Back at you. Because you are correct. His base isn’t budging. The idea that impeachment will bring out more Trump voters than democrats, never-Trumpers, and independents, is laughable.
I don’t know. You seem to be under the impression that Trump actually pays attention to stuff. 
This is not a sign of the loss of anything, IMO.
Good thing the House Democrats aren’t doing nothing, then.
If you mean an impeachment inquiry, it’s already underway (search “Nadler” and “impeachment” and you’ll find the story).
If you mean an impeachment vote: that’s not fighting—that’s handing a gift to Trump.
How?
Please be specific: what are the mechanisms by which you expect public opinion to be changed? What will be different about the hearings to be held when Congress reconvenes, if there is a big “IMPEACHMENT” banner behind the committee members, or if (instead) there is no big brouhaha made about this being impeachment?
You appear to be assuming that the conditions present in the 1970s are present now: only four television channels, and no Internet.
If you are assuming that any hearings will be watched by a majority of Americans, then what leads you to assume that?
The next two posts express an implicit supposition found in many ‘impeach now’ arguments:
The implicit assumption–which is quite false–is along the lines: nearly all American voters are like us in following political matters on a daily basis. The corollary is: therefore nearly all American voters have already decided whether Donald Trump is dangerously unfit, or is, instead, The Dear Leader–the best President ever.
In other words, you are basing your reasoning on the false premises that most voters are paying attention, and that most voters are absolutely certain of the answer to the question of whether or not an attempt to remove Trump is a good idea.
These ideas are simply wrong. They do not reflect reality. And the conclusions drawn through falsely assuming that they are true, are badly flawed.
Thank you, Sherrerd, for continuing to be the voice of reason.
Thanks for that, but of course it’s all down to my horror at the thought of Trump being able to boast of being COMPLETELY EXONERATED and VOTED INNOCENT and so on. Which will convince those masses who currently are paying little attention, that he has indeed faced a full judgment—and passed with flying colors. They will vote accordingly.
To the usual comeback some are likely to make, ‘but if the House doesn’t vote to impeach, then Trump will ballyhoo that as vindication,’ I say* he could be doing that right now. And he isn’t.
*Mentioned in post 148 of this thread; no one attempted to refute the point. https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21836481&postcount=148
Actually, it is. The article points out that not only has Trump heard of a Category 5 hurricane before Dorian, but he’s heard of them and commented on them several times: Irma, Maria, Michael, AND he’s said on several of those occasions that he’d never heard of a Category 5 hurricane before. This is not just inattention. This is a significant neurological deficit.
As many people have said (but people keep forgetting, short-term memory being what it is :dubious: ), if your mom/dad/grandma/spouse sounded like Donnie or used words the way he does or forgot stuff like he does, you’d have them at a neurologist’s office in a heartbeat. If the CEO of a company sounded like him, the board would send him off for a neurological examination immediately.
Which pays inadequate service to the notion that, having been acquitted by the Senate, the yoke of doubt will have been removed from his shoulders, he will thus be invincible, and his behavior will stray from the paddock to the south 40 on up to completely off the reservation. This, I think, the voters might notice.
See below. And, the difference in what you say above is that in addition to a banner, there will be an actual impeachment trial.
I have no clue who this potential straw man is addressed to. Perhaps it isn’t one, and you can point to who specifically believes this and has stated it here. As for me, I, an American voter, do not believe that all voters are like “us”. And I would bet there are large numbers who don’t fit into your convenient categories. But most important, I will say this: Trump’s poll numbers have been up, and Trump’s poll numbers have been down. Presumably they changed due to things that Trump has said and done. Therefore, if there are things that Trump did that lots of voters don’t know about that would be more fully publicized in an impeachment trial, such as specific, detailed explanations of possible instances of obstruction of justice, it stands to reason that this could hurt Trump in the election. This is by no means guaranteed, but it is a possibility.
There are people on both sides of this discussion. Is it too much to ask from those of you who don’t think an impeachment trial will hurt Trump to at least acknowledge the possibility that it could, instead of stating with such surety that there’s no way that would happen?
I was being a bit flippant about Trump’s not paying attention. Certainly when people forget things they’ve said in the past, one might think there may be something neurologically wrong with them. I simply don’t believe this is enough evidence to do this just because of the hurricane comments. Trump says things to suit his own needs at the moment. Truth is irrelevant. This must always be considered when one tries to interpret what is going on in Trump’s (limited) brain.
My bold.
Probably not.
To add to what I said above, yes, the facts are out there vis a vis Trump’s possible obstruction of justice. No one is going to seek these out. No one. The public needs to be spoon-fed. They need to hear Democrats going step-by-step through each instance, fleshing out Trump’s actions and making them real, instead of just words on paper that biased commentators briefly comment on.
This is a pretty decent* example of what I said about surety above. Why don’t you think this is a possibility?
- “pretty” decent, in that you did at least use the word “probably”.
Because of what you said in the post just before:
You’re right that people need to be spoon-fed and taken step-by-step through a presentation of Donnie’s transgressions. But who is going to sit still long enough for that? The sound bite and the meme rule. For example: the message of the Mueller report was “we didn’t prove Donnie isn’t a crook,” but that’s not what the public perceived. The right wingers said the president was exonerated and the lefties said Mueller blew it when he didn’t get the message across with fireworks and a brass band.
Maybe I’m just consumed by my own pessimism. 
Mueller was on TV for one day. The obstruction details in the Mueller report were discussed to some degree on cable “news” shows, but most Americans don’t watch these. An impeachment trial would be day in and day out, and inescapable to anyone with eyes and ears. Would it harm Trump? Again, I don’t know, but I think it’s possible.
Since you brought it up. I wasn’t going to say this, but perhaps you and others are so consumed by the horror that Sherred mentioned that you aren’t thinking completely clearly. Now obviously I have no way of knowing this and wouldn’t just presume it to be true. Just being honest that it did cross my mind.
As for me, I was thinking of whether or not to impeach in terms of a football game. If you have the ball and the lead, and there’s only a few seconds left in the game, you should generally play it safe and run out the clock, rather than try to score again. You might make a mistake and allow the other team to get the ball and win. Right now, there are more than a few seconds left for Trump, but time is running out. It’s almost the fourth quarter, and Trump’s disapproval rating is climbing. Maybe it’s better to wait and see if it keeps going up, and then you don’t have to bring out the big gun of impeachment, because the possibility of it helping him does exist. I’m okay* with this as of now, because I think Trump would lose an election against the current poll leaders. But that doesn’t change my idea that impeachment could harm him, and I definitely don’t think it should be off the table for good.
*Okay only in the sense of keeping him from getting elected. In general terms, I’m all for impeachment now.
That’s how I took it, as just being facetious. Trump wasn’t starting with much to begin with, so I get you saying really no loss of anything.
The link in this post from the elections thread should be required watching for anyone who thinks Donnie’s mental functioning is where it was even four short years ago.
The difference between 2015 and 2019 is shocking. The energy level, clarity of speech, coherence-- the decline is stunning. The presidency usually ages people, but turning their brains to mush? His brain is turning to mush from some other cause.
I’m not disagreeing, but the former clips was from an exuberant campaign rally, in an environment where he thrives and feeds off of the energy in the room. The latter was a dry reading of a policy announcement in front of the White House. Maybe his slow, methodical speech was more boredom or an attempt to come across as “serious.”
Any links to how he looked at his last campaign rally? That might be a bit more of an apples to apples comparison. And believe me, it pains me to give Trump any whiff of benefit of the doubt.
So today on TV, Trump showed a National Weather Service map of Dorian’s projected path. The map was out of date. And someone, likely Trump, had used a Sharpie to crudely extend the landfall projection cone into Alabama. This map was offered as evidence that Trump’s earlier warning to Alabama was based on what the NWS had told him at the time.
I kinda think this transparent charade weighs on the side of “mentally deficient liar” rather than “dementia patient”. As painfully stupid as it is, it does show the ability to recall past events and make a coherent plan to cover them up. Sure, the plan was laughable and only made things worse, but there was some organized thinking behind it. This strikes me as the work of a stunningly ignorant and dishonest
asshole, but not a person with a neurological disorder.
The only surprising thing about that incident is that it wasn’t done with green crayon.