The Nancy Pelosi appreciation thread

The BBQ Pit
421

  1. Four and a half months, not three months. And they’ve known they would have control since November 7, which is 6 months and 20 days ago. All of that ‘pick their Speaker, organize their committees’ mostly happened before January 3.

  2. We’re not asking Pelosi to ‘charge into’ anything. In fact, one of the big points of my argument is that impeachment is something you don’t want to rush. Which is why the earlier a Judiciary Committee inquiry into whether Trump has committed impeachable offenses had been authorized, the more time they would have to quietly accumulate and go through the evidence in an unpressured manner, and not be faced with a choice of rushing the inquiry or having an impeachment proceeding in the middle of a Presidential election year.

We were asking her to ‘charge into’ giving the Judiciary Committee authorization to get started. Post-publication of the Mueller Report, that doesn’t seem like a lot to ask.

I don’t hate her; I’ve got great respect for her. I just think she’s wrong on this. I can hold both thoughts in my head at once, just like I can regard Barack Obama as the best President of my lifetime (goes back to Ike), and still give you chapter and verse on a number of really bad calls he made.

This can happen concurrently with an impeachment inquiry.

As in the Nixon impeachment proceeding of 1974, the Judiciary Committee inquiry should work with what’s currently available, and include evidence that other proceedings make available if it happens, but not seek new evidence on its own. This will assure that it moves forward without being slowed down by court battles with Trump and his minions.

  1. This is much less true of today’s Dem House majority than it was of a similar-sized majority in 2007, due to the increasing urban/rural divide in American politics. Yes, a few Dems won in surprising places (SC, OK) but this is very much a blue-and-purple majority.

  2. The next election isn’t for a year and a half. If the Judiciary Committee produces an overwhelming case for impeachment, that should protect the Dems in purple districts. If not, Pelosi protects them by telling the Judiciary Committee that they can’t go ahead because their case isn’t strong enough.

I agree with you here: I think putting vulnerable GOP Senators in an untenable position is one of the political goals of an impeachment, since removal is extremely unlikely. But:

The problem here is that she’s wasting time without letting the Judiciary Committee get started in building that case.

They could have started working on this five weeks ago. That time is already lost, and probably the next few weeks will be lost as well. The 1974 Judiciary Committee took 5 months and 21 days to move from being authorized to initiate their impeachment inquiry (February 6), to voting on obstruction of justice (July 27). If the 2019 Judiciary Committee moves at the same speed, they’re already into mid-November instead of early October. Add another month for debate and vote of the full House. I get nervous at the thought of this running into next year, and that’s starting to look more likely - assuming the Dems don’t just chicken out and do nothing.

Ah yes, Axios: the outfit that’s supplanted Politico as the high priesthood of the Church of the Savvy.

It’s great that Pelosi can get under Trump’s skin, but how does that really change anything? How are the Dems going to be in better shape even two weeks from now on account of that?

The reason why Pence was available to be Trump’s VP nominee at a time when most GOP pols were still nervous about being too closely associated with him, was that his approval ratings in freakin’ Indiana had fallen through the floor.

The last two paragraphs of Article I, Section 3 deal with the Senate’s role in impeachment. It starts off, “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.” Nothing there says they are compelled to use that power anytime the House impeaches someone.

It’s certainly customary that they do so, but restraints based on long-standing custom have been falling by the wayside anytime they’re in Mitch McConnell’s way. If he thinks a trial would increase the risk that some of his Senators would lose in 2020, then he won’t have a trial.

422

A question: have any Dem Congresspersons read the entire* Mueller Report, and said an impeachment inquiry wasn’t warranted?
*I realize that no Congresspersons have seen the entire unredacted Mueller Report. I’m talking about the version that’s publicly available.

423

Two things here:

  1. You seem to be putting the cart before the horse here. Impeachment shouldn’t be pursued unless the evidence is already there to give some chance of conviction in the Senate. Well, how do you know until an impeachment inquiry starts assembling and marshaling the evidence?

You have to have the inquiry, and give it time to do its work. If the inquiry produces an overwhelming case, they proceed with articles, committee debate, committee vote, full House debate, full House vote. If their case comes up short of overwhelming, Pelosi tells them not to bother to draft articles of impeachment, and that’s the end of it.

  1. I honestly don’t know what crimes would have to be demonstrated in order to convince 20 or more Senate Republicans to vote to remove Trump. I honestly think that if he removed all our troops from Europe, Korea, and Japan, there’d be some rumblings of criticism within the Senate GOP caucus, but after a few weeks, they’d accept this as the new normal. And if a few weeks after that, they found that Trump had deals signed for Trump Towers in Moscow and Pyongyang, they’d shrug that off too after some muted criticism. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how far in the tank I see them being. I don’t know if they’d vote to convict in that scenario if there were signed papers saying the Trump Towers were a quid pro quo for removal of American troops.

So if one requires removal from office to be the goal of impeachment, and is against pursuing it if that’s not a possibility, then AFAIAC one is against impeachment.

424

I’m not so sure. The public generally supports the president during a war, at least at the beginning. It took a while for the public to turn against the Iraq war, and even longer to turn against the Vietnam war. War is a tool used by demagogues, and demagoguery is Trump’s greatest skill. The only way I could see a war hurting Trump is if he’s obviously caught unprepared—for instance, being caught flat-footed if North Korea attacks South Korea despite obvious advance warning.

Another thing that could turn the public and Congress against Trump would be a badly mishandled natural disaster. W’s popularity took a dive with his response to Katrina.

425

But those are not the people who are screaming that impeachment must start now.

The people who hate Trump so much that they demand a Fire! Ready! Aim! strategy towards Trump are not the ones who are wishy washy about voting against him.

Sure you could have a big spectacular boom over the next year. Which will be portrayed as just Democrats being partisan trying to get the other parties guy out of office. Around December 2019 Trump gets cleared in the Senate proving that he did nothing wrong, by August 2020 its all old news and anyone who bothers bringing it up again is just a sore loser who won’t accept that Trump was found totally innocent of all charges against him.

This is what the wishy-washy voters will see.

A far better way is a slow roll out of investigation after investigation all the way through to October 2020 done in an careful deliberate manner to get at the Truth which all happen to point to Trump being guilty of crime after crime. If at some point this turns the national sentiment around enough that impeachment could actually succeed in removing him from office then we pull the trigger.

426

Whatever. This digression started when you implied that people like me were “a bunch of fickle spoiled brats” because I suggested that Dem inaction in the face of a President who they’ve generally acknowledged has repeatedly obstructed justice didn’t exactly increase my motivation to vote Dem. And it’s gone further than I have any interest to pursue it.

How’s that gonna work?
The House will have repeatedly presented the evidence against Trump, in the Judiciary Committee, in the full House, and in the Senate if there’s a trial. So the Senate votes to acquit, or ignores the House and doesn’t hold a trial at all. Even casual voters by that point will be going ‘WTF?!’ because even casual voters will know what’s going on, the way I knew what was going on in GoT this season, despite never having watched a minute of it.

I doubt it. Here’s the thing: it takes repetition for shit to sink in. That’s why all the bad Trump stories in 2016 never made much of a mark, but ‘Butter Emails’ did. Each Trump story was in the news for a day or two, then disappeared, but a given Hillary story would be in the news for weeks at a time, and people got the message even if they didn’t get the details.

The case against Trump in the Judiciary Committee and the full House will be in the news for weeks at a time.

You’d have to keep each one in the news for weeks, in order for them to make a dent. Good luck with that.

427

We pretty much know what the evidence is, the Mueller report, plus perhaps some more. No hint of Trump buggering dead boys on the Capital steps.

Pelosi works with those men on a daily basis, and i would guess she knows and the answer is likely “Nothing”. She has likely talked to many of them behind closed doors.

She KNOWS the Senate wont convict currently. She has done the footwork.

If there was a political advantage to starting Impeachment in the House- Pelosi would do it. Since she hasn’t- there isn’t. Ipso facto.

428

To be sure, we like swearing quite a lot, too.

…and it’s been pretty well established that both of those properties are kinda thin on the ground in the GOP…

429

It’s interesting you mention this because it crossed my mind as well. It would poetic justice for yet another climate change denying idiot to get permanently politically fucked by climate change, as Bush did during Katrina. The mother of all disasters would be the Mississippi River flooding so badly that it changes course and potentially leaves the Ports of New Orleans, South Louisiana, and Baton Rouge high and dry, which is remote but not entirely out of the realm of the possible.

To clarify, I don’t really want this to happen, as it would be an economic catastrophe that is hard to fathom.

430

It already happened. Everyone saw him telling Puerto Rico to go get fucked.

431

Was going to mention that but then realized that Puerto Rico is full of brown people so, meh, doesn’t count.

432

How many Americans live in South Africa?

433

And I don’t think it’s part of the USA, 'cause some of them don’t speak English, amirite?

434

I admit I was surprised by the degree to which US citizens seemed unaware that Puerto Rico is part of the US. Just a little surprised, at least.

435

I think what Pelosi fears is that Trump, Republicans, Fox News would say “You want to have an impeachment? Fine, let’s do it right now,” which is different from Watergate. In 1973, Nixon was stonewalling because he wanted to keep others, including in his own party, from knowing what only a few people knew - that there were tapes with his voice on it making it as clear as day that he was involved in a coverup, which as it turned out, the cover up was way, way worse than the actual offense itself.

I don’t think these dynamics exist today - at all. Like I said, this president has been investigated since the day he took office, since even before he took office. And we’ve already had very public displays of Nixonian behavior - I’d argue even worse the Nixon. Dude, he fired his FBI director for refusing to stop the investigation - better yet, he admitted it in an interview. The fucker admitted to obstructing justice on a live mic, the same way he admitted to committing sexual assault. Dude, this country knowingly, willfully elected an admitted sexual predator. What makes you think this is anything like 1973?

I go back to something I said earlier. This is a test of the country’s collective value system, to see whether or not the country, meaning the people - not the activists, not the partisans who follow politics, but the people as a whole - will support democratic and egalitarian values over authoritarian and oligarchal values. It was the people who voted the sonofabitch in, and we’re going to need the people to throw him out. A test like this comes along maybe once every 100 years. We’re about to find out whether we pass it or not. That is why I am so goddamned alarmed because once you distill it down to this, you realize that if the people in this country have fucked up that badly already, it’s entirely possible that they will continue to do so.

Ain’t gonna be nothing quiet about starting the impeachment process - that I can guarantee you. The moment the House starts investigations and calling them the I-word, it’s going to kick off a political brawl, and considering the Democrats just returned to power a few months ago, they had better be ready for it. This is not the time for freshman representatives like AOC or Tlaib to cut their teeth and learn lessons the hard way. There is too much on the line.

The Judiciary Committee actually resisted multiple calls for impeachment from about May of 1973 on. What changed was the resignation of Spiro Agnew, the Saturday Night Massacre, and probably just as important, a growing economic malaise and a general sense that the country was not headed in the right direction. We’ve had our Saturday Night Massacre in the firings of James Comey, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, Jeff Sessions. He has called them traitors. He has revoked the security clearances of critics in the intel communities. We’ve had Trump basically threaten everyone else into retirement. But what’s really different - like way different - is that the Republican party that controls the Senate, knows all of this, and does not care. And his supporters do not care. Moreover, he has had some of the highest approval ratings of his term even AFTER doing all of this. I’m sorry, but this is 2019, not 1973-74. We live in different times. It will have to be the people who get this right, and I suspect that they won’t until they feel pain first. They let this goddamned stray dog into the house and they will have to reach the point where they’re tired of it pissing and shitting everywhere and tearing up the furniture before they kick him back out on the street.

436

On the most recent episode of the National Review “The Editors” podcast, there was a conspicuous air of rats fleeing the proverbial sinking ship, given their universal praise of Justin Amash after having mostly pooh-poohed the Mueller report in the past. One memorable comment that seemed to elicit general agreement: “The lesson we may be learning from all of this is that running against Hillary Clinton is a good gig if you can get it.”

I wouldn’t put it quite that way, but I do think Trump barely hit the halfcourt triple bank shot while our side was asleep at the wheel, to mix metaphors. Plus of course a little help depressing black turnout from Russians posing as BLM activists.

Add in the fact that some nervous suburbanites who didn’t like Hillary assumed or at least hoped Trump would “start acting presidential” after getting sworn in and having the gravity of the office settle upon his shoulders. Maybe he could go back at least to being the PG-rated character from “The Apprentice”. But those hopes were rather cruelly dashed in short order.

Although lack of representation in Congress will do that to you. Just another reason we need to make a big push to change that after Trump is out of the way.

437

I don’t think Amash’s call for impeachment is, by itself, anything, but what he does do is give reason for people in the cult to think about challenging the cult. The same with Joni Ernst’s and, fuck, John Bolton’s stance on North Korea, which is in direct opposition to Trump’s “bro-mance” with Kim.

What is clear is that there are some fault lines that are beginning to show. I don’t expect them to widen until something momentous happens. But before you can have an impeachment, you need to enable Trump’s supporters to somehow ‘go there’ in their minds, to visit that space.

Until recently, I’ve gotten the sense that this was all just a witch hunt, but now that the Mueller report is in the books, there’s less conscious need to defend Trump. That’s partly why I think impeaching him now would be a mistake. There’s less urgency to defend him. Those who support him can now take a more objective look at his bat-shittery without reflexively feeling the need to defend him.

438

Asahi, I agree with most of that. But I think you have a word missing in the beginning of your last paragraph? Hopefully?

ETA: I’d add that in addition to the people you mentioned, a GOP congressman just this weekend said Trump’s criticism of Biden in the same tweet he praised a dictator was “just wrong”. When you have it coming from multiple members of the House GOP caucus, notoriously rock-ribbed, it does give more Republicans license to start considering this stuff without being reflexively defensive.

439

What I meant to say was that in the minds of Trump supporters, it was just a witch hunt - I still think most of his devotees are still of the belief that he’s been treated unfairly.

But we’re seeing two things from the Pelosi strategy here: the investigations are still a thing, which means that Trump is having to defend himself, and it ain’t fun. I don’t think he can defend himself against subpoenas forever, and even if he can hold out, New York state can release his state returns, which will probably be a story, which in turn might put the pressure on him.

At the same time, by not calling it an impeachment, which is what his supporters dread, they can spend more time analyzing Trump and his value to them. What people don’t realize is that defending Trump has a cost. It wastes time. It detracts from the GOP message, too (whatever it is). That’s why people like Rep Hurd and Sen Ernst are occasionally speaking out because they realize that their constituents are starting to demand results and they’ve got nothing to tell them. They want Trump to stop being a fucking distraction and to do something. By not impeaching, it enables them to be a little more able to criticize Trump, not just Democrats pressing a witch hunt. But impeach him, and we’re right back to 2017 all over again.

440

I think the press has done a poor job of covering Puerto Rico and the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Katrina was the top item in the news for a long time after the storm hit, with pictures of corpses in the streets, coverage of the Superdome and Convention Center, reporting on the Bush administrations mistakes and on “Great Job Brownie.” The human cost of Maria was higher, but since the disaster happened on an island full of brown Spanish-speakers, it was treated by the American press as if it were a disaster in some place like the Dominican Republic.

If there were a disaster this bad in an American state (as opposed to a territory), and Trump had responded with the same open disdain and hostility that he did to Puerto Rico, the response of the press, of Congress, and of the American public would have been different. Trump did lean in this direction with the Camp Fire, which he tried to blame on the California state government’s “bad forest management.” He even threatened to withdraw FEMA aid. He hates California because the state voted against him in 2016, because of some state policies such as sanctuary laws, and because California politicians such as Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom have been critical of him. This led him to absurdities like saying the state needs to prevent fires by raking the forest floors. But the Camp Fire, as bad as it was, has not overwhelmed the state’s ability to respond. It’s when local government is overwhelmed that the federal government becomes really important in a natural disaster. This happened in Puerto Rico, but it hasn’t happened in a U.S. state while Trump has been in office.