An article from The Atlantic, natch.
Scaring well-heeled white liberals has long been a cash cow for that outlet.
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Just to clarify who opened that door, impeaching a sitting President for blatantly partisan political reasons was a precedent set during the Clinton administration, but neither George W. Bush nor Barack Obama were impeached.
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Not for lack of trying.
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The previous history of impeachment included Andrew Johnson, who was clearly seeking to end any meaningful reconstruction, and then Nixon would have been next, but he had the good sense to resign from office once it was clear that they had the goods on him.
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Well kind of, yes. Democrats could have launched a concerted effort to impeach George W. Bush once they took control of the House in 2007 but chose not to. Republicans could have launched a concerted effort to impeach Barack Obama in 2011 but chose not to. But neither party put in the effort because they didn’t see the political advantage of doing so at the time (in part because neither effort would have had any chance of conviction in the Senate).
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and for lying about his drug use on an application to buy a gun.
I mean, he most definitely violated Federal law on that one. Not that that has anything to do with Joe Biden. (Nor is that law zealously enforced. It is usually a thing to tack on.)
Still, I guess it is good to think about what could happen, but 1) the midterms are ahead and not a forgone conclusion. The race is a tighter than it should be, but if “unlikely voters” show up, we should see favorable outcomes. 2) Even if the Democrats lose the house, there isn’t enough votes in the Senate to convict. So it would be at worst a political gesture.
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Given that it requires a 2/3 majority in the Senate to convict, that’s unlikely.
I expect this will be the standard for some time now… the sitting president is impeached for something (nonexistent or trivial if necessary) won’t be convicted, and everything will continue as normal.
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Because that, at the heart of the matter, is more important. They can fund-raise off that. And by they, I mean both parties. When Trump was impeached but not convicted, I got a whole host of emails from the DNC bemoaning the fact that they needed money to help unseat those republicans who didn’t see the obvious… or to help keep Liz Cheney and those that DID vote to impeach/convict in their seats. I’d wager if Biden was impeached, there’d be a whole host of emails going out to my mom and her ilk about how they need money to primary/run against those traitors that didn’t impeach / convict Biden.
And so on and so forth. Just money grabs. As much as I hate the term virtue signaling, it kind of is exactly that.
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Channeling Bill Paxton?
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All about the money. Of course the GOP wants Trump still around because they are fund raising off him, but I think the Democrat (Establishment/Party/ the ones who call the shots, not the voters) do not want to bury him either because they like to trot him out as a boogeyman to scare people into giving them money. This is a dangerous tactic. They should put him away ASAP.
As far as the impeachment is concerned, they do not care if they get rid of Biden or not. They just want to say “See, everyone gets impeached. It’s meaningless”. Just like when Trump lies, they say every politician lies, when he gets caught making money off government and grifting, they say every politician is a grifter. Now they’ll say, Trump being impeached (TWICE) is meaningless because everyone gets impeached.
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Oh, thank you for that.
This reflected my view for the past few months, call me an optimist.
But, much as we all love @frauenfelder, he put the wind up me with the opening article.
Hope to dog you’re wrong, mate.
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Sounds to me like the kind of pipe dream DJTJ is having these days.
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I think at some point, one of the prominent Republicans said if they get the House, they’ll vote to impeach Biden every single day, for any damn reason they can think of.
Not even sure this’ll hurt them with voters, as they’ll also work to allow red states to arbitrarily declare the winners of any elections they want. No more voting – no more being afraid of voters.
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Sounds like Hunter should just register himself as a Republican – problem solved. The GOP is in favor of all of these things when they’re done by a Republican. This serves double duty, of course, as Conservatives have shown repeatedly they have no connection to their children in any meaningful way.
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They won’t have 67 Senators, so Joe can feel free to munch away.
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Not likely. Impeachments and trials take much more time than the new president appointing a VP.
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Appointing a VP requires a majority of both houses for confirmation. Any GOP-controlled Congress that’s looking to impeach a new president is unlikely to approve her VP choices. The GOP-controlled Senate wouldn’t even take a vote Obama’s centrist pick for a Supreme Court Justice so I certainly wouldn’t expect them to act any more honorably when it comes to a position as important as the Vice Presidency.
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I don’t usually post my neighbor’s opium ranting fever dreams. Why are we doing this?
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The more they keep pushing this matter the more it’s going to ugly in the end. They may have enough folks fooled in the right places to keep voting for them but eventually something is going to break. It might start looking like the late 1960s in the US but cranked to 11 thanks to the always-on news cycle and social media. The right wing really needs to take a break or expect to have literal fights on their hands in the most unexpected places.
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Not exactly. The appointed VP doesn’t just go away. And they can’t impeach an acting VP who is awaiting confirmation. The acting VP becomes acting president when the president is removed and can appoint another VP.
So the appointed VP/acting president can always stay ahead of the impeachment process.
I agree that it could easily result in a constitutional crisis, but the executive has the upper hand in this scenario over a parlaimentary body.
And ultimately, the GQP always fuck up their paperwork. Dems are simply better bureaucrats.
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