US Politics - All He Wants for Christmas Was His Two Dead Sheep

[Kalbear]

41 minutes ago, DMC said:

Me too.  Not sure what the Dems can do about it though.  If they "dragged" impeachment out too close to the election, there'd be a much much greater risk of it backfiring on them.

Why would you be worried? Isn't that just the status quo?

[Centrist Simon Steele]

11 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

Dollars to donuts that if the Democrats take back the Presidency and Justice Department, they'll let all the obvious traitors in the Republican caucus just slide in foolish and futile hopes of "unity" or some other milquetoast bullshit.

I don't mean this sarcastically, but...what can you really do when these are elected officials? If they were to somehow remove people in power across the U.S., I can't imagine what the repercussions would be. In a best case scenario, info should be released, and voters would have the "good sense" to remove their representatives and replace them with un-compromised individuals. But even then, I wonder who isn't compromised in the Republican party (and probably many of the Dems, sadly). 

[DMC]

17 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Why would you be worried? Isn't that just the status quo?

Is this supposed to be some sick burn?

[Kalbear]

9 minutes ago, DMC said:

Is this supposed to be some sick burn?

Not really, just an observation of odd positions. Why be worried about the economy if the polling is where it is? While the economy is doing well, it's not doing any better than it was a year ago. 

So why does the economy worry you?

[Zorral]

57 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

hyperbole, much?

How much history do you know?  Or even the investigative journalism of the last ten years?

[Martell Spy]

1 hour ago, ThinkerX said:

hyperbole, much?

Not, really, no. Conservatives attempts at governing are always attempts at destroying. They are always attempting to destroy some large program that is successfully helping Americans, attempting to shovel money into war programs, or attempting to hand out money to the wealthy. The rest of the time conservatives are trying to put gums in the works and stop anything from happening as the status quo favors the wealthy, the white, and the Republican.

And that was before the Trumpist nihilists that just want to destroy American democracy entirely for lulz.

[DMC]

21 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Why be worried about the economy if the polling is where it is? While the economy is doing well, it's not doing any better than it was a year ago. 

So why does the economy worry you?

Because of the distinct possibility a good economy throughout his entire term could boost his numbers as the election approaches.  If on November 1, 2020 he's still at 42/53, his support against the Dem nominee still looks like this, and the generic ballot still looks like this, then yeah, I'll be considerably less worried.

[DanteGabriel]

38 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

I don't mean this sarcastically, but...what can you really do when these are elected officials? If they were to somehow remove people in power across the U.S., I can't imagine what the repercussions would be. In a best case scenario, info should be released, and voters would have the "good sense" to remove their representatives and replace them with un-compromised individuals. But even then, I wonder who isn't compromised in the Republican party (and probably many of the Dems, sadly). 

Prosecute the appointed ones, at least. Barr, Pompeo, Mulvaney, DeVos, Chao. Giuliani isn't even appointed, he's just a crooked lawyer sticking his hand out in Russia's backyard. And the whole rotten Trump clan, of course. NRA leadership is almost certainly dirty with Russian oligarch money. 

[Ormond]

14 minutes ago, DMC said:

Because of the distinct possibility a good economy throughout his entire term could boost his numbers as the election approaches.  If on November 1, 2020 he's still at 42/53, his support against the Dem nominee still looks like this, and the generic ballot still looks like this, then yeah, I'll be considerably less worried.

Looking at the first link the thing that seems a bit surprising to me is that Trump's approval is 3 points lower and disapproval 3 points higher among those 65+ than among those 50-64.  I wonder if that's statistically significant. Perhaps a minor difference, but my past perceptions have been that the older voters are, the higher the % are Trump supporters, so I find even this 3% drop off noticeable.

[DMC]

20 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Perhaps a minor difference, but my past perceptions have been that the older voters are, the higher the % are Trump supporters, so I find even this 3% drop off noticeable.

Yeah that'd be my perception as well.  Looking at other recent polls, YouGov has his approval at 49/46 for 45-64 and 53/45 for 65+, while Morning Consult has it at 44/54 for 55-64 and 43/56 for 65+.  So, seems like once you're over 50 it's pretty much even and the differences are mostly noise.

[ThinkerX]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

How much history do you know?  Or even the investigative journalism of the last ten years?

hyperbole it is then.

Now, the question I have just started mulling over within the past few days is this:

'Given that Trump attacks and betrays *everybody* at one point or another, and given that even republicans find him difficult to work with at best, is it safe to assume that all republican senators would actually want to put up with Trump's crap for another term?'  Set the other BS aside.   

[Darryk]

So? The debates didn't do fuckall for polling. They almost never do.

Well the polls themselves don't really mean fuck all for the election, as Hillary's lead in 2016 showed. They just provide an indicator, as does the reaction to the debates. Partisan voters (which is probably most of them) won't be swung by any debates but independents might.

The people in the Rust Belt states who voted for Trump gave him victory in the Electoral College by a very narrow margin; those are people who have been hit hard by the decline of American manufacturing and the outsourcing of jobs. It's hard not to see a link between that and Trump's hammering of Hillary Clinton over NAFTA in the debates. Of course, Hillary's failure to visit Michigan during her campaign also played a role.

Yes, he's got socialism, he's got higher taxes, he's got shitty foreign policy, he's got that weird sex thing Sanders wrote a while back. But mostly, he's got the fact that 

he's currently losing to Biden and did lose to Clinton. Making this whole thing moot.

He's also got a lifetime of fighting for causes, many of which matter a lot to people who voted for Trump, such as outsourcing of jobs and the decline of American manufacturing. I imagine his foreign policy of getting America out of useless wars would be pretty popular too.

He's losing to Biden in polls by a narrow margin, and he ran Hillary close despite the DNC violating their own charter by trying to shift things in favour of Clinton. Plus the Democrat primary has superdelegates, and any "outsider" candidate like Bernie or Tulsi has to run against the entire Democrat establishment, including their media machine of MSNBC and CNN.

So although I think he's the candidate with the best chance of beating Trump, such is the nature of the Democratic primary process that I fully expect them to sideline him and nominate another corporate puppet who will lose.

 

 

 

 

[DanteGabriel]

It's been a while since I heard "The Ballad of How Bernie Got Cheated" and its B-side, "A Socialist Jew is Definitely the Best Candidate to Appeal to Trump Voters." Age has not improved the lyrics.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

12 hours ago, Zorral said:

Don't know what you mean here?

Just that I'm neither an originalist nor a faux originalist (most originalists are actually faux originalists IMO), and I think the reinterpretations of some pretty basic provisions starting post court packing threat saved the country from something more seismically destructive on the home front in the 20th Century.  

[argonak]

12 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

I don't mean this sarcastically, but...what can you really do when these are elected officials? If they were to somehow remove people in power across the U.S., I can't imagine what the repercussions would be. In a best case scenario, info should be released, and voters would have the "good sense" to remove their representatives and replace them with un-compromised individuals. But even then, I wonder who isn't compromised in the Republican party (and probably many of the Dems, sadly). 

Criminals should be JAILED.  If someone commits a crime, they should be charged and tried.  Letting the "voters decide" is just letting the rule of law fall apart.   I don't care who you are, no one should be above the law.

If rule of law really falls apart all the way, shit is going to get really bad.  I often hear people in my workplace joking about how, "well if its ok for the president to do that, why can't I?"  Its jokes right now, but we could easily find our way to that point.  

[Fragile Bird]

I was curious to see how impeaching Clinton affected the Republican drafters of the impeachment. Hillary Clinton, of course, has been hated and demonized her entire life for her role on the team that drafted the articles against Nixon.

The Republicans seem to have fared much, much better.

A story just popped up last week in the Atlantic about James Rogan, one of the 14 major leads (the House Managers) on the team that drafted the articles. He was a California congressman at the time, and the Democrats targeted his seat. The person who replaced him was Adam Schiff. It will be interesting to see if history repeats itself. Nonetheless, Rogan didn’t exactly suffer. Bush appointed him head of the US Patent department, from 2001 - 2004, and then Gov. Arnie Schwarzenegger appointed him a district judge in 2006. Bush nominated him for a lifetime federal judgeship in 2007 but he didn’t get approved in time, and of course the Democrats weren’t going to. I’m surprised he hasn’t gotten a nomination from Trump.

I noticed that the glaring absence in the article was any questions about what he thinks about Trump blocking major witnesses from testifying. I guess as a judge he told them any such questions were off the table.

Another of the 14 was Asa Hutchinson, now governor of Arkansas. The man who worked to impeach the former governor of Arkansas now sits in his place. Amazing.

Ed Bryant of Tennessee spent years, from 2008, as a magistrate judge, which I gather is a judge who helps senior judges and is selected by the judges themselves. Again, not someone the Obama administration appointed, but his Republican buds in Tennessee helped him out.

Dave Schippers was the lead counsel. He claimed he voted for Clinton twice, but then why did the Republicans choose him? I have doubts. He was so honest and straightforward he chose is own son as one of the 8 counsel on his team. Imagine if a Democrat did that. He died last year, and neither Wikipedia nor any of the obituaries I saw had any information about what he did after the impeachment. He did have a very nasty mouth both during the impeachment and in a book he wrote afterwards.

Bill McCollum had been a Florida congressman for decades. He chose not to run in 2000, going for Senate instead and losing to Nelson. He tried again and didn’t get the nomination. He tried to be governor, but lost the nomination to Scott. He did, however, become AG of Florida and led a group of state AGs trying to overturn Obamacare. He fought any public option for Medicare, which option was actually supported by the Floridians. He also defended a Florida ban on homosexuals being able to adopt children, eventually losing that case. He also found time to be the Florida chair for Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential nomination bid. He’s now 88, thankfully, and unlikely to do more despicable things.

Yet another team member was Lindsey Graham. He hadn’t suffered at all, has he. 
 

I can’t be bothered to look up any others, I bet the stories are all pretty successful.

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

It's been a while since I heard "The Ballad of How Bernie Got Cheated" and its B-side, "A Socialist Jew is Definitely the Best Candidate to Appeal to Trump Voters." Age has not improved the lyrics.

Correction, a socialist non-practicing Jew. Speaking as one, I can confirm that Christian nation doesn’t like us very much. Odd though considering these people give their blind adoration to a liberal socialist hipster Jew who played fast and loose with his religion, as does everyone though.

#BongHitsForJesus

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

. Hillary Clinton, of course, has been hated and demonized her entire life for her role on the team that drafted the articles against Nixon. 

This is really not true.  She's received a lot of bullshit demonization (and legit criticism as well) but none of it comes from being involved in the Nixon impeachment.  Would love to be proved wrong here, any evidence of this?

[Fragile Bird]

1 minute ago, larrytheimp said:

This is really not true.  She's received a lot of bullshit demonization (and legit criticism as well) but none of it comes from being involved in the Nixon impeachment.  Would love to be proved wrong here, any evidence of this?

Over the years I have often read that the hatred of Hilary Clinton was rooted in her role in the impeachment team, and as Bill moved up in the world of politics Republicans revenged themselves on her. It’s not something I pulled out of a hat, but I really couldn’t provide you with quotes and links.

[Ormond]

2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

 

A story just popped up last week in the Atlantic about James Rogan, one of the 14 major leads (the House Managers) on the team that drafted the articles. He was a California congressman at the time, and the Democrats targeted his seat. The person who replaced him was Adam Schiff. It will be interesting to see if history repeats itself. Nonetheless, Rogan didn’t exactly suffer. Bush appointed him head of the US Patent department, from 2001 - 2004, and then Gov. Arnie Schwarzenegger appointed him a district judge in 2006. Bush nominated him for a lifetime federal judgeship in 2007 but he didn’t get approved in time, and of course the Democrats weren’t going to. I’m surprised he hasn’t gotten a nomination from Trump.

 

Why would you be surprised? He's 62 now and one of the main criteria the right wing activists who advise Trump on who to appoint have is that candidates be young enough to probably be on the bench for decades. So he's probably too old to appeal to them.