Seriously.
If you’re that ready to give up, roll over and show your belly, how is that going to play with the electorate? If you can’t bother to fight for your beliefs, why should I bother to support you? Were I one of the unaffiliated voters, I can’t imagine why I’d support a party that is so cowardly, so willing to throw aside principle for “pragmatism” Hell, that’s for Republicans!
Why is this even a question?
I’d rather have the party stand on principles of universal health care and fighting climate change than on pointing at one guy and saying “He’s the problem!”
Of COURSE Trump should be removed from office, and the fact that he won’t be is a terrifying statement about the crisis of our democracy. But it’s still a fact, and ignoring facts is for Republicans. Bush should have been impeached, too, and a lot of Dems wanted to do that when we took the House in 2006. Restraint worked out OK in that case.
If impeachment proceedings will increase the chance of Trump leaving office on or before next Inauguration Day, then do it. That’s the only criterion. Forget this purist “We MUST impeach because some threshold of awfulness has been met, regardless of the likely consequences of that action!” crap.
Set the procedures in motion, the Pubbies will do everything in their power to slow the thing down. Good. Make the investigations public, put out all the evidence as it surfaces. The Republicans will keep fighting, slow-walking, and be seen to do so. Good.
It wouldn’t much help the Dems to push hard, just keep piling up the evidence, in calm, plodding Mueller style. By then, the same people who are pissing and moaning now about the Dems being over eager will be bitching about how chickenshit they were, how they would have pressed the case.
Il Douche is our best hope of bringing together the brown, the black, the women, the gay and the persons of no particular variety into a coalition, a unity. Maybe not actually making America great again, but definitely better!
Always look on the blight side of life…
This.
If you’re going to do battle against someone like Trump, you can’t do it half-assed. You have to be sure you can go all the way.
He’s proven repeatedly over the past several years that one would be extremely foolish to underestimate him. More than a dozen Republican primary opponents made the mistake of underestimating him. None of them are in the White House. He is. Hillary Clinton and the entire Democratic establishment made the mistake of underestimating him. She’s not president. He is.
Trump is like Obi Wan Kenobi in the sense that if you try to bring him down, he’ll just come back stronger than you can possibly imagine.
The Democrats can go ahead and try to impeach. But when the Senate inevitably fails to convict, his supporters will see it as a full exoneration and just become more emboldened and motivated than ever.
…they saw it as a full exoneration when Burr released his first 4-page memo. They will see it as a full exoneration if the Dems *don’t *impeach. There isn’t a scenario where his supporters won’t believe he is fully exonerated. So why are we letting their reactions dictate whether or not to impeach?
Can you quantify this somehow? More emboldened than what? More motivated than when? And can you quantify what effect a more “emboldened base” will have on the next election?
Impeach him. If Trump is allowed to flagrantly break the law as President, what does that mean for our country? Our system falters and fails if the President cannot be held to account. We become a dictatorship, instead of a republic. He should be impeached and tried in the Senate. As Elizabeth Warren says, it is our constitutional duty to get this done.
I think it’s important enough to do this that even losing the election would be a fair price. We’re not looking at the long game. Consider the Republicans and the Supreme Court. Their actions undoubtedly damaged them at the mid-terms, but so what? They’ve got 2 justices in lifetime positions. It was far more important to them to do that then it was to win at the mid-terms. Impeaching the President for his crimes must be done. No one is above the law.
Removing Trump just gives you Pence, and the same appointment authority but without the political baggage. We may not need impeachment itself (let’s see what future indictments are coming via the SDNY or NYS), but we do need to keep the broad issue of his fitness for office prominent enough to limit the damage he can do. Certainly that starts with getting Mueller and his witnesses to testify publicly about what they found and why they did what they did.
Nixon’s end came only after months of hearings, on TV every day. Fox won’t be able to spin it well enough for that long.
It doesn’t matter whether any one person does it. Even if assiduously followed it would be about as effective as trying to follow a “don’t feel the troll” policy: someone would make a sexual reference and CFSG supporters would nutpick this as representative of all of the other sides’ views.
I can agree with this. Really, if not now then what constitutes “worthy” of impeachment? A hypothetical child molester President? Of course the Senate won’t convict, or even participate, if McConnell can swing that. But I think Democrats will forever regret it if there is no impeachment.
If Pelosi wasn’t willing to do it for lying us into a war of aggression, she won’t be willing to do it for mere corruption, conspiracy, and obstruction.
I don’t agree. I am convinced that if Fox news existed in Nixon’s time, he would have served out his term.
Why are we treating this as an either-or situation? Has America lost the ability to chew gum and walk? :dubious:
Trump will be in office for another 21 months. He’s removed all the people around him who would have restrained him, and replaced them with lackeys who will do his bidding.
At the very least, impeachment would give him another focus than figuring out how next to damage the Republic. It will occupy his thoughts, it will stay in his head, until it runs its course late this year. (How late depends on whether there’s an impeachment trial, or whether Mitch puts the kibosh on the whole thing. But if they authorize an impeachment investigation now, it’ll be over and done with before Christmas at worst. At which point he’ll have to start thinking about his re-election campaign more than every once in a while.
Between impeachment and the campaign, he’ll have enough shiny objects to keep his attention for the remainder of his term.
I don’t know about America, but we’re talking about the Democratic Party here. 
And what will they do that they’re not already doing?
Agreed. Here’s what I think the message should be:
Any time Republicans talk about how Democrats are wasting time with impeachment, Democrats should be able to respond with a raft of bills they’ve passed through the House and are waiting for the Senate to act on.
Pelosi, if she wants, can teach the house Dems to walk and chew gum at the same time.
Hey LHOD, who are you quoting in that second box? Good stuff, that.
I’m a pacifist by temperament and a pragmatist based on experience, but seconded. Or n’thd. This is one of those (insert any of a number of current season of Game of Thrones spoilers here) moments.
I have sympathy for “don’t waste time on X if it probably won’t work” arguments, but they only make sense if there’s something besides X that has a good chance of having a better payoff.
And of course, as others have pointed out: impeachment is a process. In Nixon’s case, it started with having hearings about whether to recommend impeachment.
And – it’s the right thing to do. Why not do the right thing when that’s really obvious, even if it’s risky? (Hey, it works in the movies!)
I agree with this, so long as the emphasis really IS on*:
**working on sensible bills that will demonstrably make life better for 99% of Americans
**continuing to keep the heat on Trump with public hearings on:
[ul]
[li]his actions and decisions that make him a security risk[/li][li]his being compromised–vulnerable to manipulation or worse by Russia, Saudi Arabia, and any other nation for which there’s evidence[/li][li]his corruption --from violations of the Emoluments provisions to his business deals[/li][li]his attempts to undermine election security[/li][li]his attempts to undermine the civil service and replace it with a spoils system (with required pledges of personal loyalty to him)[/li][/ul]
That last one has been largely pushed aside by other news:
Obviously Trump’s people aren’t stating ‘we want to throw out career civil servants and replace them with people loyal to Trump’—but that’s basically what it is. This needs to be explored in hearings, and the probable results laid out for the American people. Do we really want the IRS officials making decisions on who to audit, being Trump toadies? Do we want the Federal Marshals and election-oversight officials to have pledged personal loyalty to Trump?
So feeling Noble and Righteous in a Lost Cause is more important than removing Trump from office?
That’s either self-indulgence, or foreign-adversary propaganda.
*As opposed to an emphasis on Look How Special We Are, Impeaching! Even Though We’re Handing Trump the Massive Gift of a Senate Acquittal! Such posturing would not be acceptable to voters who care about the likely outcome. It will disgust many and drive down participation by Democrats in November 2020.
If impeachment is inevitable—and the way the bots are pushing it, it probably is—then it has to be done without posturing about Virtue and Duty.
What is this, False Dichotomy Day? I can’t keep up with all these wacky holidays they come up with: Presidents’ Day, Cesar Chavez Day, False Dichotomy Day…
How does Senate Republican intransigence and partisanship translate into less participation by Democrats in November 2020?? Yes, yes, Clinton, but he was impeached – when you get right down to where the cheese holds together – for a blow job. By a bunch of guys with extramarital affairs and illegitimate children on their records. So, no, I really don’t think the comparison is valid.
Doing the right thing – playing out the constitutional process of impeaching a sitting president for malfeasance - is “posturing about Virtue and Duty”?? :dubious: