It should be timed so as to peak right before the election, as I’ve been saying ever since it began.
Trump isn’t afraid of prison. Haven’t you ever seen a mob movie? He’s afraid of what Putin’s thugs will do to him and/or his family if it looks like he’s heading to prison, because they know he’s spineless enough to rat them out.
There is something to this approach. Assuming Trump doesn’t get caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy (as the saying goes), he’ll escape conviction by the Senate.
So the second-best outcome is to make him and his congressional supporters so toxic, that November 2020 is a Republican bloodbath. It seems like the best way to do that is to drag out the hearings for another 6-8 months, and pile on more and more charges before they ever go to trial (if at all).
I’ve also advocated for this strategy, but the objection makes a lot of sense: a prolonged inquiry with multiple accusations eventually just becomes background noise, and actually plays into the GOP narrative that Dems care more about smearing Trump than offering any ideas of their own.
So, unless something truly nasty arises, we’re screwed either way.
Madoff got beat up in prison so it’s not all fun for him. He knows he will die there unless he gets pardoned or his sentence commuted. Also remember Trump may to go a NY state prison instead of a federal lockup.
This would defeat the purpose of at least trying to make sure that Trump isn’t around come the 2020 election to continue meddling in it. I don’t believe anymore that anything will make the Republicans admit out loud how badly he has suborned the office of the President. Right now they’re complaining the House is moving to fast, and if becomes more deliberate they will complain that the House is dragging its collective feet. It doesn’t matter, whatever is said or however it is accomplished, it will have been done wrong in their eyes because the point is not whether or not he’s guilty. It beggars belief that they don’t know that he is. It’s throwing as many spanners into the works as they can because they have decided as a group that it doesn’t even matter, and they plan to have his back no matter what.
We know about Russia, though there can be some debate about whether the interference from Russia was sought or merely accepted; there’s little doubt that it occurred. We’ve learned about Ukraine, with only specious doubts from Republican ostriches that interference was sought and would have been eagerly accepted if Ukraine had caved to his pressure campaign. I have strong suspicions that there are more plots and schemes rolling around in the background that we know nothing about as of yet.
North Korea? They have a robust hacking underground, as does China. Russia isn’t definitely out of the picture. The point is, Trump has been credibly accused twice of involvement in varying degrees with foreign countries helping him by meddling in our elections (one willingly, one under duress). Aside from the fact that he’s a detestable human being and a waste of good oxygen, aside from his politics and policies, his actions show him to be a real danger to the democracy of the United States.
I don’t foresee a future where there are enough votes to remove him from office in the Senate, either with the evidence we have now or with anything that might come out if the House keeps investigating. The sad fact is that the people who* can* be convinced have been convinced. If what has already been uncovered hasn’t moved the needle, and for many it hasn’t, then I don’t see what might change their minds.
There is one way that waiting and keeping the investigation in the House until closer to the election would be beneficial: as soon as the Senate doesn’t convict, Trump will be crowing about being completely exonerated just like he did after the Mueller report came out. Gah! Minimizing that as much as possible would be good.
Though this is a good point:
Like you, I’m on record as saying impeachment should be carried over until next November. But I’ve reconsidered in view of the certainty that Republicans will crow about ‘Democrats are obsessed’ to the many voters who rate the impeachment issue as being of low importance.
John Dean said something yesterday on CNN that I can’t (yet) find online: he said that the House could indeed vote on the articles of impeachment in the next few weeks----but then hold off on sending them to the Senate. Hold off for as many months as seems effective to them. And there would be nothing that Mitch McConnell could do about it—nothing at all.
That would withhold from Trump his Acquittal/Exoneration/Full-Declaration-of-Innocence.
Which has a certain appeal.
Yeah - so long as there is NO CHANCE of the Senate convicting lacking anything short of a televised murder by Trump, I’d like the House to set out as much damning evidence and as many charges as possible.
I also don’t understand the timing. Why a rush to impeach before the end of the year? How has that been calculated to have the greatest impact? Is the Dems’ goal removal from office, or preoccupying Trump as much as possible while maximizing the potential for electoral gains next year? IMO, the first is a nonstarter…
Obviously no one knows for sure, but I have some notions.
Despite Trump Republicans pushing a narrative to the contrary, people are paying attention to this impeachment process. They are uneasy. They are worried. I think Pelosi’s calculation is to have this all wrapped up with a big red bow in time for the holiday recess – when Congress must go back to their home states/districts and face the voters.
I know MoveOn and Indivisible are (rightly) spinning up public demonstrations in support of impeachment during the holiday recess for those who want a way to express their agreement. I suggest this may be one of the most effective times in history to share a bit of holiday camaraderie with friends and family to express the Will of the People. Public pressure has never been more important, in my view. Representatives/Senators do respond to it.
As for the rest of the year in the run-up to the election, Trump is going to be plenty busy with what Dems and others have already sought. Those court rulings are beginning to come home to roost, and the investigations will be ongoing, irrespective of what happens with this impeachment effort. If the Senate fails to remove Trump from office, it’s very likely House Dems will get his tax returns as well as those Deutsche Bank/Mazars records – and Cy Vance’s New York City Office, will, too. SDNY’s cases against Lev and Igor will proceed and Rudy is almost assuredly going to get scooped up. Will Rudy go to prison to protect The Donald?
By next November, anyone paying even minimal attention should grasp that Trump is a crook and a traitor to his oath of office and the nation. Let’s just hope we can protect the integrity of our elections till then.
Perhaps his on-off man-crush (blubber-crush?) Kim Jong-Un might take him in.
Decent analysis, Aspen. Makes more sense than anything I was able to come up w/.
CNN: Supreme Court puts temporary hold on House subpoenas to banks for Trump’s financial documents.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/06/politics/trump-supreme-court-financial-documents-house-subpoena/index.html
Ruth Bader Ginsburg temporarily blocked subpoenas for Trump’s financials until December 13th.
emphasis mine
In America, where we’re all equal, but some people are more equal than others.
I think I just threw up in my mouth a little. It should have been slapped down with a terse, “When he starts acting like a President, he will get the respect a President deserves.”
That’s kinda the point. That’s why comparisons with a criminal trial are specious, because the condition of being President is a high honor and privilege. It is not a question of whether or not the President deserves the rights and protections afforded a common criminal, but whether or not the President deserves the enhanced state of honor and privilege an election affords him. Impeachment isn’t about whether or not he is a criminal, but whether or not he can be trusted with the position. I assert that he does not “with the calm confidence of a Methodist with four aces”.
People change, often in an avalanche. All too often, the alpha lemming screams “Follow me!” and we do. But sometimes it changes the other way. Like when a futile and expensive war becomes too unpopular to defend with patriotic anthems and flags waving.
He’s getting a lot more pushback. High military men resent his bullying. A Governor refuses his demand for a Senate seat. Romney dips his toe into resistance as delicately as one might dip a toe into a pond full of snap-turtles. Is Romney suddenly wildly unpopular in Utah?
Going slow to gather more ammunition is sensible, especially if the alternative option is glorious but certain failure. Bonus, it can be sold as a calm and measured respect for the majesty of the office. If nothing else, we encourage resistance to his more ham-fisted stupidities.
Am I optimistic? No. Am I giving up? Oh, Hell, no!
I think it makes sense to keep the impeachment limited, wrap it up this or next month and just stick to obstruction and the Ukraine extortion in the articles of impeachment, rather than other shady, unethical things they can pin on Trump.
Dragging it out forever is essentially the way the GOP handled Benghazi, and IMO trying to use that same blueprint would be a mistake because Trump has a very different public perception to Hillary or Obama, and because in Benghazi there was no actual smoking gun, so getting lost in the noise didn’t really matter.
If they wrap up the hearings now, the only testimony came a handful of policy/legal experts and people who are direct witnesses to Trump’s crime. The longer they drag it out, the more they have to find some reason to bring forward random witnesses who aren’t as clearly connected to the scandal.
Just having more hearings about tangentially related things worked for Benghazi because the best they could do is muddy the waters. In this case, you have Trump who is already highly distrusted by most of the public, and have more to gain by trying to hammer home a few points and make them stick.
I’m going to blow the impeachment case wide open! Has nobody else noticed that during her press conference Nancy Pelosi was standing in front of a line of flags with gold fringe? The Admiralty has no standing in the US Congress, especially since we don’t have an Admiralty, so the Dems can’t go forward with it!
There’s an important difference between “this case involves the president… so we’re going to be extra careful to make sure we do everything exactly right, take our time, make sure all the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed” vs “this case involves the president, so he has extra rights and any close decision will go in his favor”. Hopefully, if any court treats cases involving Trump specially, they will do so in the former fashion.
I believe that at least part of the Democratic goal behind the timing is to get the proceedings done before the primaries begin in earnest. I think that part of this is to allow the Democratic candidates to actually be able to have some press coverage, given how much the news is currently dominated by the impeachment proceedings, as well as to make sure that the Senators who are running for the nomination aren’t stuck in Washington for the trial during the height of the primaries.
I have seen the Dems to have any number of reliable characteristics. Often, I have wished that “crafty” and “cunning” might be among them. Alas.
Your analogy is wrong which is why your analysis is wrong. If the Democrats did nothing but speak about Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine and drag that on for months and years, then it would be Benghazi.
This is the opposite of that. This is finding new avenues of corruption, incompetence, High crimes and misdemeanors. This is taking to the Senate an ironclad case. This is making it so if Senate Republicans continue to ignore this information, the Fallout for Trump and Republicans on the national stage will be heard in the voting booths and in the streets.
Republicans kept going back to Benghazi because that’s all they had. When Trump’s Financial records come out, there’s going to be a lot more then just Ukraine and it would be stupid of Democrats to rush through this process and ignore other avenues.
Think about it. Who are the people who want to rush this through? Donald Trump. Mitch McConnell. Republicans in the Senate.
If I’m watching the sporting event and my team has a decision to make, I almost never want them to make the decision that the other team prefers.
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