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

[Mudguard]

We all know how the impeachment process is going to go.  House will impeach Trump, but the Senate will acquit/fail to convict him, and Trump will claim total exoneration and claim that Democrats have been unjustly pursuing a failed witch hunt against him since he's been elected because they know they can't beat him in a fair election.  Trump is going to be repeating this over and over for the next 11 months.  I'm not sure what the Democrat's message will be after Trump is acquitted in the Senate, but I think it'll be difficult to come up with a strong message.  Blaming Republican senators for failing to convict Trump doesn't seem that strong of a message, but I'm not sure what else they can say.

The big question is how will this affect potential Democrat voters in the battleground states, particularly the ones that sat out the last election.  Do these voters view the Mueller Report and the impeachment proceedings as failed attempts to remove Trump?  Will it motivate these voters to come out and vote? Or will it demotivate them out of a sense of hopelessness?  If these voters were apathetic enough to not vote in the last election, I'm concerned that 11 months of Trump claiming total exoneration is going to demotivate them more than it motivates them to come out and vote.

There's no backing out of the impeachment proceedings now, so we'll find out soon enough.

[Paladin of Ice]

31 minutes ago, Darryk said:

 

Trump has already committed several impeachable offences, most notably breaking the emoluments clause. The Ukraine thing is probably the least serious, and the one that is easiest for Trump to turn back on the Democrats thanks to Biden's son's shenanigans. 

Eh, the thing about both Hunter Biden and “Ukrainian corruption” both seem very easy to defeat and be shown as the bullshit that are.

Republican politicians: “Joe and Hunter Biden are corrupt because Burisma!!!1!” Then why didn’t you say or do anything about it at the time? Hunter getting hired by Burisma wasn’t a secret buried somewhere on obscure corporate documents and not seen by anyone in the U.S.  Every major news source had at least a small story about it, the Obama White House had to put out a statement about why it wasn’t a conflict of interest, etc.

Similarly, Joe Biden acted out in the open and in his official capacity. (Unlike, say, operating through shady lawyers and criminal campaign donors.) Nearly every Western nation called for the firing of that prosecutor, and there are statements from some of the same Republican senators who are currently accusing Biden of corruption thanking him for what he did in Ukraine as VP. (And unless I’m misremembering the timeline, the corrupt prosecutor who got fired was fired before Hunter even served on Burisma’s board.)

If this was all so corrupt, why didn’t republicans say anything at the time? They had the majority in the House, they could have been holding hearings all day long and adding it to their list of Obama conspiracies. What, they didn’t have time for it in between 50 Benghazi hearings that they were pushing during an election year? Bullshit!

As for the silly excuse about Trump being so concerned about corruption in Ukraine, if that was a real thing why did military and foreign aid go through to Ukraine without a hitch in 2017 and 2018? Why did it only become a problem when even Fox News polls showed Trump losing decisively to Biden?

 And most importantly, why should any election be considered trustworthy or believable if we’re going to, by default, say it’s okay for a president or party to use extortion and force other countries to help them and/or slime their opponents? Because that does become the de facto state of play if we don’t try to draw a line in the sand against it here and now.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

Trump is going to be repeating this over and over for the next 11 months.  I'm not sure what the Democrat's message will be after Trump is acquitted in the Senate, but I think it'll be difficult to come up with a strong message.  Blaming Republican senators for failing to convict Trump doesn't seem that strong of a message, but I'm not sure what else they can say.

Well, they say what they already have been saying - "Trump is an existential threat to our democracy - and is completely unchecked by his party in Congress."  The strength of that message compared to Trump's is in the eye of the beholder.  While I was considerably worried at the outset impeachment would lead to a backlash on Dems, since it hasn't by now I'm much less worried that it will in the next 11 months.  The American public is the most ADD kid in the world.  Be very surprised if impeachment is even really on the radar by the time voting starts.

 

[Maithanet]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

Well, they say what they already have been saying - "Trump is an existential threat to our democracy - and is completely unchecked by his party in Congress."  The strength of that message compared to Trump's is in the eye of the beholder.  While I was considerably worried at the outset impeachment would lead to a backlash on Dems, since it hasn't by now I'm much less worried that it will in the next 11 months.  The American public is the most ADD kid in the world.  Be very surprised if impeachment is even really on the radar by the time voting starts.

I'm also extremely skeptical of the idea that Trump's supporters will be any more fired up in 11 months than they would be otherwise.  They will be at 100% angry regardless.  The question is whether it turns off low-information independents or fires up Democrats.  On the latter, I doubt it will make much difference, like you said that's 11 months from now, and this isn't exactly a pocketbook issue.  As for Democrats, we'll see, but I have trouble believing that Pelosi sticking her head in the sand and declaring that she isn't going to do anything about election interference would have gone well for the party AT ALL.  If impeachment and acquittal turns out to be an electoral winner for Trump then so be it, but doing nothing was not the solution. 

[DMC]

9 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

but I have trouble believing that Pelosi sticking her head in the sand and declaring that she isn't going to do anything about election interference would have gone well for the party AT ALL.  If impeachment and acquittal turns out to be an electoral winner for Trump then so be it, but doing nothing was not the solution. 

Yep, this is very important to emphasize when evaluating whether impeachment was the right move or not politically.  One can only wonder how outraged the left would be at the Democratic leadership right now if they didn't do it.  Floating a compromise of censure is still immediately dismissed by most.  

[argonak]

26 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I'm also extremely skeptical of the idea that Trump's supporters will be any more fired up in 11 months than they would be otherwise.  They will be at 100% angry regardless.  The question is whether it turns off low-information independents or fires up Democrats.  On the latter, I doubt it will make much difference, like you said that's 11 months from now, and this isn't exactly a pocketbook issue.  As for Democrats, we'll see, but I have trouble believing that Pelosi sticking her head in the sand and declaring that she isn't going to do anything about election interference would have gone well for the party AT ALL.  If impeachment and acquittal turns out to be an electoral winner for Trump then so be it, but doing nothing was not the solution. 

Yeah.  They're already 100% angry, all the time.  Their propaganda cable channel of choice seems to serve up a regular dose of gamma radiation to their brains.

[Zorral]

The following is adapted from Gregory P. Down’s book, The Second American Revolution: The Civil War-Era Struggle over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American Republic, reprinted with the permission of the University of North Carolina Press.

There many intriguing ideas within:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/civil-war-revolution-constitution

Quote

.... The name Second American Revolution raises a number of disturbing questions about the system of government we live under. If the Constitution was so well designed, why did we need a second revolution? And if the new Constitution created out of occupation and martial law was so distinct, should we imagine that the First Constitution failed and fell into abeyance, and that we live under a Second Constitution? And does that mean we should call the period before the Civil War the First American Republic? And then that we live today in a Second American Republic, governed by this Second Constitution created by this Second Revolution? Those questions tell us something about the past, but they also tell us something about how we might see the present. The name the Civil War covered up the messiness in American history; many great historians have tried to uncover the full story through the language of revolution but they haven’t been able to convince the public or even other social scientists. But if we think of the Civil War as a revolution, we have to face some challenging ideas: that the system set up by the Founders faltered, that the country could not be saved by normal means, that slavery could not be killed by the typical procedures or laws and congressional debate. The Constitution could not prevent civil war, and it could not end slavery. Therefore, Republicans reluctantly and temporarily abandoned some of their faith in the Constitution to save the country and to end slavery. They broke constitutional norms, relied on military rule, added states, and threatened to dismantle the Supreme Court because they did not believe they could end slavery within the Constitution as it was....

Quote

 

.... The First Founders retain their force partly because their Constitution presumably constrains and empowers Americans. But in fact, seen aright, their Constitution is less meaningful and less constraining than Americans imagine. Many of the constitutional rights that Americans enjoy are derived from either the Second Constitution or the creative interpretations of twentieth-century jurists, and none are — or ever will be — self-enforcing; all still rely on the promise of enforcement, of force. They will always depend on political will and thus on reinterpretation of their contents.

Taking the Second American Revolution seriously would lead Americans to ponder new forms of public memory. Who among the Second Founders should be recognized on dollar bills, in statues, in city names? Beyond Lincoln and, arguably, Grant and Frederick Douglass, few of the Second Founders are well remembered, and none for their role in remaking, not saving, the Republic. The nation has outrageously neglected Thaddeus Stevens — one of the two or three most significant Second Founders — and is only beginning to come to terms with black Second Founders like Robert Smalls and Henry McNeal Turner and Charlotte Forten and Harriet Tubman. The nation might rethink its holy sites. Instead of Philadelphia and Boston, cradles of the First Republic, the birthplace of the Second American Republic might be at the National Park Service sites in Beaufort or Natchez or New Orleans. More productive than raising new icons would be new debates. What would it mean to turn the congressional discussions over the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments — including the extraordinary testimony from ex-slaves themselves and the petitions from women and men across the country — into the nation’s founding texts, instead of the Federalist Papers?

A United States born from the bayonets of the 1860s and from the actions of terrified congressmen and generals may be a less appealing story. That narrative may even be a dangerous one. There is no shortage of fanatics ready to believe that the government can be changed only by violence and ready to turn that violence to bad ends. There may be good reason to forget the bloody and coercive roots of our rights and our freedoms. It may be safer to pretend that we live in a self-governing and perhaps self-correcting machine. Whitewashing has its purposes, even its pleasures. Liberals and leftists take shelter in a counteroriginalism that attempts to make equality an unimpeachable American value, despite all the evidence to the contrary....

 

 

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Darryk said:

Right now my advice would be for people like Pelosi, Schumer and other corporate democrats to step aside and hand over leadership to the Progressive wing. They can crow about Bernie's supposed "unelectability" all they want, but they dropped the ball in 2016 and they're dropping it again now. The dignified thing would be to stand aside and let someone else take a shot, especially someone who beats Trump in so many heads-to-head polls. 

By that logic you should be against Sanders and heavily in favor of Biden, who is leading in those polls far more than Sanders ever has. 

 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

7 minutes ago, Zorral said:

The following is adapted from Gregory P. Down’s book, The Second American Revolution: The Civil War-Era Struggle over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American Republic, reprinted with the permission of the University of North Carolina Press.

There many intriguing ideas within:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/civil-war-revolution-constitution

 

Show me the lie.  (And honestly a lot of the "creative interpretation by jurists" in the 1930s-1980s should be given more weight).

[Darryk]

38 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

By that logic you should be against Sanders and heavily in favor of Biden, who is leading in those polls far more than Sanders ever has. 

 

No because Biden is part of the corporate elite, is bought and owned by big money donors, and will be destroyed by Trump in the debates. Trump can attack him for all the same things he attacked Hillary for.

Bernie on the other hand is immune to all those attacks. He doesn't take anything from big money donors, so the people know he's not bought and owned. He's an "outsider" like Trump was perceived to be, and he's been talking about the decline of America's Middle Class and the manufacturing industry for his whole career, whereas Trump probably only cottoned onto that issue because Steve Bannon told him it would resonate and in the Rust Belt, which is essentially what won Trump the election.

Yes, Bernie and Biden are the two front-runners currently, but the debates are going to make a huge difference. What's Trump got against Bernie? Socialism? Bernie can just respond with stuff like "well actually you wrote a book where you said you supported single-payer healthcare, but you changed your mind after a meeting with Big Pharma" and "medicare is a form of socialism and is extremely popular. Remember when you said durijng the Republican primary that you were the only Republican who wouldn't cut medicare, but then you cut it anyway?"

Whereas Biden will just be something along the lines of "you're like...very mean...and stuff. We need a president who can bow and scrape before corporations and the military industrial complex but like...be a lot nicer about it"

[Mudguard]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

Well, they say what they already have been saying - "Trump is an existential threat to our democracy - and is completely unchecked by his party in Congress."  The strength of that message compared to Trump's is in the eye of the beholder.  While I was considerably worried at the outset impeachment would lead to a backlash on Dems, since it hasn't by now I'm much less worried that it will in the next 11 months.  The American public is the most ADD kid in the world.  Be very surprised if impeachment is even really on the radar by the time voting starts.

 

If the best case likely scenario for Democrats is for them to forget about the impeachment in 11 months, then that's pretty sad.  If the economy continues to hold, Trump is going to be able to claim credit and it will blunt the claim that Trump is going to destroy our country.  He's going to be able to claim that he's achieved a great economy despite continued opposition from Democrats from the day he was elected, and that things would be even better if everyone got on board.  I think we might need something big to counter that advantage, but it doesn't look like it's going to be the impeachment or the allegations about collusion with Russia or obstruction of justice.  The continued strength of the US economy is getting me really worried.

[Leofric]

U.S. Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon from Pennsylvania summing up Democrat's case for the 1st article of impeachment simply:

Sentence breakdown with a Sharpie

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

27 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Yes, Bernie and Biden are the two front-runners currently, but the debates are going to make a huge difference. What's Trump got against Bernie? Socialism? Bernie can just respond with stuff like "well actually you wrote a book where you said you supported single-payer healthcare, but you changed your mind after a meeting with Big Pharma" and "medicare is a form of socialism and is extremely popular. Remember when you said durijng the Republican primary that you were the only Republican who wouldn't cut medicare, but then you cut it anyway?"

Um, that's exactly how they'll attack him and it will scare off the middle. @DMC was too kind in calling Americans kids with ADD. They're that and then they've also been hit in the head with a bat. My experience in the field has lead me to conclude that the average American is a complete idiot and too scared to have honest adult conversations. Most of the most popular programs within the government have elements of socialism in them, but that doesn't change the fact that using socialism as an attack has been successful for Republicans.

[Mudguard]

Out of the top four Democratic candidates, Biden, Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, I think Buttigieg has done the best in the portions of the debates I've watched, which admittedly was just a small fraction.  He's very articulate, extremely intelligent, and quick on his feet.  He would destroy Trump in a debate.  His relatively short track record also doesn't provide Trump with much to work with.  The others have very long track records which provide Trump with all sorts of ammunition.  Biden is also prone to gaffs, so even though he is polling well against Trump in a head to head match up right now, I have the least confidence in Biden maintaining that edge to November 2020.  The Democratic candidates have been mostly nice to each other, but during the general election, it'll be completely different going against Trump.

I also don't have any problems with Buttigieg's business background.  Honestly, his business background is a plus for me.  I'm also OK with his tack towards the center.  Strategically, I think it's a good move for him, and it'll probably play well in the battleground states.  The only concern I have is his sexual orientation.  I left the midwest decades ago, so I'm not sure how much the attitudes against gay people have changed over there.  When I left in the 80's/90's, homophobia was very strong.  I assume that it's much better now, but I'm worried that it could cost him a few percent or maybe more.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Darryk said:

No because Biden is part of the corporate elite, is bought and owned by big money donors, and will be destroyed by Trump in the debates. Trump can attack him for all the same things he attacked Hillary for. 

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

1 hour ago, Darryk said:

Yes, Bernie and Biden are the two front-runners currently, but the debates are going to make a huge difference. What's Trump got against Bernie? Socialism?

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.

1 hour ago, Darryk said:

Bernie can just respond with stuff like "well actually you wrote a book where you said you supported single-payer healthcare, but you changed your mind after a meeting with Big Pharma" and "medicare is a form of socialism and is extremely popular. Remember when you said durijng the Republican primary that you were the only Republican who wouldn't cut medicare, but then you cut it anyway?" 

Who the fuck cares? Who are these mythical people who are basing their decisions on the debates? By that token, Biden can simply say "I never said on a hot mic that I wanted to grab women by the pussy". And none of that shit matters. 

 

[Zorral]

3 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Show me the lie.  (And honestly a lot of the "creative interpretation by jurists" in the 1930s-1980s should be given more weight).

Don't know what you mean here?

[ThinkerX]

conventional wisdom, both sides is that a significant number of republican senators will never vote to impeach Trump.

 

I have started wondering about this from a different angle.  Take your typical republican senator, whose been forced to deal with the 'Trump Effect' for the past three years - the broken deals, the erratic behavior, the often ludicrous Executive Orders.  Yes, they got the tax cut through, and rammed through some of the conservative social agenda.  But, point remains, Trump is very, very hard to work with, and that situation will not improve, period.  

 

So, vote against impeaching Trump and contend with another full term worth of personal attacks, continual scandal and like matters - with no real prospect of accomplishing anything else with the conservative agenda?  Or vote to impeach, and hope that a reasonable 'bridge-builder' democrat gets the Oval Office, somebody who could be bullied if need be?

 

Which situation would the typical republican senator prefer?  

[Zorral]

19 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

conventional wisdom, both sides is that a significant number of republican senators will never vote to impeach Trump.

 

I have started wondering about this from a different angle.  Take your typical republican senator, whose been forced to deal with the 'Trump Effect' for the past three years - the broken deals, the erratic behavior, the often ludicrous Executive Orders.  Yes, they got the tax cut through, and rammed through some of the conservative social agenda.  But, point remains, Trump is very, very hard to work with, and that situation will not improve, period.  

 

So, vote against impeaching Trump and contend with another full term worth of personal attacks, continual scandal and like matters - with no real prospect of accomplishing anything else with the conservative agenda?  Or vote to impeach, and hope that a reasonable 'bridge-builder' democrat gets the Oval Office, somebody who could be bullied if need be?

 

Which situation would the typical republican senator prefer?  

You have missed the point entirely -- it's not about at all accomplishing anything.  It's about destroying democracy in every possible way.  And this is a global movement that has crested now with the election of trump.  There is no idea whatsoever of accomplishing anything at all but getting rid of any democratic institution and process.  Everything for the obscenely wealthy and powerful and utter oppression and extraction for everyone and everything else.

 

[DMC]

4 hours ago, Mudguard said:

The continued strength of the US economy is getting me really worried.

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.

[ThinkerX]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

You have missed the point entirely -- it's not about at all accomplishing anything.  It's about destroying democracy in every possible way.  And this is a global movement that has crested now with the election of trump.  There is no idea whatsoever of accomplishing anything at all but getting rid of any democratic institution and process.  Everything for the obscenely wealthy and powerful and utter oppression and extraction for everyone and everything else.

 

hyperbole, much?