I think what is really going on here is that if Trump is impeached (and then tried and found guilty in the Senate and forced to leave office), then a lot of angry people who would have gone to the polls and vote Democrat will not show up. They will say the problem was fixed and everything is OK. Turnout will be low and people will vote Democrat or Republican in different down ticket races as in any other normal presidential election.
If, however, Trump is still in office people will be fired up and angry and vote for the Democratic candidate, no matter who it is, even a center right Democrat, corporate pet Democrat, status quo Democrat. There will be high voter turnout. They may also vote straight Democrat down the ticket like they did in the mid-terms. Big wins all around for the Dems. People will also give $$$ to the Democrat party between now and the election because they are so angry.
The third possibility is the one Pelosi says she is afraid of, where DT is impeached but not convicted, the Republicans get angry and there is a high voter turnout for them and Dems lose a lot of races. I think Pelosi is as afraid of kicking DT out as of failing to kick him out.
This is the same mistake Hillary did when she was happy that Trump won the Republican nomination. The Democrats thought that was the best outcome, to run against DT, instead of a competent Republican as it would be an easy win for the Democrats. They were wrong then.
It would have been best for the the country if someone capable won the nomination. Then, win or lose, the country would have been better off. Pelosi and the Democratic leadership is putting party over country. It is wrong, legally and morally. If they continue down this path they are just as morally bankrupt as the Republican enablers.
The Senate is very likely to let Trump get away with his crimes and misconduct, true. But that won’t change by piling on more evidence of his crimes and misconduct, and the House has a duty to hold Trump accountable regardless of what the Senate chooses to do.
What? Emoluments clause alone gives a list of impeachable offenses longer than my arm. That’s before we get into obstruction.
What more does she need, for fuck’s sake; a freakin’ dead body to be discovered in the Oval Office?!?!
SMFH
Reading through this thread, maybe everyone who really wants impeachment proceedings to start now should go back and rewatch the Game of Thrones episode, “Battle of the Bastards”.
You need evidence for the legal process to work. Given Trump’s track record of obstruction you can bet that he will focus all his energy and resources on undermining the evidence gathering process. At the moment he can’t do that very publicly as it would draw attention to all these court cases.
However, once he is ‘exonerated’ by the Republican Senate he can make a big song and dance of being the victim of a witch hunt.
Not to mention of the concentrated effort to fill the judiciary with yes men. The judicial process needs to take precedence and needs to happen fast.
Maybe the actual evidence the report is based on.
Which they filed a suit to get at this morning. The report itself is not evidence of anything. Its a summary. And you might have noticed it left enough wiggle room for the GOP to use it to their advantage despite the details.
Importantly though that is higher. Quite a bit higher , think it was 27% last time the BBS had this argument if your refering to the style of poll I thi k you are. Unfortunately most of that increase is still coming from registered Democrats, independents aren’t shifting as fast. And GOP voters are… GOP voters.
I’d be willing to to bet there is one. Though speculating about exactly what it is would be exactly that. Speculation. Fun though it cam be. As we’ve seen by Trump’s fun times in court the last few years public pronouncements about such things can come back to haunt you in court.
That said this statement should have been made, this clearly, months ago. And they could stand to specify what they feel they need to proceed.
It didn’t happen. Articles were drawn up, and used to pressure him into resigning. Votes were whipped, but no vote was taken.
People were opposed to impeaching Nixon until the tapes began to come out and public opinion rapidly shifted against him. Even then GOP congress critters weren’t down with the idea. And essentially agreed to participate only if they were first given the opportunity to convince him to resign. And its long been suspected that Nixon’s pardon was part of that deal.
Very little in the way of serious prep for Impeachment happened before that point. And until public opinion shifted there was damn near identical polling on public support, trust in the media, opinions of congress and each political party. The major differences were that the congress was controlled by the DNC, Nixon was a far more popular president to start, and he was in his 2nd term when most of this went down. Year 2 IIRC, with the events that kicked it off happening in the lead up to his re-election campaign roughly 3 years earlier.
I really think that’s a big part of the hold up, otherwise all the suits and subpoenas they’ve filed would have gone off at once. Instead of being staged. From a legalistic stand point it looks like their waiting for the courts to clear the path to get at documents.
He resigned because his own party told him had to or they’d vote to impeach and convict. Right up till public opinion shifted the bulk of the GOP were more than happy to run interference for Tricky Dick. And once it was apparent that something had to be done. They still forced an approach that protected him from heaviest and most formal consequences.
Read your own link:
slim majority of Americans (52%) want one of the following: to begin impeachment proceedings (22%), to continue investigations into potential political wrongdoing of Trump (25%) or to publicly reprimand him — that is, censure (5%)
Support for impeachment in that poll is 22%. And that’s on the low side for these things. But its down to how they structure the question with multiple options. Simpler polls tend to sit higher. And both have been on the uptrend. Also that’s from early June, so its from before a couple of big developments. More recent polls show the moves continuing up.
I have one major concern about this, and that’s because I don’t really trust Pelosi. I worry that she’s trying to game the system somehow by hoping she can gather the evidence to impeach both Trump and Pence on the same charges. We’re already so deep into Trump’s term that even if hearings started today there’s a good chance it would drag through to the next election anyway, so I can’t think of any legit reason why she wouldn’t move ahead with what we already know.
Well that’s the thing - the polls vary widely.
While you might be morally correct, like I said, politics is a game. A moral win does a lot of good if you get a political loss. Is a “tried and failed” impeachment going to keep you warm at night after it damages their 2020 race? Hey, at least you had the moral high ground.
Like I said, good luck getting those votes. We’re all counting on you.
Trump infuriates me, but he doesn’t make me consider packing it in and giving up on the USA.
Hearing democrats say that we need to just accept that its just a tactical political game and all that matters is winning that game, is SO much more depressing and makes me seriously consider giving up and leaving.
Accepting that ideals and morals do not matter is admitting defeat. If neither party gives more than lip service to what is the right thing to do, then who wins the elections ceases to matter.
It is Pelosi’s job to game the system. That is how the legislative process works. People seem to forget that she managed to end Trumps shutdown in February and ensured that there are no further shutdowns in this legislative period.
She is doing her job.
She wants a smoking gun. She wants an actual irrefutable piece of evidence that cannot be spin doctored. The pee tape? Nah, all it shows is his fetishes, which aren’t illegal. A dossier or testimony that says “Oh he’s guilty!!” Nope…because someone can just say its lies.
She wants actual recorded phone calls of him saying “Get Russia to fix it so I win”. She wants a video of him saying “Oh we totally did that XYZ thing which was completely illegal.” She wants the signed memos or digital communiques that say “FIRE THAT GUY BEFORE HE GETS TOO CLOSE TO THE TRUTH!”
I get what she wants. I am not sure I’d choose differently in her position to be perfectly honest.
Best way to get rid of him is vote in 2020. Then watch Secret Service drag him out of the WH after the new POTUS is sworn in. Take him right to jail to await trial.
If the only “win” is removing Trump from power, yes.
It does other things that could count as a win:
- radically expanded power to investigate and collect evidence
- maybe uncover something the republicans can’t ignore
- maybe uncover something the public won’t ignore
- convince the people that Trump has to go, but the GOP is to corrupt to do the job
- (stated another way) get GOP senators on the record as saying “yeah, sure he broke the law, but who cares”
- keep Trump busy defending himself thus limiting the damage he can keep doing
So yeah, maybe getting enough votes to remove him from office is off the table, but the impeachment process can still do a lot of other things.
I mean the house is still bothering to pass a lot of bills that the senate won’t approve, and Trump would veto. Clearly there is a value in doing the right thing there and making someone else stand up and swat it down.
Shorter Pelosi: We can’t impeach because the Senate wouldn’t vote on it and because it might alienate people who already hate us.
But 1) If you have an impeachment vote, you cath user that vote as a chance to name, shame and blame every R. Senator in ads and debates until 2020. “Rand Paul is fine with a lawbreaking president who works with Russia – are you?” Say that over footage of Paul voting ‘no’ and make it his Willie Horton. And 2) Nancy Pelosi should WAKE THE CHRIST UP AND RECOGNIZE THE GLOVES ARE OFF. Impeachment would be NEWS, every day, and part of messaging: Are you better off than you were 4 years ago? Are you okay with treason?
Nancy Pelosi is showing up to the Tet offensive with horse-mounted cavalry in gold-braid uniforms: Pretty, polite, respectful and fated to die in pain because the other side is meaner and smarter.
Permission. She’s waiting for permission. From whom is anybody’s guess. Maybe the money people. He hasn’t fucked up the world quite enough to trigger them yet. They’re waiting for a lovely buying opportunity when the market crashes, maybe? The Dems looked so hopelessly ineffectual questioning Mueller, and he was just a taciturn old man the exuded, “Get me outta here. I want to play golf.”
I have totally given up hope, and see the government as just a business run for its own reasons, by people who have no relation to the real world except that they can fuck it up at will and with impunity.
Every time the Dems pull one of these hearing stunts or ineffectual subpoenas, Trumps gains more power and control.
Let’s have continuous parades.
I really do not understand this learned helplessness BS. Of course the Senate, while under Republican control, will never vote to remove Trump from office. But it’s absurd to think that if House Democrats do their job and pass lengthy, thorough articles of impeachment to the Senate outlining and detailing Trump’s many, many crimes and violations of his oath of office, the Senate can just sit on them and Trump can walk into the election with a claim of exoneration.
The only way that works is if Democrats utterly fail at making the blindingly obvious case that Republicans are aiding in Trump’s determined undermining of the rule of law and covering for him for the sake of passing their wildly unpopular agenda. Trump’s devout will claim victory no matter what happens, because they don’t give a shit about reality. But we can’t let that utter detachment from reality guide what we do to remain committed to the rule of law. Why would you preemptively cede the high ground to Trump on this?
If we go into the 2020 election and Trump hasn’t been impeached by the house, that’s also an exoneration, and a bi-partisan one at that. Do you think he won’t wield that as a cudgel at everyone who wants to try and bring up how flagrantly criminal his administration has been?
This isn’t some neutral Schroedinger’s Cat space where nothing matters until a decision gets made. Not making a choice (or repeatedly insisting that now is somehow “not the right time” to make a choice) is the same as choosing not to impeach him. It makes his argument that he’s done nothing wrong stronger every single day that Democrats slow-walk or just outright refuse to take serious action.
The report was released months ago. Why are they only just now filing this suit? Why would you wait for months to sue for the evidence in a case where you knew there would be material there that could strengthen a possible impeachment hearing unless your goal wasn’t actually to carry one out?
I certainly hope you’re not linking that because of the headline…
Meanwhile, an Economist-YouGov poll this month found that 36 percent of adults support efforts in the House to impeach Trump, while 45 percent were opposed.
In that poll, 11 percent of Republicans supported efforts to impeach Trump. It’s possible that that is the figure Trump was referencing in his tweet, but the poll was conducted more than a week ago and would not be the “newest.”
(emphasis added)
Point of order: it is literally Nancy Pelosi’s job to uphold the Constitution of the United States and protect the country from all enemies foreign and domestic. That means impeaching a demonstrably criminal presidency.
Trump is an emotionally fragile bully, and you don’t defeat emotionally fragile bullies by letting them dictate the terms of engagement. You defeat them by punching them square in the nose and then laughing at them when they start crying. Trump is shit at political calculus (he thought the last government shutdown would be a political winner for him), and he’s even more shit at it when he’s pissed off. He’ll flail wildly, spill endless word salad screeds on Twitter, and do anything he can to get in the way of any kind of investigation, which is absolutely a great look for someone who’s definitely as innocent as they claim they are. When Mueller was appointed, Trump tried to have him fired, and even replaced his AG with a yes-man who refused to recuse himself despite having already stated publicly that the investigation was a waste of time. He obsessively watches vote tallies on issues relating to his guilt. Can you even begin to imagine what an impeachment hearing would do to him?
Trump does better politically when he’s not the one making the news. An impeachment hearing would be nothing but Trump news driven by someone other than Trump. It’s a complete no-brainer of a political winner to launch an investigation that would drive the president absolutely off the deep end if your goal was to make the president look guilty as fuck.
It is both. The legal process is spelled out in the constitution (and I suppose to a much smaller extent by the case law formed by the tiny handful of times it has been used). It is a legal process largely carried out by political figures.
Starting an impeachment hearing also gives the house broader capabilities to gather evidence.
I’m not, they quote 3 actual poll with 3 different figures.
There he goes tilting at windmills. He fucked it up by being a boy scout, when we needed a ninja. I’ve lost all respect.
