Totally agree.
What impeachment offers as a corrective is that it will
Both noble goals. I think it’s almost a 0% chance he’d leave or even be asked to leave formally.
You know you’re in for a good day of news when the guy whose job it was to cover up the whistleblower complaint just straight up says “yes, I did that, and it’s totally unprecedented” on live television in front of a congressional hearing, but as a defense of his actions.
IF Trump is not removed from office, the only way that Dems win this is to convince enough swing voters and trump voters that he is corrupt and they shouldn’t vote for him again.
This is going to be hard to do, if they only watch Fox “news” because Fox will just say “he did nothing wrong, Dems are evil”.
unprecedented because there has never before been such a whistle blower complaint involving a person with executive privilege. This is going to go down just like Muller. No one can legally hold Trump accountable except by a vote for impeachment in the house. that’s it. Trump is gonna get away with it unless the house votes to impeach.
Honestly, I think any president would have pardoned him, as it was seen as protecting the office of the presidency, much like the AG office will not indict a sitting president.
Yeah, but I just don’t see him doing that.
Another possibility I doubt will come about, honestly, given the complicity of his cabinet with the president.
He doesn’t believe they did anything wrong, largely because they believe that the presidency has no limitations on their actions. It’s a full blown monarchy, as far as this administration is concerned. Every single one of their actions reflects the believe that there are no checks on the office.
He really doesn’t. The DNI said it, the office is not above the law. What congress can and can’t do is laid out in the constitution, meaning it’s a legal recourse as much as it is a political one, because all of our structures stem from the constitution.
i mean, I hope so, but that’s not how it’s been going down so far. The republicans at least are taking the POV that he literally can’t do anything wrong. The impeachment hearings are a good start. an actual impeachment vote, hopefully followed by legal action once he’s out of office (probably after 2020) would be rad. That executive privilege ends the day he leaves office.
Right? The question is if we get to that point prior to 2020 (for whatever reason, impeachment/removal, stepping down, etc.
As for the democrats (or at least the leadership) there motivation at being so cautious seems to have been that they want a slam dunk that they can assure themselves that Mitch McConnell can’t ignore or reject. I think they misjudge McConnell who is no reasonable man at this point. I think we could have a smoking gun, and McConnell would still refuse to have a senate vote on removal.
It would also probably face legal challenge, as I doubt there is a quorum of confirmed cabinet members. Aren’t over half of them “acting” Secretary of Covering Up Shit?
Sadly true.
Update: Well, the stunners are coming in at speed. I just learned that the Senate last night passed a resolution by unanimous consent saying the complete and unredacted complaint should be released to Congress. Now, “unanimous consent” doesn’t force all the R Senators to vote “yea”, but it gave them the opportunity to object, and not a single one did even though just one objection would have killed the motion for such consent.
Second, Ukraine is now saying it was their understanding that *Trump would not speak to them at all unless the Biden thing was brought up.
Correction, this was actually from the whistleblower’s complaint, to wit:
"…multiple U.S. officials told me that the Ukrainian leadership was led to believe that a meeting or phone call between the President and President Zelenskyy would depend on whether Zelenskyy showed willingness to “play ball” on the issues that had been publicly aired by Mr. Lutsenko and Mr. Giuliani. (Note: This was the general understanding of the state of affairs as conveyed to me by U.S. officials from late May into early July. I do not know who delivered this message to the Ukrainian leadership, or when.) " (italics are mine, not in the original)
That is still a very credible allegation that the subject of releasing the funds was directly dependent on digging up dirt on Biden.
This continues to be a rather interesting week in US history…
Seems like it… their (metaphorical) looting of their offices likely…
Also, Ned Stark looked so young when he was fighting for Gondor! 
Close, but not quite. While there are some swing voters. A large part of the outcome really comes down to our apathy around voting in elections. Dems need to convince enough Republican voters that it’s not worth coming out to vote at all. While at the same time convincing enough Democratic voters to show up. Sure, there’s some limited swing in the middle of voters that go back and forth. But, most of this is going to be based on who shows up. It’s sad that voter turn out is such a low percentage of people.
On the bright side (in a depressing sort of silver lining), you don’t really need to convert a Trump voter into a Democratic voter. You just need to make Trump unpalatable enough that they don’t show up to vote at all.
That’s why they need something simple, straight forward, with no nuance, spin, and not buried in technical details.
IE:
Through some obscure tax maneuver and minor fraud, Trump skimmed money out of every travel trip he took. - This will get lost and marked up to poor bureaucratic process. Limited impact.
Through direct action, Trump funneled millions to himself, diverting money from active duty and military veterans and their families, plus sweet little old ladies too. - Put up questions like “Do you support Trump’s theft from veterans?”
The second one is arguably already true, but in to disconnected an approach. The pulling of money from military budgets supporting schools and daycares to build a wall instead. Using contractors he probably benefits from. If they can remove the “probably” and instead make it “Trump directly benefits from The Wall contracts”, that might do it.
good point about voter turn out.
Might work, if it’s an actual smoking gun, on video, from multiple angles, live on Fox News, the person he shot was well liked, and a Republican.
I’m going into cynical overload here, but I think even then… the republican being shot would be like “FAKE NEWS, TRUMP 4-EVAH”… and then Fox would work to pin it on the democrats, and he’d say he did it on twitter, but it was “perfect, no crime.”
The number of eligible voters who (historically) don’t vote is roughly the same as registered Democrats and Republicans, combined.
But your point about voter turnout is spot on.
I wonder what made them not vote? They must be lazy? /s
Turns out, automatic registration and vote-by-mail lead to higher voter participation. Who’d a thunk it? 
He also thinks the Democrats want nude pictures of Trump like that’s a thing literally anyone anywhere would want.
I couldn’t disagree with this any more strongly. Democrats don’t have to win over a single Trump voter, and I think every dollar and minute spent trying pander to those folks is a wasted effort that should be spent motivating the vast swath of voters who, if they come out to vote in anything resembling strong numbers, will sweep these fuckers out of office.
Yup, “Acting gives you great flexibility that you don’t have with permanent.”
I think the more likely outcome there would be that the GOP had its Trotsky upon which they can now heap any and all blame for any problems. Trumpism cannot fail, it can only be failed, and the traitor to the revolution McConnell’s demise shows us why we need to root out any other counter-revolutionaries.
There’s a point to the argument that too many charges makes an impeachment look partisan. If you pile up a bunch of stuff that’s arguable or unlikely to pass a vote it could look like the DNC is just throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. Hoping they can impeach no matter what.
On the other side of it if you pile up a lot of focused, specific charges that stand a good chance of holding up or are difficult to dismiss out of hand. Then it makes Trump look much worse.
Basically you toss 60 charges into the articles of impeachment. And only 3 pass to the senate. You’ve just shot yourself in the foot vs just putting up those 3.
But if you put 25 charges in the articles. And 24 make it through. Holy shit does that look bad.
Even the idea of playing to the center isn’t particularly real.
Ultimately these ideas are left over from a different era, with a different electorate. And are a function of keeping the electorate small. Turnout can make them all pointless.
The number of Americans who don’t vote, or are denied their right to vote, is orders of magnitude larger than actual moderates, true independents, and the miniscule number of legit swing voters.
