These are valid points. We’ve been using “impeachment” to mean “removal from office,” but it doesn’t automatically include that.
As I’ve said, I’m in favor of waiting until all the ducks are in a row. But maybe at some time it will seem to be a good strategy to put Donnie through this even if the likelihood of him being removed from office is remote. If anything, it will make it even clearer how the Pubbies are backing a total loser.
Here’s what US Intelligence veteran Malcolm Nance tweeted today:
#NukeHimFromOrbit is definitely going to catch on.
For the most part, here at the Dope, we’ve been using ‘impeachment’ correctly - to refer to a majority of the House voting articles of impeachment.
IMHO, the likelihood of the Senate’s removing him is so small it isn’t worth practical consideration. Unless Trump were to literally shoot someone on Fifth Avenue (and maybe even then), almost all of the Republicans in both houses of Congress would fall in behind him. A few GOP Senators might vote for removal to hold onto their seats, and one or two more might vote for removal out of principle. But I’d be astounded if even 55 Senators voted for removal, no matter how strong the case for it.
OTOH, UltraVires’ 85-15 vote for acquittal is even more absurd. The impeachment vote in the House would be all hands on deck. I think there are or will be a couple of empty House seats, and now-independent Justin Amash would vote for impeachment, so the Dems would ‘only’ need 216 of their 235-member caucus to vote for impeachment in order to send articles of impeachment to the Senate. And if 216 of 235 Dems vote for impeachment in the House, a similarly large majority of Dem Senators would vote for removal.
I could see a Kavanaugh-ish vote on removal, where all the Dems except Manchin voted for removal, and all GOPers except Murkowski voted against removal. If that happens, you heard it here first - though I still think it’s more likely that McConnell would protect his Senators from having to vote at all by the simple expedient of not holding a trial. And even more likely still at this point, alas, that Trump doesn’t get impeached at all.
Is there a reason to believe this guy has a better idea of what’s going on in the House than your average reporter who covers Congress?
When the nuke hits, can Pence be standing next to him? While I believe she’s handled this whole thing badly, I could live with a year or so of President Pelosi! 
I just mentioned his intelligence credentials in case any reader might have been trying to place him. I wouldn’t claim that his idea has any particular dependence on his special area of expertise.
Works for me!
I honestly do not know what he meant by ‘subject to’. I still don’t and I don’t think your guess is correct but it might be.
Well no big deal, amirite?
Russia tried to influence our election to elect Trump. If they were unsuccessful, and had no actual influence on the result, that’s a big hairy ass deal. Because they tried. If they did succeed, that’s fucking thermonuclear. That’s a spoonful of plutonium on your granola. Really, very bad. And we don’t even know.
Trump had ongoing business interests in Russia. But said he didn’t. He lied.
Trump told Don McGahn to fire Mueller. Mr McGahn has no authority to do any such thing. He doesn’t have authority to fire the janitor. The caterer. Trump’s hairstylist has a security clearance, prolly not him either.
Trump told McGahn to falsify an official record. In any other litany of bad acts, that would be yuge. In this bunch, its a pygmy. Puny, itsy bitsy. Mere perjury.
Both Trump and Barr characterized the Mueller report as largely an exoneration. They lied. Amazingly, they lied while knowing full well there was a good chance they would be exposed. Its Baghdad Bob level.
Trump deliberately played cutesie games with any possible testimony, refusing any direct examination, and settling, finally, on written questions. And then, according to Mr Mueller, lied. Pretty sure that isn’t actually legal. TG, IANAL.
Mike Flynn was working on behalf of at least one foreign government, as he was nominated for and confirmed to be national security adviser. Obama warned him, Sally Yates warned him. He asked Comey to go easy, because Flynn was such a great guy. And then fired Comey when he refused!
Manafort, his campaign manager, is a slimy, traitorous greed-freak. A two dollar Shanghai waterfront hooker is less of a whore. Hey, maybe Dipshit Donny didn’t know! I can believe that, he is that stupid. Sure. A pass, due to cognitive shit-for-brains. Dumb as a bag of wet mice.
Shit, if Obama had done any one of these things, the Republican Senate would vote to put him in front of the Washington Monument before a firing squad that afternoon! And I’m leaving a whole* bunch* of shit out!
But hey! Let’s just move on. I mean, really, what’s the big deal, here?
This. There would be NO vote in the Senate.
Mueller hearing = nothingberder? Not so fast.
What the Mueller Hearings Did Not Tell Us
This is the kind of thing Nancy Pelosi was referring to.
I don’t give a flying fuck that Trump ultimately won’t be removed from office through impeachment, but the democrats deciding not to impeach him is really depressing and is the reason why democrats will lose big in the 2020 elections. The legitimate outrage that spurred 2018 voters to show up is dismissed by the democratic leaders. No, people really don’t want to hear about health care, education, blah, blah… that shit is boring. I want to vote for someone who will fight for goodness and what is right, not someone who is a puppet of the latest polls. Any (D) that says that infuriating line about “…but people don’t want to hear about Trump, they want to hear about health care, about LBGT rights, about education” and therefore not expressing 100% outrage at the corruption of the Trump administration as being the #1 threat to our confidence in gov’t, our image of the US, should just forfeit. You are not a gas station. You don’t need to build your store right across the street from your competitor. Your competitor is in the worst part of town so all you are doing is making sure no one wants to visit your store.
I’m surprised this hasn’t been mentioned, or maybe it has somewhere and I missed it. Mitch McConnell and that idiot from Mississippi block legislation intended to increase security against Russian meddling in 2020 election, just hours after Mueller warns of the continued risks of such meddling.
Hard to understand why Republicans are so unconcerned about Putin’s Trump-supporting goons. Why, one might almost think they want to encourage them!
Meanwhile, in other news, Republican efforts to prevent blacks and poor people from voting continue. Because election security is important!
Well, yes, election security is precisely the issue! If elections are not carefully secured, the wrong people might gain power. Mr McConnell is well aware of the corrupting effect of power, we should be grateful that he is so eager to protect us.
Great, so McConnell will use that “but, but that’s way too partisan” as a reason for all his fucked-up actions.
And then, ONE day after a somewhat botched attempt to reinforce these valid points in front of the American people, Congress goes on recess for six frickin’ weeks. Six weeks of Trump crowing bullshit about his TOTAL! EXONERATION! NO! COLLUSION! with no one around to provide rebuttal. And when Congress comes back in September? Fuhgeddaboudit, everyone will be talking about football then.
So, OK. I’ve gotta think the Mueller investigation is DOA; at best, it goes into the hopper for blending with all the other ongoing investigations that may or may not turn up something that finally swings momentum toward impeachment. But I am not…optimistic. heavy sigh
I rise to quibble. A small matter, perhaps, but that’s the trouble with quibbles…
No “rebuttal”? The rebuttal has been made, it was not spectacular, it was not shattering, it was a dull and ordinary recitation of appalling fact. Mr Barr was full of shit. Très duh, mais non?
Such headlines as there are have been made, roughly the same dull thud as the disHon. Mr Barr impacted. Anyone who was affected by his avalanche of horseshit is likely impacted by this rebuttal in roughly the same degree. Almost certainly not more so, but roughly equal. Its not the thunderbolt that sets the bovine herd to stampede but we could never realistically depend on that. Which is to say, your idiot brother-in-law who read Barr’s headline read this one. True, the cerebral vacuums under MAGA hats will not hear, but they would not hear the thunder nor see the bolt if it fried their collective butts.
Il Douche would have, and will, trumpet exoneration and vindication regardless. If Herod’s Curse descended upon him from the Throne of the Almighty, he would claim the boils were the result of AOC planting poison ivy on his golf course. Nothing, but nothing! would alter his course. Brothers and sisters, pals and gals, perseverance furthers. Nothing guarantees success, but despair guarantees failure.
Dare we persist? We do dare, do dare, all the livelong day. Sic 'em!
I think you’re right, and I agree with you. But remember that Hillary was viciously criticized for making that election all about Big Bad Trump and NOT about issues. OTOH maybe after 4 years of His Royal Doofusness, people WILL want to make 2020 a referendum on him. Who knows? The fact is, no one can figure out what the fickle electorate wants from minute to minute, let alone from year to year. :smack:
Realistically, the Democrats should simply say that it’s up to each side to police their own. Trying to do otherwise just makes the accusers not be believed, because they’re the “enemy”.
At such a point as the Republicans decide to stop being criminals, the Dems will be happy to vote to oust the crooks. Until that point, it’s on them and the Dems are just going to do their job making law and practicing oversight.
But the choice is very simple: vote for boring Democrats, or get four more years of Trump. This “I want a real progressive” purity bullshit is partly why we have Trump in the first place. See, it’s not the parties that determine the fate of a democracy; it’s the citizens themselves. The worst part about American democracy is the ignorance and apathy of the average voter.
2018 mid-terms, blue wave. Democrats, weak as always, decide not to rile up Trump supporters by not impeaching him. They still don’t get it. His base will be out in full force on election day regardless of what they do. And now they’ll lose and somehow look even weaker because they not only made a cowardly decision, but a completely wrong one. This has nothing to do with being a “real progressive” and everything to do with a party that will always cower and will never be confident about its own ideas.
Sure, passive and metrosexual Americans are attracted to Mr Roger’s effete and soothing style but real Americans are naturally drawn to the direct, bold style of Vlad Tepes. When he says “Up yours!”, there is no question, no doubt, this is a serious leader…