’t convict. Spend the political capital regardless. If you’re going to fail, at least fail with honor. Better to fail to do the right thing than success doing the wrong.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk