You guys are missing the obvious play. McConnell had to block Garland because Garland would have been confirmed had it come to a vote. But if the Dems have a solid majority in the Senate, they can bring Trump’s nominees up for a vote and just reject them outright. There’s absolutely no need to copy McConnell’s tactics.
Republicans currently have a bare majority, but they just hypothetically gained +10 over the last election after the latest round of gerrymandering. If there is just moderate blue shift instead of a pretty sizeable blue wave the Republicans could easily hold the House and it wouldn’t necessarily be all the fault of the failure of the Democrats to campaign properly.
I don’t think the Republicans will hold, but it might be closer than some think and there is certainly a moderate chance they do keep control of the House. I think it is likely the Republicans will hold the Senate as well, but at least it is in play.
Remember - pessimists are never disappointed 
.
Not only is it proper to reject unsuitable candidates, it’s mandatory. That’s what normally happens.
So then, either the Republicans compromise and nominate someone who Trump may not love but is competent and acceptable to Democrats, or they get nobody. And again, that’s normal.
As you say, the situation McConnell was in was an unusual one, and I don’t see that happening here.
The main things that the Dems can do if they take control of the House & Senate have been mentioned above. I think use the subpoena power & investigatory powers to highlight Executive branch malfeasance & corruption. They should of course impeach Trump. They should work together to pass real bills that would help average people, and they should repeal laws that gave over too much power to the executive branch. If Trump vetoes, use that against MAGA in 2028.
They should block Trump’s judge nominations, and they should block any cabinet nominations that are as awful as his typical cabinet has been in Trump 2.0.
I think Congress has the power to arrest people that don’t comply with their subpoenas. They haven’t used that power in about 90 years. They should consider using that power again.
They should play hardball: no Trump nominated judge gets confirmed, none, zero.
When a Dem president gets elected: fill all the vacancies and set up a rational system to stop this kind of games.
Until such a rational system is in place doing otherwise is unilaterally disarming.
That’s just such a fucking waste of time. I’m sorry, but no way will it look anything but performative to me and it will elicit eye-rolls (again, from me). I want them to block and minimize damage and they can investigate and prosecute to their heart’s content once he is out of office, hopefully with more gusto than last time. But impeachment is going to make some people happy (yayyy! we’re trying to hold him accountable even though there is no way we can actually hold him accountable!) and piss off other people like me that think it’s worthless grandstanding that accomplishes fuck-all.
The problem is that he’s committed hundreds or thousands of impeachable acts during the last 16+ months. I don’t think they can just come into office, and not do their duty on that front. Force the GOP to demonstrate their acceptance of Trump’s criminality, and use that against them in 2028.
This didn’t work at all. In 2024, Trump was a twice-impeached-already president. Numerous Republicans had been on record as voting against convicting him. And in 2024, Republicans still captured the White House, Senate and House trifecta again anyway.
If Democrats impeach Trump again - and Trump is, of course, not convicted by the Senate - then this will piss off a lot of centrist voters who are hurting desperately financially in inflation, etc. and saying “Why are we not focusing energy on something that works?”
I think the Dems lost in 2024 because they were the incumbent party, and all over the world, incumbent parties were punished for post-covid inflation in 2024. In 2028, the Dems will not be the incumbent party, and I think impeaching Trump won’t hurt them. They should impeach, because it’s their duty to do the right thing. In 2028, they can cast the GOP as the incumbent party that is throughly corrupted…
Include a repeal of the tax cuts in the BBB into the next budget. If Trump vetoes it, the government shuts down. If the senate flips in Nov, look for Alito and Thomas to retire and two new Maga types quickly confirmed in Dec. Or maybe not. Maybe enough senators have been pissed off by Trump that they don’t go along
Yeah, but we are not the Republicans. It is now precedence to not vote during “lame duck” season- November to January, but beyond that gets silly. Of course- the Dems can simply have hearings and say "NOPE! No reason to play games.
If Democrats capture the Senate, no need to block votes on nominees. Just vote them down. This requires party discipline but is feasible.
Right. Have a hearing and vote NO! Oddly, McConnell could have done that, he didnt need to pull that bullshit.
We’re already there. Do you trust any of your federal agencies under the current registration? Do you think the Democrats are going to unscrew those levers of power and put them away once they get voted into power? They’ll be more subtle than the Republicans are but the temptation will be too much to resist.
For literally decades as an activist in a small party I have watched the Democrats put its collective finger on the scale of elections, not through voter suppression as do the Republicans but rather in keeping candidates off of the ballot. Case in point: My nephew who lives in DC became radicalized under the Trump administration. Figuring the city was safely in Harris’ hands he would have loved to vote for Claudia de la Cruz but he could not because she had been kept off of the ballot, by the Democrats. He wrote her in anyway.
Don’t forget that Fetterman is now a Republican in all but name. That makes the odds of capturing the senate considerably higher.
Is there a provision for discharge in the senate rules? If they keep it bottled up in committee, will that block it?
Not even close. Fetterman has voted Dem 93% of the time.
here are some stats-
Agreed.
Impeachment without any realistic chance of conviction feels like a misuse of political capital. We’ve already seen how this plays out—during Clinton’s impeachment his approval ratings actually went up, and Trump’s first impeachment mostly strengthened his support by reinforcing the idea he was being politically targeted. The second impeachment was different and did some real damage politically, but even then it didn’t remove him or end his influence.
If the goal is accountability, investigations, prosecutions where warranted, and exposing financial conflicts are far more effective than a Senate trial everyone knows won’t convict. At some point it becomes performative politics. Every hour Congress spends on a symbolic impeachment is time not spent building airtight cases, passing legislation, or focusing on issues voters actually care about. If the evidence is there, pursue it aggressively—but going straight to impeachment without the votes risks repeating the same cycle: energizing his base while accomplishing nothing.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. And because of the Trump veto threat, they can also put off the question of the filibuster until 2029.
Is this regarding the 2024 Democratic primary for POTUS? If so, that was obviously a one time unique situation due to Biden’s health and his refusal to do something like what LBJ did in 1968 in a more reasonable time frame than what actually happened.
I’m guessing it was the 2024 general election. She was the presidential nominee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. It has been speculated (without proof, AFAIK) that the Dems worked to keep her off the ballot in several states, including the District of Columbia.