Indeed, outside a very few posters on a few sites I’ve read, everyone who considers who considers impeachment an ethical responsibility also thinks its a good electoral strategy. And if both motivations are in the same direction, then we can’t tell which element constitutes the major part and I think most people assume electoral strategy is the primary motivation.
This has essentially comes down to an argument about electoral strategy, using the ethical aspect as a strategy to get one’s preferred electoral strategy accepted.
The vanishing few people who split those two are the only ones for whom I can evaluate the strength of each motivation, because they’re pointing in different directions. Hence they’re more interesting.
I’d use another term for those outliers, but I haven’t encountered any in the media or comment sites so it’s theoretical for me.
A useful argument about electoral strategy would be one of timing. Pelosi is still playing it as if there’s a chance impeachment won’t happen at all, which makes no sense in terms of inspiring confidence in voters or other Reps.
75 years ago, no-one knew exactly when or where the D-Day invasion would occur, but they knew it would happen eventually. This demoralised and preoccupied the enemy and gave hope to those living under occupation. Eisenhower and Churchill weren’t saying “hey, we might just keep our troops and supplies sitting here in the UK and see what happens on the Continent and within the Nazi leadership”, because that would have been ridiculous.
I wish that I could go with the 5-dimensional chess version of Pelosi, but after seeing her in action all these years I can’t. As a leading member of the party she was effective at working the rules during the 1990s and early 2000s, mainly depending on the triangulation that suited her ideology and the branches of government operating roughly within norms (even under the Cheney Regency). That situation changed radically in 2008 and then more so in 2016, but she hasn’t changed with it.
I will give you that, that the one thin Ms. Pelosi assumes (and wrongly so, it seems) that there are enough on the other side of the aisle that have some modicum of decency, that have at least a smidgen of respect for the rules. And that, I suspect, is a side-effect of her age.
It does seem kind of crappy that the Gen Xers in the House are so quiet in relation. There ought to be a new leadership arising out of that generation, but instead, they are sandwiched in between the retirement age boomers and the fire in their belly millennials.
The demographics will probably exclude Xers from prominent leadership roles. But in politics or in other areas we can share our experience as quiet, behind-the-scenes advisers to younger people. Knowing since we were teenagers that the system would screw us over has been good preparation in that regard.
I’d say a slight majority. The Know-Nothing contingent reliably clocks in at about 27% of the total electorate, leaving about 25% of the electorate who voted for Biff in 2016 but might still be swayed by evidence of real criminality. Convince 1/5 or even a little less of those conservative voters to stay home and the Dem candidate can make her margin in 2020.
Yes, if one looks back at history we can find examples where being cautious didn’t work.
While I suppose I get all the Pelosi-hate on the BB boards, everyone who thinks that she and other House members are more centrist/slow to act/cowardly than the public really wants should find good candidates to replace them. Of course, it isn’t that easy: first, because your neighbors might actually disagree with you; second, because unlike the DNC the DCCC supports incumbents, giving them an extra edge in primaries; and third, because finding good candidates who share your opinions is tougher than you might think. (My district is represented by a blue dog of decent character; he is politically to the right of the district, but his D.Soc challenger – hyped in a couple of posts by @doctorow and supported by AOC – was ethically challenged.)
Those were actual Nazis, not “proto”, and the risk which he didn’t avert was foreign invasion. I don’t see the parallel, but will happily concede that in this particular case Pelosi’s strategy will probably not work in keeping Nazis out, given that they (or at least near-Nazis) are already in.
