I just can’t see how Donnie can be more attractive in 2020 than he was in 2016. And given that he was outvoted by 3m+ votes and is office for no reason than the Electoral College…
Two groups voted for Donnie: GOP base and independent/swing voters can’t see the latter falling for his shit again and I don’t think the GOP base alone is enough.
I expect you are correct. So my words were one part “well maybe they sound like they have a false point to pound home, but are actually misinformed and would listen to reason”, and approx. forty-five parts “screw you, you are wrong, and I while I’ll never get through to you, maybe I can get through to some other people that read your words”.
It may not move the needle of internet discourse much, but hey, we all need windmills to tilt at.
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impeachment is fully the prerogative of the house. conviction and removal is the senate’s job. that’s how andrew johnson and bill clinton were both impeached but neither was removed from office.
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I repeat what I said elsewhere a few days ago (and was first referenced by someone else here - I take no credit).
You’re either protected by the law but not bound by it, or bound by it but not protected by it. If you do not already know which group you’re in, you’re in the latter one. Self-entitled crooks posing as public figures are typically in the former one.
Hence their bosses told the border guards they ought not to do this, but should follow the law. Yet Trump can get away with telling them it’s ok to break the law.
I don’t even need to say “go figure”, it’s plain as day.
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Yes, I’m aware. That’s exactly what I said above (twice, actually). It’s why I think impeachment sounds impressive but would be largely a waste of time, would look like pointless political showboating, and would have no lasting effect on Trump at all.
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it’s a thought provoking statement, but overly reductive. one of the points of law is that since we are bound by it, we are protected by it.
easiest example would be something like drunk driving. by binding me we protect you, and by binding you we protect me.
and that does work. enacting dui laws reduced drunk driving. seat belt laws reduced traffic fatalities. etc. and that’s why im in favor of - for instance - things like gun control laws. because laws do matter, and they can help improve society.
that said, there’s no getting around the fact there are huge issues with the application of law - racism, classism, deference to police, deference to the president, etc.
it’s not all broken… just big pieces of it. 
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You’re only protected by it incidentally. The idea is that if someone important drove drunk and killed the woman, then she certainly wasn’t protected by it and the important person gets off because they can afford lawyers. Her “protection” is only an incidental side effect of the fact that you don’t have enough money to be in that protected, not bound category.
You can lead a horse to a wikipedia link, but you cannot make him read it.
The House doesnt “declare an intent to impeach.” The house impeaches. Or not. The Senate does not “actually impeach.” If it gets to the Senate, the President has already been impeached.
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nah. our system is corrupt but it’s not quite that corrupt.
i definitely agree that in many cases criminal law has a sliding scale from the most privileged and most white seeming to the least. money and race influence outcomes significantly but they aren’t the only factors. we aren’t run by the mafia and white supremacists just yet
switching to my example of seat belts. manufacturers follow the law to put them in cars, despite the fact they fought it bitterly. make no mistake there the ones with the money, but they need the protection of the court for copyrights, labor, etc. so they also agree to be bound by those same courts.
we all have rights and responsibilities. it’s not all one or the other.
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If you only think an impeachment is “successful” if it leads to a President being frog-marched on the White House lawn, sure. But the Republicans got a lot of direct political capital, effect, and strategic advantage from tying up Clinton for years.
Impeachment isn’t a legal procedure, it’s a political one. It’s a way for Congress to strenuously object to something or someone. If they have a better fight they should take it, but is that what they’re doing?
Leave those poor horses alone.
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Infamously:
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That’s an interesting take. As far as I know, it’s generally regarded as a mistake for the GOP, and one that left Clinton more popular than he was before the impeachment process.
The thing is, with the House in Democratic hands, they can successfully do an awful lot of things to investigate and harry Trump and his cronies, and to thwart Republican legislative agenda, without impeachment.
People are fixated on impeachment because they (rightfully) think Trump is awful and should be kicked out of White House ASAP. And in a just and fair world, that would happen (we’ll skip the problem of how the hell did Trump get elected in a just and fair world). But in the real world, unless the balance of power in the Senate changes a lot, or something so egregious and undeniably awful comes out about Trump that the Republicans feel compelled to move against him, an impeachment process against him will fail. And that failure will be a win for Trump. Don’t give him that.
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Reasonable points, but it “failed” with Clinton too, and it’s all most people generally remember of the time. The Republicans held more power after it, so it’s hard to say how it significantly backfired on them. (Gingrich had to step down, but it wasn’t a loss overall).
Not formally censuring Trump will also be a major win for them to point at.
If he was more in the middle of a fight with Congress today, in a defensive position, he’d have less time for for his immigration/border project and visits to border guards, and that’s what the story is right now.
Waiting for something to come along that Republicans will also see as disgusting enough seems like a non-starter to me. I don’t know how low that would have to go.
Let’s just say I’m quite aware of how impeachment works, but being given facts, opinions, or actual content in a BBS post is a lot more useful than linking to a massive Wikipedia page with the entire contents, history, and explanation of Article One of the US Constitution, as if I’m supposed to find the needle in that haystack of what, specifically, you’re trying to point out to us all.
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As others have pointed out, we’ve had several impeachments so far, the effect of which has basically for those presidents to have a little star by their name in history books as “guys who were impeached by the opposing party back then”. Sure, the House can use it to say “we seriously, really, no joke, formally object to Trump!” and then the Senate will refuse to even listen to it, and Trump will be victorious again and frame it as pointless political grandstanding by Democrats.
I feel like impeachment may have had more weight 100 or even 50 years ago, but in the political reality of 2019, it’s just an empty proceeding, a footnote on a President’s history.
He has said on multiple occasions “What we need to do is get rid of judges.” How long until one of his followers takes that as an order? Will that cross the line finally? Not holding my breath, but I am hoping these judges have some form of security detail.
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It may be reductive, but not overly in all too many cases.
In UK there are regular cases where someone with enough money to buy the best specialist lawyer gets a result others won’t - not least in motoriing offences
This guy is famous for it here.
You may say his clients are indeed bound by the law because all he does is exploit valid legal loopholes. But it is money (and often celebrity) that makes the difference, and clearly others who cannot afford him are not protected by the law if the same loopholes would apply to them, but are never tested (or even raised).
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It’s hard for me to see the Clinton impeachment proceedings as “nothing” or that it had “little effect”, just because he had a personal popularity bump in polls and wasn’t put in jail, or because it didn’t cause the Democratic Party to formally surrender and permanently disband.
And I doubt Al Gore (among others) would characterize it as a “nothing event” without consequence either. Trump never “proved” that Obama was born in Kenya. It still had a beneficial consequence to Trump’s political fortunes.
If a different fight has more effect, great. Congress has some discretion about how they apply their checks and balances. But holding off for the “perfect” fight might have less impact overall.
