Trump will become less politically powerful after Inauguration

Great Debates
1

Whaaaa? Before June 16, 2015, he was a vulgarian publicity hound. Jan 21, 2017 he has his Finger On the Button. Less powerful?

I have not recognized any of what I am going to talk about here in my twitter feed and news reading. I think mostly that is because the Left is currently freaking out about more basic things, and people of #NeverTrump-philosophy are taking time out to be appalled at Progressive hypocrisy (from my twitter feed: “Love trumping hate involves a lot more assault and arson than I anticipated.”). OK, so you heard it here first. Follow along…

When Trump decided to run for President, Republicans were in a bind. If they made the Primary process difficult for him, or denied him the nomination at the convention, there was a chance a lot of voters would leave with Trump with the result of a Clinton victory. After the release of the “Access Hollywood Tape”… what are they going to do? Substitute Romney at the eleventh hour? It would have been a Clinton landslide.

After January 20, the consequences of getting rid of candidate or President Trump will no longer be that you get a Clinton landslide!

Do you not think that if Paul Ryan could wave a magic wand and vanish Trump, producing President Pence, he would do so? The greater-than-50% of the voters who voted for Clinton? The 193 Democrats in the House? They would go for the vanishing. Senators like John McCain and Ben Sasse? There is a perfectly constitutional procedure to do this.

So I say it is highly likely that Trump will provide material that could be used to charge him with things at least as serious a perjury and obstruction of justice which were the charges against Clinton. Even though impeachment is a serious remedy, and used only twice, it was used recently, and on the other side of our political divide. The set of willing, potential actors seems larger today than in 1998.

Imagine that Trump is called on to put his complicated set of assets into a blind trust and he balks at this. Paul Ryan escalates, Trump gets mad, Tweets, does some other Trump-y stuff, the House impeaches. Trump is over 70, what if he has a health problem as well as a scandal? Convincing people that he is a rich source of material in this regard is the least difficult step of this argument. (The hard part is refuting that he would be “graded on the curve”… a Trump curve.)

There does not need to be an impeachment for my thesis to have merit: There only has to be a credible threat, that Trump is smart enough to understand and that the Congress is willing to use in some way. Trump doesn’t have a large group of partisans. The Alt-Right is much smaller than the set of people voting for Trump even though they think him unqualified. The later were mostly voting for anybody-but-Clinton, and hey, sure, why not Pence? Where then would opposition to impeaching Trump come from?

2

I have two problems with your theory:

Judging by his behavior so far, Trump is used to getting away with things. He was born into wealth and privilege, and has spent much of his adult life screwing over other people in various ways. He has faced scant few consequences for his behavior so far. For fucks sake, he bragged about committing sexual assault on tape and was still elected president. I’m pretty sure that Trump already thought he was bulletproof before the election, and would have gone on thinking it even if he had lost. I don’t see him reigning in his impulses after they’ve gotten him into a position of power. So I think Trump is much more likely to get himself impeached rather than be able to moderate his behavior to avoid it, which leads me to my next point…

I don’t think that Trump getting impeached is a good outcome for liberals who are horrified with the election results (like me). From a progressive standpoint, Pence would be a terrible president. He’s less likely to cause global destabilization, but he’s more likely to cause domestic problems.

So I feel like we’re in trouble either way. Just different kinds of trouble. Not that I’m saying we should give up and let the fire consume us. I’m saying that, whatever happens with Trump’s administration, we’re in for some troubled times ahead and we need to be vigilant and stand up for what we believe in.

3

Agreed that Trump winning the election means that his already grotesquely bloated ego is going to swell to supergalactic megabloated level. So he’s going to follow his instincts. His instincts have brought him to the White House, why stop now? And so, his instincts are going to cause him to do all sorts of things.

But will those things get him impeached by Congress? Hell no. We’re going to see a lot of norms trampled over the next four years, just like we saw a lot of norms get trampled during the election. And expecting the Republicans in Congress to do something about it is expecting them to stand up to Trump. Who just proved he can do whatever he wants and get away with it. They will never stand up to him, and the more outrageous his offenses become the more they realize how suicidal it would be to try.

This is how authoritarian leaders centralize power around themselves. At any given time there’s lots of downside and no upside to opposing the autocrat. So you go along for now. But each time the autocrat’s power grows and grows, which just increases the downside and decreases the upside. So while you could have opposed the autocrat early, you didn’t because there wasn’t enough in it for you, and by the time he’s fully in control and you’re fully in his power you can’t do anything.

4

I think you underestimate the power of the grass roots movement that allowed Trump to take over the GOP, and the amount of fear that traditional Republicans have of this force. But yes, getting their man Pence in there has been a CT floating around ever since he “won” the VP debate.

5

This.

A truly yuuge percentage of Congress would be voted out in 2 years if they try to impeach Trump for anything much less than stealing all the tax money or maybe publicly swearing fealty to Putin. One thing red-blooded Murricans don’t like is foreign ex-Commies.

Rather more likely in 2 years we see large numbers of conventional R congressmen replaced by Trumpists. It worked in 2016, it’ll work better in 2018 will be the mantra.

6

I understand your claim. I consider it just a corollary of wildly popular idea that Trump won because of Xenophobia, Misogyny, and Racism. In fact a huge percentage of people that voted for Trump dislike him. I think there might be exit polls out there that, bizarrely, have people saying they considered him unqualified and still voted for him!

Clinton lost MI by 12K votes. 100K Michigan voters did not bother to vote for President. California voted for Clinton, but I think Iowa and Wisconsin vote anti-Democrat, not pro-Trump.

7

Clinton lost my state of FL by less than the number of Ds who voted for Stein. Friggin’ morons.

Had she taken FL, many of the more westerly states might have taken the D line too.

I do NOT assert Trump won solely because of the deplorables. But he did bring out a metric crapload of voters who normally don’t vote. If he can keep that going he or his ideology will be a force to be reckoned with.

OTOH, Obama did the same thing in 2008. By 2012 he’d achieved rather less than the Promised Land of 2008. As a result many of his army of 2008 first time voters didn’t play in 2012, and definitely didn’t play in 2016.

Trump’s got a slightly more favorable freshman congress than Obama had. But what he promised was far less doable. Odds are the folks expecting Trump to work miracles for them will be mightily disillusioned by 2020 if not by 2018.

My main concern is that Trump has awakened the slumbering giant of authoritarianism. That is an idea that resonates deeply with a fixed 25+ percent of any populace. Couple that with aggressive propaganda and we’re talking about a situation the US hasn’t faced in a very long time. Trump’s a buffoon; a skilled authoritarian pol could do serious damage.

8

My bet is that he governs so badly, both houses switch Democratic in the mid-terms. Then we can revert to comfortable old gridlock.

Until then, we still have the Filibuster (unless the Republicans are so incredibly hypocritical as to take it away – no bets there.)

9

Update your prior beliefs, Bayesians. Bannon’s appointment makes Trump more likely to be impeached than he would be without Bannon in the WH.

10

If the Dems are smart, they’ll vote to acquit.

11

OTOH, maybe the Breitbart line becomes official White House policy from end to end.

As Goebbels almost said, keep repeating the big lie until it becomes the truth.

12

Impeachment will never happen while there’s a Republican majority in Congress. Dream on.

13

Yes and no. I think Trump has gained a lot of respect from his party after winning the election and enhancing Republican control. His supporters love him and that will last a while since they seem to give Trump credit for speaking in vague terms and will give him leeway if he doesn’t live up to all his promises; they’ve given him plenty of leeway already.

But it remains to be seen how much political control Trump wants, or if he prefers to delegate and just look important. I think he is practical and shrewd enough to smooth things over with his party, picking Priebus will help. If people get upset that bringing manufacturing jobs back to the rust belt is difficult, you may be right.