Impeachment (actual impeachment, not an inquiry) puts the country into a political crisis, much like previous government shutdowns. I think it’s perfectly rational to hesitate to want that to happen.
Amazing how exceptional America is. :dubious:
HurricaneDitka:
What, from Clinton? Clinton was much more charming and therefore popular than Trump is. Clinton’s popularity and PR skills intimidated the Senate into holding a weak half-trial. Trump has no such asset on his side. Trump’s best hope is that the over-eager media has made this Ukraine whistleblower thing seem like way more of a slam dunk than it really is, as they did with the Mueller report. But counting on one’s opponents to slip up is not a great formula for victory.
I wish that people would disassociate Trump from Conservatism and the Republican party. I wish the Dems would point out that in holding an inquiry on impeachment they’re not going after Conservatives or their platforms, they are going after the Orange Stain on the presidency.
From the Democrats I’d like to hear something like:
“Liberal vs. Conservative politics is not the issue at the moment. Yes. We disagree substantially with Republicans on many areas of policy. We’ll be more than happy to vigorously debate these differences as soon as we take care of this
treasonous-criminal-in-the-White-House-thing. Look, the thug put an R next to his name… sorry about that. I feel for you guys but better you than us, I guess, ha-ha! A monstrosity like this has to be taken down no matter what his politics are.”
Nate Silver has an excellent, pithy analysis (I hope I’m not quoting too much of it here — I don’t think I am):
“Lesson No. 3: Emphasize the threats to election integrity. As I mentioned, I suspect (though I certainly can’t prove) that some of the public’s reluctance on impeachment over Russia stemmed from the fact that Trump was still in his first term and is running for re-election. We want to decide this one for ourselves, the public may have been saying.
In some ways, that’s a bigger problem for Democrats on Ukraine, since the election is even closer now. But, of course, the Ukraine scandal involves the 2020 election: Trump’s efforts to impair Biden’s candidacy. My point is simply that Democrats should emphasize that angle since any impeachment hearings would take place directly against the backdrop of the election, a prospect that voters might otherwise find strange.”
Clinton getting a blowjob in his office is minor. Weaseling around the language about it to get around the question is kind of scummy and lawyerly, but not really a big deal to the performance of his job in the grand scheme of things. Nevertheless, Republicans ran countless investigations on him desperately trying to find anything before they finally found something fairly minor to try to stick.
On the other hand, Trump’s transgressions are way outside the norm. Way worse than Nixon. He’s obstructed justice and admitted to obstructing justice on national TV. This isn’t even debatable - he just flat out admitted he fired Comey to stop the investigation into himself. He has deliberately weakened and cast doubts on our commitment to NATO and to our allies. He has sucked up and praised every dictator in the world. He often comments along the lines of “we should try that here” upon learning that Xi Jinping was appointed president for life. He has given top secret intelligence information to hostile foreign leaders. He’s said that he will only accept the legitimacy of elections that he wins. He’s stacked regulatory agencies with cronies who have no expertise in their field whose only purpose is to take down those agencies from within. I could list dozens more things. Clinton’s crimes wouldn’t even make the top 50 of Trump’s fuckups, and Trump’s fuckups are entirely relevant to his job as the president.
Now, what you’re saying is essentially ideological and immune to facts. In your mind, Clinton did something bad, and republicans wanted to punish him. Trump did something bad, and democrats want to punish him. So everyone is the same. All are equal. And it’s patently absurd. You haven’t weighed the transgressions of both parties to evaluate which is more damning. You haven’t evaluated the investigations of each party to evaluate which are more substantive, and which are less.
You’ve arrived at your conclusion - that both sides are the same - and no matter of fact or reality will ever change your view. If Trump nukes Canada tomorrow, well, Clinton got a blowjob. If Trump admits that he gives every scrap of US intelligence to Putin and the democrats want to investigate - oh, well they’re just politically motivated investigations like the Starr investigations or Benghazi. There is nothing that could happen that would change your mind from “both sides are the same”, and so your opinion on the subject is not, nor is intended to be in line with reality or truth or values or anything consistent like that.
And if anyone actually weighs the factors involved, and concludes that one side is more guilty in some way than the other, then you can just say “oh, see, you’re biased! you concluded that one side is worse, therefore you must not be objective, and therefore your opinion is unreliable!” - again, this is a useless ideological position that has no connection to reality.
Your position is not informed, it isn’t useful, it doesn’t change as the facts change, it is incapable of seeing nuance or evidence or reality - you simply start from one absolute conclusion and never budge from there. There is no value in it.
Edit: This attitude of yours, of course, only works in one direction. If Obama had done literally any of Trump’s major scandals, you’d be screaming your head off about treason. “Both sides are totally the same, guys!” works when you’re on the defense but suddenly your method of evaluation flips around entirely when you’re on the attack.
NM
There’s no point in predictions on how this will work out. Any such prediction is just a wild guess, barring some deep intimate knowledge of the actual facts of the inquiry. We’ll all just have to wait and see.
Um… we know things about the contents of the call, we know things about the whistleblower, and we know things about the contents of his complaint. Like it’s in all the papers. You should maybe read up on it a bit before you start making predictions.
We don’t know everything yet, but that doesn’t mean we know nothing.
I think the argument that impeachment puts the country in crisis is an overstatement. During and after the Clinton impeachment, things went on as usual. Clinton worked with Congress during the whole process to find common ground and get legislation passed. Are we afraid that with the impeachment trial that Donald is going to turn into an irrational compulsive tweet machine? If so, you’re a bit late to the party.
I don’t buy the argument that he loses only if the economy goes south. People don’t vote their pocketbook anymore. They vote in their tribe. If their tribe is motivated to turn out in numbers, the tribe’s candidate wins. It’s that simple.
What’s the point in getting the transcript of the call? If there were any smoking guns in the real call transcript, there is zero chance it would be in the transcript that was released. I wouldn’t trust this administration to read me the weather, given their official lies to date. Off the top of my head: they lied to the Supreme Court about their reasons for putting in the citizenship question on the census; Barr lied, or spun to the point of lying, the contents of the Mueller report; NOAA lied about the predicted path of that hurricane to cover for an ill-advised tweet. Obviously, the president lies non-stop, but these are lies by others in his administration.
If they would lie to cover an idiotic tweet about Alabama, why wouldn’t they publish a false, or redacted-to-the-point-of-misleading transcript, when the real one may end up with the president disgraced and maybe in jail?
Congress should demand the recording or nothing. A false transcript will have the same effect as Barr’s false summary – make this seem like no big deal, and then when the real transcript is eventually released, it will just seem like an incremental thing, rather than a blockbuster.
There was a fellow on The Last Word on MSNBC last night that explained that there are no recordings of calls and that there haven’t been since the 1970s. As he explained it, a few agents listen in on headphones and type up the conversation in real time. Then they get together and compare notes and present a consensus draft for review, then a more senior official with more knowledge of the big picture might edit the transcript and the final official version is retained.
The administration is like the magician who shows you the rabbit in his right hand and is doing something with his left that you don’t notice. Sure, the transcript is going to look innocent. So obviously there was something else that motivated the whistleblower to speak out, we just need to see what that was and we have to see the complaint report.
True, and just because Trump says he’s going to release something (cough: taxes) doesn’t mean he’s going to release something.
I still wonder if he’s going to invoke some non-existing privilege for the whistleblower, and if the whistleblower is going to dummy up when questioned. I have a small amount of hope that if the whistleblower was alarmed enough to speak up in the first place, that they may also continue to put what’s right for the country ahead of any corrupt white house direction.
The Ukrainians probably have recordings of the call.
Yes the guest (who formerly worked in the Bush and Obama White House) said that they sometimes suspect the other country involved may be recording the call. He thought some may and some may not record.
Neither would I, which is precisely why the administration is promising to release it, especially given the delay in releasing it: if they do indeed release it, it will be only after they’ve redacted it so that it will control the narrative so that when the actual audio is released it will seem like an old story.
If the Ukrainians have a recording of the call and Trump puts out a false transcript, he will have literally created kompromat out of thin air for them. Trump himself might be dumb enough to do this, but surely there’s at least one person in his inner circle smart enough to stop him from doing this.
On a side note, the new head dude of the Ukraine is speaking today at the UN. (If I heard the radio properly this morning…) It would sure be something if he had any “bombs” to drop.
But they have zero reasons to release it.