The Trump Impeachment Inquiry

Politics & Elections
21

I tend to think this was the right move, especially if they move relatively quickly. Use those increased powers to subpoena absolutely everything and everyone, ASAP, and the courts will probably process the WH’s resistance much more quickly. However it goes, make it go quickly. If it goes well, great for the Democrats… if it goes badly, then there will be plenty of time to try and make up for it.

But at least Congress will have used their powers appropriately to fight corruption and wrongdoing at the top.

22

Thanks, just read it. Here is an interesting bit:

So support for impeaching Trump has already reached what it was for Nixon a few months before he resigned and the investigation hasn’t even started yet. :cool:

Any comparison to Clinton’s impeachment is apples to oranges. His was unpopular because most of the public saw it for the bullshit that it was.

23

This is the opportunity for the Republican establishment to regain control. They need only lay low and let the Dems impeach while encouraging Republican serving anti-Trump propaganda - Trump was always a closet Democrat, his election was a Make Trump Great scam, stuff like that. Vote him out of office by one vote.
Then run Nicky Haley against Warren in 2020!

24

Quiet, you. :wink:

(Actually, I think a healthy, sane, robust Republican Party would be a good thing, for EVERYONE, so I kind of like your idea).

25

Another thing that concerns me is if that you’re a centrist voter on the fence about Trump, you’re probably not the sharpest knife. My bet is they take a Senate acquittal as meaning “Not Guilty,” as if this is a legal process, then they get mad at the Dems for wasting the country’s time and vote Trump.

26

I agree, except they don’t deserve to be perceived as healthy and sane for at least two presidential election cycles, or until three SCOTUS justices can be replaced, whichever comes first.

27

I remember that the opposition party won the following election. Was that the lesson?

28

I closed two parallel threads and directed traffic to this one. The threads I closed were hereand here.

[/moderating]

29

I used to fear that starting impeachment proceedings against Trump would, ultimately, strengthen his political standing and make re-election more likely.

But at this point, I doubt there are many who will now switch to Trump because of the outcome. His core seems pretty static. If it hasn’t grown by now, it’s not gonna grow much in the future.

In fact, the entire impeachment process will probably not continue interminably. It will finish way before next November. If Trump is found guilty, case closed. If the Senate doesn’t convict, or proceedings are stopped before that (in fact, Mitch could refuse to hold it), it will be old news before November 2020. In today’s news cycle, anything that happened more than a week ago is forgotten. People aren’t gonna vote for Trump because “hey, he was found ‘innocent’ last year”.

30

Amen to that.

31

Here’s my concern with this situation:

If it seems like things finally might start turning on Trump, McConnel and all of the other Republicans who enabled him are probably going to try to cut a deal with Pelosi and the democratic leadership. “Okay, so we’ll help you get rid of Trump, but leave us out of it.”

And I fear that the democratic leadership would be stupid enough and derelict in their duties enough to take such a deal.

Trump is only one aspect of a larger problem - the radicalized Republican base and the corrupt Republican party that will do anything to enhance their own power, rig the system in their favor, and loot the country as hard as they can. Pretending that this is all just Trump, and if we get rid of him it all goes back to normal, would be a horrific mistake.

If Trump was the only problem, then a responsible Republican party would’ve already been on board with getting rid of him 200 scandals ago. Their corruption and complicity is what kept him protected no matter how badly he fucked up. If those same people remain in power after this, the situation gets worse.

The Republicans now know that their radicalized, hateful base will support absolutely anything Fox News tells them to support, anything that anyone who isn’t part of their in-group thinks is bad, they’re all for it. So the next Republican president isn’t going to be a senile clown who can’t speak a sentence or two - he’s going to be a smooth operator who knows full well how to take advantage of his radicalized base, who can sound like a relatively normal politician while also using the dog whistles to throw the republican base a bone while much more effectively executing an evil agenda like coordinating foreign rigging of our election in their favor, continuing naked power grabs (like in North Carolina), domestic rigging and manipulation of elections (like in Georgia), stacking the courts with radical right wing judges, obstructing the democrats no matter what, like under Obama, etc.

It’s not enough to just get rid of Trump. And in fact, getting rid of Trump alone might be the most dangerous of all options. There has to be a reckoning, a purge. We have to acknowledge that what has gone on in recent years is way outside the norm, and way outside of what can be acceptable from an American political party.

32

A couple thoughts from a Canadian:

This is much different than Clinton’s impeachment. They wanted to impeach Clinton over lying about a BJ in the oval office. That’s pretty frivolous. This impeachment is regarding Trump conspiring/black mailing a foreign country for political gain! Plus the possibility of at least 2-3 other major charges for things Trump has done. Totally an apples to oranges situation!

My other thought is after watching Bill Maher this weekend, one of the panelists had an excellent point: if you don’t start impeachment proceedings because of what Trump did with the Ukraine, you set a dangerous precedent that would allow future presidents to the same (if not worse) and know there are no repercussions. Even if you know impeachment won’t happen (because the other guys run the Senate) there has to be a record of you trying! And who knows, maybe something truly earth shattering will come out of the proceedings and “Moscow Mitch” might actually find a spine inside his slimy bag of endoplasm!

You’ll never move his base from not voting for him, but I would hope the rest of the Republican “Patriots” will finally see the light and not vote for this clown in the next election.

And here’s another curve ball, if impeachment proceeds and forces Trump to resign, before November 2020. What happens to the 2020 election? The Republicans will need to come up with a candidate, what if the resignation is after their convention? Would the running mate (Pence?) be the defacto candidate?

MtM

33

This seems like counting your chickens before they’ve hatched. You haven’t even gotten “rid of Trump” yet (and you’re very unlikely to do so) and yet you’ve already moved on to ‘we also need to get rid of these other guys’?

34

…and the Trumpites will refuse to comply with those court orders much more quickly, too.

Why wouldn’t they? Who would be enforcing any court orders? Why, William Barr’s Justice Department. Guess how he’s going to handle this…just guess.

I can see that Pelosi had to move. The activist base was trending toward giving Trump a complete pass while declaring Pelosi to be History’s Greatest Villain.

But, what, exactly, is going to be different now? The witnesses are going to go on refusing to comply, and facing no consequences for that refusal. The American people aren’t going to learn any more about Trump’s misdeeds than they’ve learned up until now (which is to say that some fraction of them may hear a few rumors here or there, but nothing that will convince them that Trump should be removed).

I’m curious as to what you see those rules as being…?

35

The majority can dream, can’t it?

36

So that’s it? We have one example of an impeachment that backfired, so impeachment is always wrong?

Clinton’s impeachment backfired because it was obvious that the Republicans were just trying to create something out of nothing, playing partisan games, and trying to overreact to minor thing they found over him. So they impeached him over something everyone knew was small potatoes and basically had nothing to do with his job, and that backfired.

And now you’ve concluded that’s all that can happen. No matter the circumstances, with a sample size of one, impeachment backfires. Doesn’t matter if the president is a senile moron ruining America’s standing in the world, sucking the dick of any dictator he can find, and probably actively under the control of our greatest geopolitical enemy - there can be no circumstances that would justify impeachment, because hey, you should learn “the lessons of impeachment”

It’s a ridiculous comparison.

What these two impeachment proceedings will have in common is that they involved a radical bunch of tribal fanatics that will support their side no matter what. In the first case, the fanatics were determined to get Clinton for anything, no matter how minor. In this case, the fanatics believe that their guy cannot be impeached for anything, no matter how major. In both cases, it’s the same toxic group that operates irrationally yet powerfully, completely wrecking any semblance of rationality in American politics.

37

The bolded part times 1000.

People have been assuming that since Clinton’s approval ratings went up after he was impeached, it would happen under *any *impeachment scenario.

The reason the public didn’t turn against Clinton (like with Nixon) was because people looked at the offense and concluded it didn’t merit impeachment.

How will the public react to this? We’ll find out.

But I’ll take any advice from Trump supporters on Democratic campaign strategy like a Hatfield telling a McCoy where to aim.

38

Do you mean “people” as being the Senate? I don’t know the numbers but wasn’t it a pretty much party line vote (with a few Republicans crossing over and voting not guilty)?

39

I’m not talking about conviction. That requires (what is it – two thirds?) of the Senate voting to convict, and I know that’s not ever going to happen.

But it’s not clear what an impeachment in the House would do to voters outside of the shoot-someone-on 5th-Avenue base.

A lot depends on what we learn in the proceedings.

40

You mean ‘minority’, right? I’m pretty sure a solid majority of the public is against impeaching Trump: