“Caught on a hot mic later in the evening, asked to explain his blatantly contradictory actions, McConnell was heard to say to a colleague, ‘I really just didn’t want Elaine to throw me down the stairs again’”
/s
I’m actually really pissed that MY party, the Democratic Party, took on this risky gamble of impeachment AGAIN and failed AGAIN and seemingly handed more vindication and more opportunities for grandstanding bullshit and propagandizing to the QOP with yet another public failure of an impeachment. I hate that they’re kicking off Biden’s presidency by making their party look as impotent as possible. I don’t want to see any more sad-eyed-puppy-dog bleating for moral high ground by characters like Jamie Raskin that only end up in a public loss. IT DOESN’T WORK.
What risk? Doing nothing was far, far more risky, and would have made the party look incredibly weak.
I agree. But the point is it won’t get done.
There’s this:
…
Case files in the investigation have offered signs that many of the rioters believed, as impeachment managers have said, that they were answering Mr. Trump’s call on Jan. 6. The inquiry has also offered evidence that some pro-Trump extremist groups, concerned about fraud in the election, may have conspired together to plan the insurrection.“If this was a conspiracy, Trump was the leader,” said Jonathan Zucker, the lawyer for Dominic Pezzola, a member of the far-right Proud Boys group who has been charged with obstructing police officers guarding the Capitol. “He was the one calling the shots.”
As the sprawling investigation goes on — quite likely for months or even years — and newly unearthed evidence brings continual reminders of the riot, Mr. Trump may suffer further harm to his battered reputation, complicating any post-presidential ventures. Already, about a dozen suspects have explicitly blamed him for their part in the rampage — a number that will most likely rise as more arrests are made and legal strategies develop.
…
My bold.
The worst trump will ever suffer over this is “harm to his battered reputation.” And I want him to suffer oh-so much more.
This was my take. Two-faced McTurtle. 
And they are right.They’ve been absolute dicks in public for a long time without consequence and this will embolden them further. The public is to blame for not holding them to account by voting them out. You reap what you sew.
He weighed the consequences.
A no trump 2024 election, vs a primary attack on him. He went for Numero Uno.
He cares nothing for America.
They want to be re-elected.
It’s the optics. They’re setting a precedent that the Donald Trumps of the world will never be held truly accountable. If they hadn’t tried a second impeachment, the optics would have been “Trump fucked up so badly that he lost the election…lesson learned.” And that would have been the end of it. Now it’s “Trump can fuck up so badly and still evade consequences”. They took the momentum of the victory in the election, and lessened its impact. Maybe it’s not “one step forward, two steps back”, but it’s two steps forward and one step back, when they could have just not stepped back at all.
CBC post-impeachment analysis:
I’m not sure I would categorize all four of these as “threats” except to his legacy, but the second and third may yet surface as significant:
-
The impeachment itself, for starters, might have failed to deliver Trump a short-term sting but will carry a long-term stink.
-
A second source of potential trouble ahead for Trump: the legal system. Prosecutors in several jurisdictions have publicly revealed they’ve opened criminal investigations related to him.
-
A third potential source of scrutiny involves investigations into what happened on Jan. 6. There have already been different processes launched in Congress, and there will be others, probing the attack and how the Trump administration responded.
-
Finally, there’s the punishment Trump has already suffered: The sting of electoral rejection.
This was the most bipartisan impeachment in history. That means something. Not everything, but something.
A Democratic party that did nothing to try and hold Trump accountable would be a party that pretty much has given up on defending the country. That’s more important than “optics” (and I think the optics actually turned out fairly well).
Agreed.
Ideologically, there are two ways to look at this kind of battle:
- You fight the fights you can win, or
- You fight the fights that are unambiguously worth fighting
Not taking on this Impeachment, for the Dem’s, was really a Hobson’s Choice…
Fine.
Maybe it’s time Democrats do the same.
Whether the end of Biden’s 4 years (dude will be vacation at Sander’s after it) or at the end of each 4 year run of a Harris Presidency … I guess you can grab or kill or do anything you want.
Yeah, I know, not a Democratic politician will ever throw away their career doing so. Which is a shame.
IOKIARDI
I wonder whether statements made on record at the impeachment trial can be used in criminal trials later on.
The GOP today face the same problem it faced 10 years ago. How do you campaign and win with Republican policies and without white Christian nationalism? A majority of this country is okay with an expanded government role in providing healthcare. A majority want the rich to pay a fairer share of their taxes. A majority want more affordable education and a healthier environment and don’t trust the invisible hand alone to deliver.
In other words, mainstream Republican ideas aren’t really going to attract more voters. They have to have something else to sell the American public, which is fear of brown people and majoritarianism to the ethnic majority (whites). That’s what the GOP’s been selling since the 2000s when they started banging on about Muslims and illegal immigration. About 30% (maybe closer to 25% now) of the electorate calls itself Republican. What’s left of that party is pretty much sold on MAGA. The establishment Repubs are in a straightjacket.
I don’t see it that way. The compilation of facts in context was valuable. I learned things I didn’t know before. Trump basically had NO DEFENSE. The fact that 43 senators stood up to be counted as A-OK with that speaks volumes.
That was more Rs than I thought would vote to convict. But only one of them (Murkowski) is up in 2022.
WASHINGTON – Donald Trump thanked Senate Republicans – most of them – for his impeachment acquittal on Saturday, and proclaimed that the political movement he began with his 2016 election has “only just begun.”
“We have so much work ahead of us, and soon we will emerge with a vision for a bright, radiant, and limitless American future,” Trump said in a written statement issued shortly after the Senate impeachment verdict.
While thanking GOP allies, Trump – who is considering another presidential run – attacked Democrats by saying “it is a sad commentary on our times that one political party in America is given a free pass to denigrate the rule of law.”
…
Teflon Don rides again!
McConnell, you two-faced coward, this is your doing.
Of course the original Teflon Don was, in fact, convicted and imprisoned, and eventually died in jail. One can only hope …
I think criminal charges of incitement are going to be tough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury that will likely include at least one MAGAT. But I’m wondering why I haven’t heard anything about the possibility of civil charges where the burden of proof is much lower. There are at least potential wrongful death suits out there as well as a few hundred people who suffered severe trauma and Trump is one plump chicken that is ripe for a plucking. So there has to be at least a couple of dozen ambulance chasers making calls to staffer and families of the deceased.
Oh gimme a fucking break. As the majority party, this was entirely within the Democrats’ control, other than the possibility of Trump’s current lawyers quitting on him. You, and anyone else who keeps going on about this is just making up a bullshit problem out of whole cloth.
And if Trump’s lawyers quit on him, the witnesses sought by the Dems could testify now, and any questioning of the witnesses by Trump’s lawyers could wait until he had some. In the meantime, the Dems could recess the trial and move on to regular business.
For that matter, an impeachment trial isn’t a regular trial: there’s no reason the GOP Senators couldn’t question the witnesses, and give the concluding argument prior to the vote. After all, a few of them were already actively collaborating with the Trump legal team; they could just take over. 