Impeach Trump Y/N

Sure. But don't stop there.

Absolutely. If only because it would deal a massive blow to the GOP.

No, it would be an absolute waste of time and 50/50 that it backfires when he isn't convicted - "See, folks, it was just a witch hunt, the Senate cleared me of everything. Everything!"

Two straight years of impeding him and investigation by the House is more useful.

I assume there can be no impeachment without a conviction, since the GOP needs to be on board as well, no? But I'm hardly an expert in these matters.

"See, folks, it was just a witch hunt, the Senate cleared me of everything. Everything!"

Isn't it either that or "See, folks, it was just a witch hunt, 10,001 Angry Democrats wasting your money for years and no charges brought against me!"

Fuck a Pence though

If by 'impeach' you mean 'sew his asshole closed and keep feeding him and feeding him and feeding him' then I offer an enthusiastic yes.

Impeach Cobbler Y/N

it only backfired on the Repubs in the 90s because Kenneth Starr veered so far from his original purpose, it looked like he was 'hunting'.

the idea that we should wait 2 years while Trump's decisions harm actual living people rather than at least trying to hold him accountable, no matter how unlikely the success, seems off-putting to me.

It'd go to trial in the Senate after it easily passed the House, it isn't like it'd be over in 5 minutes with a Nelson "ha-ha!" laugh.

thank you for making "i guess, whatever" an option

democracy is a sham, who cares about another fucking piece of political theater

I've always liked Derrida's notion that, for all its flaws, democracy is always yet to come because it is perfectible, which can't really be said for other systems of government.

We should of course impeach the fascist president who committed—at the very least—federal campaign finance violations. What kind of precedent does it set to not start proceedings after all the pain he’s caused?

Pence is a secondary concern, you deal with that when it comes up. The principle has to be that a person like Trump can’t use our system of government as a toy.

the perfectibility of democracy is one of its greatest flaws imo, it leads those committed to the ideology to mentally swap out the reality for the idealized form. it encourages delusion.

for the record "what kind of precedent does it set?" is pretty much the exact argument people used to _oppose_ nixon's impeachment

the "precedent" argument is inextricable from political theater. political theater will always be necessary and i'm not arguing against it, only that i'm not personally invested in what sort of puppet shows the plutocrats put on but in the underlying reality it's increasingly poorly masking.

There is even more delusion involved in dictatorships, for example, if only as a coping mechanism.

xp

yeah you make a good point. i frankly don't understand most of derrida, but is the idea that most forms of government present themselves as already perfect, divinely ordained, and the strength of democracy is that it isn't? it's an interesting argument but i've never known a form of democracy that didn't present itself as already perfect and divinely ordained.

If the Republican senate wasn't brainwashed into following his every whim I would think it was inevitable and necessary to impeach an active criminal in the White House. Not sure if that is giving them anywhere near enough accountability for their own actions but can't really see what's in it for them in the long run otherwise.

Am hoping this is a last conservative stand before inevitable diversity increase. & i can't see how it can be sustained in their favour.

Would love to see this guy stripped of all power and having to face up to the results of his own actions.
But until you can get that Senate majority it might just backfire and lead to a further 4 years of continual nightmare and this time with him feeling even more confident in whatever whim being followed.
Hoping for a return to sanity and the current incumbency going down in history as a warning, not a guideline for what can be got away with if you just tidy it up a little.

I don’t know what the outcome of impeaching him and having him not convicted in the senate would be. That way of thinking seems too consequentialist though—if he committed crimes he shouldn’t have his office, it’s the right thing to do.

stevolende, it's not a matter of "return to a senate majority" - impeachment requires a _supermajority_ the sort of which would require at least some senate republicans to abandon the president. impeachment at this point would not be aimed at a conviction, but it would be a sort of public show trial aimed at breaking the wall of inflexible and dogmatic support for the president (about, as best as we can estimate, 40% of the american people). if republican support for the president diminishes to the point where voting for removal _isn't_ a threat to the electoral prospects of republican senators, they will flip on him, as they obviously have no moral principles or backbone whatsoever. this could work or it could not - nothing that's been tried to this point, obviously, has had any lasting effect.

my personal belief is that the idea we can "return to normalcy" from this point is a liberal fantasy and that globalist capitalist democracy is essentially finished, though i guess anything's possible. i'm mostly waiting it out to see what comes next.

is the idea that most forms of government present themselves as already perfect, divinely ordained, and the strength of democracy is that it isn't?

Yeah, that's how I interpret it. 'Perfectible' implies that it's never quite perfect, i.e. it's always in the process of seeking perfection, whereas autocraties claim to have achieved it already. You're right, though, that democracy is often taken, in the Western collective unconscious, to be definitive in and of itself, but this line of argumentation is perhaps a trick used by reactionary forces – they deliberately conflate the status quo with democracy, as though it were impossible to change the former while preserving the latter. Sorry if this comes across as muddled – it's not a topic I'm too familiar with.

You think this idiot destroyed global capitalist democracy?

More like a marker along the road of it's decay

Tho I suspect it's more like a balloon that will inflate and deflate many times, possibly with a burst at the end

Yeah, that makes more sense

re. Derrida, i always linked his thinking on democracy to benjamin’s and the concept of “weak messianism.” The concept holds open a promise that will never be delivered, always deferred, but its being-open is the condition of possibility of progressive change.

I've come to think of the specific government programmes/manifestos of left or "progressive" parties needing to be like this: acknowledging fluidity and progress and always open to further demands/further movement towards economic and social democracy - in fact those demands should always be advancing

Like, the state can't be "fixed" in any sense, and to want to do that is inherently conservative small c

Definitely, treesh, Benjamin is a touchstone here – Derrida explicitly discusses weak messianism in Spectres of Marx.

You bet he does

Impeach him. I don't care if the Senate doesn't convict. A failure to convict will not lead to a sudden explosion in his popularity.

Like, the state can't be "fixed" in any sense, and to want to do that is inherently conservative small c

― have you ever seen a VONC's tears? (Noodle Vague)

yes, but any notion of "progress" must also account for the demands of the people, which are very often small-c conservative. the only way to bring about lasting progressive change is often through duplicity - for instance the augustan project of revolutionary governmental change under the pretense of "restoration". there is no reason for any radical to _not_ cast themselves instead as a "restorer".

^

Sorry meant to one up soto not you

Idk rush, duplicity and strategic compromise haven’t served the left well. It’s put them in a reactive position a lot of the tiem, responding to the new reality the right creates. I like the sanders approach of somewhat naively just laying out the policies that he thinks are better, overton window be damned. It’s worked too—nj just passed a $15 minimum wage

My feeling is that impeachment would have the effect of taking the spotlight off Trump himself and on to the proceedings instead. This would make it harder for him to muddle and confuse. I think if Americans had what we already know stitched together for them without distractions, Trump would be even less popular.

And if the Senate doesn't convict in the face of the evidence -- which will surely include things we don't yet know -- that will be a millstone for those senators and the Republican party.

I'm not a big fan of trying to "outsmart" the electorate either rush but I feel like I'm derailing this thread so I'll maybe pick at this another time somewhere else

I think Trump is already a 2020 millstone. The question is whether he can take any GOP senators down with him.

(Or maybe he'll win and they'll make gains!)

I mean saying "don't impeach him, it won't work and could backfire" just gives the Prez carte blanche to keep breaking the law. If the Repubs were actually holding the fucker accountable, then it would be better to slow down the pace of proceedings. But they aren't and never will.

I don’t think you can predict the effect it will have. But it’s still the right thing.

Yea i mean that's the reason to do it too! Tired of every act having to be measured by what it might mean 2 months from now. All that leads to is capitulation.

The upside of the way he runs things and the state of the country as a whole is that when every day brings a new disaster, time becomes meaningless. No one remember what he did a week ago, let alone a month ago, let alone a year ago. There is no downside to going at him hard, because if anything it slows the clock down and forces him to take some damage. He's like a shark who must keep swimming forward, and if he stops he dies.

We're still at the investigation phase, largely because the last Congress refused to do a proper job of it and Mueller's investigation continues to be a black box except when he drops an indictment here or there. When a coherent, evidence-based and properly corroborated narrative is constructed and out in the open, then it will be time to draw up suitable articles of impeachment for the House to debate and the public to consider. This stuff is serious business and you need a strong scaffolding if you're going to hang a president.

I mean saying "don't impeach him, it won't work and could backfire" just gives the Prez carte blanche to keep breaking the law. If the Repubs were actually holding the fucker accountable, then it would be better to slow down the pace of proceedings. But they aren't and never will.

― fuck the NRA (Neanderthal)

yeah thinking about it the "don't impeach" argument just doesn't hold water. all of these theoretical political considerations are secondary, america's potential future status as a 'failed state' is secondary. there is ample evidence that the president is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors for the house to impeach, sufficient evidence that failure to impeach would in fact constitute dereliction of a professional duty. it might not work, it might backfire, but none of that means that impeachment is a bad idea or that it shouldn't be done.

oh, to clarify, i wasn't arguing for kissinger-style realpolitik, more that "restoration" is just as much a utopian myth as the progressive utopia, and that an effective politician will appeal to both instincts. we're very far from the place where progress can come about by saying "fuck america, we can come up with something better than that".

read anything about Mike Pence and his views on lgbt people and record wrt them and Trump being impeached seems a lot less exciting

As I've pointed out before, if articles of impeachment against Trump were not merely referred to the Senate, but he was successfully removed from office as a result, then the political damage inflicted upon the Republicans would be sufficient to prevent Pence from accomplishing much of his agenda. He'd be a lame duck from day one.

Also it’s not like trump is serving as a liberal voice of reason in the administration.

here's the case that i can see for leaving trump in place: as bad as he is he is equally incompetent at executing his vision. it could be suffering through him two more years will be preferable to putting someone more competent in charge. he seems unable to work within the gov apparatus to effectively promote his agenda. he gets into fights with his subordinates, inspires resistances and undermining of his authority, doesn't fully understand the mechanics of the apparatus he seeks to control -- like i'm not even sure he could start a new war if he wanted one. (nb he could still be a rubber stamp on a military that wanted a particular war but so many were.) this is an [overly] optimistic analysis i admit - it assumes he won't be able to do real serious lasting damage before 2020 because of these deficiencies, and that his failure to effectively run the country won't lead to an exceptional catastrophe either. otoh all this suggests is that you'd rather have trump in office for two more years than two more years of gwb or of cruz or pence or even rubio any of these psychos who have the will and the means to destroy the world not just the will.

if charges emerge against trump that are serious enough to result in his conviction by the full Senate, then not moving forward with impeachment because of the kind of calculations put forward in mordy's post would be both morally wrong, but a profound political misjudgment.

the usual trump v. pence arguments all seem to rest on the idea that a successful impeachment or forced resignation would rest on somewhat ambiguous grounds that would leave the country much as it was prior to trump leaving office. it would not be like that. it would be a political earthquake of the highest magnitude and leave everything in government badly shaken up.

Impeaching Trump = Raise the chance of another republican president in the 2020 election

i think it's at least plausible that president pence post-trump impeachment could more easily start a war than president trump pre-impeachment even taking into account your contention that the gov would be in upheaval presumably some of our well-funded institutions like the military would be coherent and able to act.

Unlike the Gingrich impeachment move, which was motivated mainly to appease the rabid republican base, I'd predict the Democrats under Pelosi will only refer articles of impeachment against Trump to the Senate if they're being pushed to it by a much larger percentage of the electorate, in a range well above 60% in favor of impeachment. If that were true, then the chances of a Republican president in 2020 would be pretty dim.

president pence post-trump impeachment could more easily start a war than president trump pre-impeachment

imo, an unelected president from a thoroughly discredited administration would require a damned strong causus belli to bring the nation into a major war. how easily a "pre-impeachment Trump" could drag us into a war would partly depend on which stage of the process is being defined as "pre-impeachment". if serious criminal charges backed by sufficient credible evidence are already known to and widely accepted by the public, that's much different than our present state of affairs.

No, it's useless, it won't get rid of the people who voted/supported/enabled this.

Cool, the pro-gun debate strategy

Trump is incompetent at anything but playing the media. Pence does not have that skill. I'll take Pence. Who, by the way, can probably also be impeached by rights.

And as of 3 weeks ago, we were at 40% for impeachment. But just as support for the wall has increased since the shutdown, so will impeachment support once the trial has begun.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

if there is evidence of impeachable things, he should be impeached.

emoluments seems like a slamdunk to me but only in my nonlegal ignorance

I do think every future Dem president (if there are any) will be impeached as a result

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Pelosi gave a solid no today

the dream is over

"It divides the nation." erm...

things can always get more divided

and they will

Crowded House thread is elsewhere

hey now

trying to catch the deluge in a paper cup

I never really understood how it was possible to successfully impeach in the first place

only 20 months till he can be voted out anyway. Seems a more reliable method of removal (though at this point I've lost all track of what is up and what is down)

As I get older & lose faith in the world, I wouldn't be surprised if he gets re-elected.

Pareene: "Democrats who preemptively declare impeachment off the table are mistakenly (or intentionally) conflating one possible end result of the impeachment process for the process itself."

https://newrepublic.com/article/153629/democrats-hoping-dont-understand-impeachment-entails

https://crooked.com/articles/democrats-impeachment-mueller/

...House intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff, who among Democrats has the best handle on the details of the Russia scandal, nevertheless echoed Hoyer Thursday saying he learned as a prosecutor, “you don’t bring a case if you don’t think you’re going to be successful just to try the case,” and thus “barring a bipartisan consensus” impeachment should be off the table. This argument has been an inducement to Republican lawlessness since Schiff first offered it last year, and it is fatally misguided. It presupposes that if press releases and headline writers don’t move public opinion on their own, then all options are exhausted. That if Republicans refuse to support the impeachment of a president who needs to be impeached, Democrats are out of options and must throw up their hands.

In reality, the job of persuading the public that the president needs to be impeached falls to the leaders of the House of Representatives themselves. Unlike prosecutors, they don’t infringe on anyone’s liberties by trying a case they think they might lose. Unlike prosecutors, their decision to decline warranted charges can create lasting precedents and perverse incentives. Unlike prosecutors, their trials aren’t zero-sum affairs, because trying a case well and losing can have salutary benefits for their party and the country. Going down swinging can be good politics, and set important precedents. Unlike prosecutors they can’t select their jurors, but also unlike prosecutors, they are not discouraged from trying the case in public. To the contrary, it is their obligation. And if the Mueller report makes one thing clear it’s that if Democrats fail to meet that obligation, Trump won’t be chastened—to the contrary, he will be more emboldened in his abuses of power, and the country will be in even greater danger.

Yes Adam, cases as a prosecutor and Congressional Impeachment work exactly the same way.

Look, can we all just agree that when another irredeemable piece of shit inevitably decides to follow Trump's wildly successful 'President Supervillain' template, we will discuss with an even greater degree of seriousness all of the reasons why we cannot and should not impeach him/her? That's all I want, really. Grave pronouncements, thoughts, prayers.

thoughts and prayers is what they do best

Just like Daddy Mueller, there is no Congress Ex Machina to save us. Give it up. Hasn't anyone read any Pynchon? The machine always wins. Gotta beat him in 2020.

If my non-voting rep fails to impeach this bastard, I will flail about in the most impassioned manner possible to recruit and elect an alternative candidate in the next race.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqbEsS5kFb8

the theme song for this and every day

let's get on with this shit already !

someone draft the papers and get them over to Nancy ASAP

https://www.theroot.com/waiting-is-for-white-people-the-privilege-of-not-impea-1834244059

The now officially documented fact that his subordinates regularly refuse to carry out his orders mean we don’t really have a functioning executive. No one voted for these aides. Isn’g that a reason to impeach?

Reason 853 but still

what is this fucking fear of backfiring or political misstep shit ? Like what they are going to make some imaginary fence sitting assholes vote Trump again if impeachment fails? fuck'em who cares ? if we are counting on those dipshits then we are fucked anyways.

"the more you say he's unfit to lead, the more i wanna vote for him."

“Everyone says he’s dumb and unfit to lead - the same things they say about me and my friends! That’s why I’m voting trump”

what is this fucking fear of backfiring or political misstep shit

like it or not, impeachment is a deeply, intensely political process and only minimally and peripherally a vehicle for delivering 'justice'. it was designed that way. it cannot be any other way. and if you examine your feelings, I think you'll find your vehemence is almost certainly born of your intensely felt political beliefs and desires, not some abstract desire for truth and calm reasoning about the functioning of the executive branch.

what's weird to me is that anti-impeachment Dems seem to be unafraid of the more likely 'backfiring' scenario: Trump gets reelected in 2020 at which point impeaching him would be basically impossible.

impeachment is a deeply, intensely political process

this seems a perfectly valid reason to pursue it

I mean it's *all* a deeply, intensely political processs, what is the advantage to pretending otherwise when your opponent is going there whether you like it or not

what's weird to me is that anti-impeachment Dems seem to be unafraid of the more likely 'backfiring' scenario: Trump gets reelected in 2020 at which point impeaching him would be basically impossible.

heh, yeah, reminds me of that lovely time when a lot of people (including me, for a while) were hoping trump would win the 2016 GOP nomination because he would be so much easier to defeat in the election than establishment faves jeb! or the moral beacon ted cruz

Even if they dont move immediately into impeachment, they need to get way more aggressive ASAP. Their oversight is being challenged at every step and they are doing little to hit back.

yeah putting the president on trial is not going to *gain* him any votes, his base will be sufficiently demagogued into turning out no matter what congress does

i think Trump is really cornered and isolated this time for certain

this seems a perfectly valid reason to pursue it

not quite. it is perfectly valid reason to analyze the likely political consequences, and if your analysis is on balance neutral-to-favorable, that is when you pursue it. politics sometimes honors noble failures, but it punishes them just the same.

well of course I don't mean politics for the sake of politics. I mean impeachment has political advantages above and apart from "justice"

how is it not a good political move to get every single Republican Congressman on the record saying "I support this traitorous criminal idiot. I think he rocks, actually."

it is a good political move

Democratic politicians like to imagine there's a significant portion of the electorate that's turned off by any action not done in the spirit of bipartisan hand holding

Trump's behaviour just seems to be getting even worse daily despite theissue of this being brought up and presumably being prevalent at least as a pursuable possibility.
I'm hearing that there is inevitably going to be a period of further investigation since taht's what hearings would amount to so starting the process seems to be necessary.

But on the other hand some possibility of him being reelected would only mean he would feel absolutely justified in any further action he took. Just hoping also that any further exposure of his crimes might make that reelection unlikely.
& at what point doe she cease to be a useful asset because he's shown himself up so badly. Would think that even Putin might pull the plug once he'd outlived usefullness. So he'd be alone trying to get reelected and only have a dimished GOP supporting him.

on the record saying "I support this traitorous criminal idiot. I think he rocks, actually."

Good luck with that. What they will say irl is how "troubled" they were, but that the evidence blah blah blah. Do you honestly believe these people got where they are not knowing how to spin their vote to match the leanings of their constituency?

Voting to impeach and to convict is GREAT politics for winning your vote, because you already are sold on Trump being a "traitorous criminal idiot". But in order for the politics to align with you, a majority of voters need to be sold on that conviction. If they aren't, then going gung-ho, all-in for impeachment is playing with fire, politically. Like I said, a noble failure still fails and will be punished, not rewarded, leaving you worse off, not better.

HRC has spoken! "caution"

and she's an expert

this is a politics thread morbs

Morbs, we all know caution is not in your emotional vocabulary.

Morbs you made it, like, three days

that was a driveby

It was a voluntary, impromptu, and self-imposed restriction, so there was never a reason to think it would last any longer than the reaction that prompted it.

join me in the Tootsie thread

I am boycotting all the Dabney Coleman theads

a strange game

at some point enough is enough

let's all talk about Santino Fontana in here now that Morbs is gone

a strange game

― difficult listening hour, Wednesday, April 24, 2019 12:02 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao

Investigative hearings should proceed, so that there is a constant dribble of damning news on Trump. I'd prefer that it focus on the violations of the emoluments clause, as I think corruption will hit much harder with the electorate than

I would much rather see the Democratic caucus pass sweeping Medicare for all and climate legislation, and have this be the central theme of the remainder of this Congress. Give the Democratic presidential and Senate candidates something to run on.

^ corruption will hit much harder with the electorate than the clear obstruction of justice in the Russia investigation.

are we discussing impeachment in the Tootsie thread or

So its back again?

I don't understand how this is supposed to go anywhere

it is a moral and legal imperative

and you know, I wd've impeached every fucking president ive lived through

I can see the rationale if the purpose is gumming up the works, but otherwise I don't get where this is supposed to end up

and if there was any seriousness to impeachment why not just do it on emoluments instead

too complex to sell to the moronic public

as this may be

it's to force a drumbeat of bad news about trump for months in the run-up to the election

it's to force republicans to defend him and shrink their base to only die-hard trumpers in the run-up to the election

it's to actually discover evidence of criminal activity and hold criminals to account

it's to finish mueller's job

p sure there are some other good reasons too

and you know, I wd've impeached every fucking president ive lived through

as well you should have because they are all war criminals

You know who wouldn't handwring and have internal debates for months and months over whether to impeach? Republicans. And yet somehow "the American public" doesn't hold their "partisan witch hunts" against them.

What are its chances in the senate?

Why this over emoluments?

"they're going after him for the exact same thing Hillary did"

I don't get where this is supposed to end up

the president of the united states is a criminal who leverages his office to enrich himself and go after his political enemies. he effectively got away with this in the 2016 election and is now doing it again, in plain view, even admitting to it on live TV. forget the political calculations for a minute - you impeach because it's objectively the right thing to do.

very fine reasons on both sides

you impeach because it's objectively the right thing to do.

Will he be removed from office? How likely, scale of 1-10

Will Clinton be removed from office? Prob not so hey let's just forget the whole thing

Well if he's not going to be removed from office then we have to ask what the purpose is? (if its to gum up the works I'm fine with that, but otherwise what is the actual goal here?).

And also if the goal really is to remove him from office, is this Ukraine thing the most reliable thing to get him on?

probably about a 2? again, the idea isn't so much removing him from an office (because we live with a stupidly broken political system) as it is exposing all his crimes, keeping his hands tied, and forcing every elected official to either vote for removal or endorse the corruption

it's to emphasize HE'S A CROOK for the next year, wtf is so difficult?

anvil - succeeding in removing him from office via the actual mechanism of impeachment is very unlikely - and so far down the list of reasons to impeach i didn't bother mentioning

do you think the other reasons aren't good reasons?

If he's impeached, it fails, his base is energized further and he gets re-elected - this seems a reasonably likely scenario? Would want at least some expectation of success before heading down this road - so seesms reasonable to ask "will this actually work?"

it's to emphasize HE'S A CROOK for the next year, wtf is so difficult?

a failed impeachment doesn't specifically emphasize this

Not impeaching looks like tacit approval or acceptance that this is normal now.

what I also want to see from impeachment is Republican senators having to stake their careers on the Trump project even further than they already have

More than anything in the near term, I hope this ruins Biden's run for nominee.

In the long view, good for them. You want to sort of try and make the office of president a little bit unattractive to supervillains? Let's go back to the days these guys had a little finesse, you know?

Does it make it harder or easier to credibly impeach again if (when) he commits a more serious crime, god forbid he wins a second term?

Would want at least some expectation of success before heading down this road - so seesms reasonable to ask "will this actually work?"

Who would

that's a risk that has to be taken imo

from the start, the message will be: trump's friends enabled him then, and they're covering up for him now. a failure to convict in the senate will prove their corruption. i wouldn't be surprised if articles of impeachment actually pass the house after all the creepy crawlies come out.

if the impeachment fails it will visibly, publicly, fail because the system is visibly, publicly, corrupt and will not exonerate Trump in the minds of anybody beyond his existing faithful.

So then isn't emoluments a much safer vehicle? This seems flimsy and destined for failure

If he's impeached, it fails, his base is energized further and he gets re-elected - this seems a reasonably likely scenario?

Nope. He was only elected in the first place due to a fluke - 70,000 votes in three states, at least one of which he's currently underwater in. His "base" is ~40% of the voting public. The other 60% are firmly aligned against him. No matter how "energized" they get or how much spittle they spray, they're not the majority of voters and they never will be. And if you demoralize a significant enough portion of them by repeatedly saying "Your guy is a crook and a loser and he's going down," it has an effect. See, a lot of them aren't actually fueled by hate. They're fueled by a burning desire to be on the winning team. If you paint Trump with the stench of loser-dom long enough and emphatically enough, a sizable chunk of his base - 10%, say - will peel away and say, "Fuck this loser," and even if they don't vote Democratic, they'll simply not vote, which will tank him.

his base is energized further and he gets re-elected

ah yes, his enormous base

ah yes, his enormous base

dont need enormity when you got gerrymandering

well if gerrymandering's gonna secure a trump win then that doesn't seem to have any fuckin thing to do with trying to impeach him

You think failing to be impeached will increase his vote? xp

Can you believe this whining little bitch still commands the respect of 30% of Americans? https://t.co/4YtLPIGEUi

— Roy Edroso (@edroso) September 25, 2019

well if gerrymandering's gonna secure a trump win then that doesn't seem to have any fuckin thing to do with trying to impeach him

― american bradass (BradNelson),

its not going to secure a win! But it does help to have it on your side, fine margins and all that

"they're going after him for the exact same thing Hillary did"

― anvil, Wednesday, September 25, 2019 7:19 AM (twenty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'd been wondering just how long it was going to take for this extremely incorrect take to start popping up.

If he's impeached, it fails, his base is energized further and he gets re-elected - this seems a reasonably likely scenario? Would want at least some expectation of success before heading down this road - so seesms reasonable to ask "will this actually work?"

Trump's base is already energized. He feeds them red meat all the time. If he's not aggrieved about this, it'll be something else. Kavanaugh, Russia, that one WaPo story showing empty seats during a campaign rally, etc. etc. Impeachment will also energize the Dem base, who have lately been disappointed in their party's inability to do anything whatsoever about the president's unchecked crime spree. As mentioned in this thread, continuing to do nothing is an implicit approval of his behavior. If they don't impeach it's easy for Trump/GOP to just say "if you thought this was so serious, why didn't you do anything about it then?"

Anyone foresee a considerably higher voter turnout in 2020?

(I'm lurking here from Canada)

So then isn't emoluments a much safer vehicle? This seems flimsy and destined for failure

I don't think they have to tie it explicitly to the Ukraine thing. from what I've read the Dems have a long list of impeachable offenses so even if this winds up being nothing they've got a lot to fall back on

I lean towards thinking impeachment is worthwhile and should have been done a lot earlier but, in this case, my concern would be less about motivating Trump's base than demotivating everyone else. The worst case scenario imo would be Trump surviving and everyone thinking he's corrupt but enough mud to be thrown at Biden (and by extension the Democrats spun as protecting him) that it depresses the turnout enough to make another fluke result more likely. Hopefully that won't be successful, though - and hopefully the Dem nominee will be seen as enough of a clean break to render that line of attack useless.

dont need enormity when you got gerrymandering

― anvil, Wednesday, September 25, 2019 8:39 AM bookmarkflaglink

Wtf does gerrymandering have to do with the Presidential election? Only states that aren't winner take all are Nebraska and Maine. Every other state determines it's winner by popular vote.

Gerrymandering affects House elections only.

Anyone foresee a considerably higher voter turnout in 2020?

Turnout was pretty high in 2016. I think it could be higher in 2020 but it also seems likely that some of the Republicans who just wanted to "give him a shot" or cast strictly anti-Hillary votes in '16 are gonna sit this one out. One thing that's gone a bit understated here is just how sick people here are of this guy. He might be the most suffocating American personality to ever exist.

I'm voting to impeach

Wtf does gerrymandering have to do with the Presidential election?

the electoral collage is a nationwide form of gerrymandering. Trump lost by 3,000,000 votes and still won the presidency.

The worst case scenario imo would be Trump surviving and everyone thinking he's corrupt but enough mud to be thrown at Biden

if this happens Biden probably won't be the nominee. he's already starting to get overtaken by Warren.

I lean towards thinking impeachment is worthwhile and should have been done a lot earlier but, in this case, my concern would be less about motivating Trump's base than demotivating everyone else. The worst case scenario imo would be Trump surviving and everyone thinking he's corrupt but enough mud to be thrown at Biden (and by extension the Democrats spun as protecting him) that it depresses the turnout enough to make another fluke result more likely.

Basically thats more or less my take. If you're going to impeach do it early or stfu. I'm not anti-impeachment per se! Just like, it needs to be clearer what the point is, what the end goal is

Emoluments was always there, and tying it to something specific IS a much better route than this grab bag of different things which boil down to "trump is a bad man"

Biden isn't going to last the primaries surely, he's shot

2016 turnout was 55.5% if I'm reading right, between the numbers for 2008 and 2012.

I keep seeing this argument: "If the House impeaches Trump and the Senate refuses to convict, as expected, the Dem base could be deflated."

My counter-argument, which I'm not seeing in any major media: "If the House impeaches Trump and the Senate refuses to convict, as expected, the Dem base will be enraged."

The mass media is intent on portraying Democratic voters as a bunch of weaklings who will cry and trudge despondently home. (Except when they're violent antifa maniacs out to burn America to the ground, of course.) But I don't think it's gonna work that way.

If he's impeached, it fails, his base is energized further and he gets re-elected - this seems a reasonably likely scenario?

No.

you're not wrong but don't underestimate Trump & the GOP's ability to absolutely own the media narrative and shut down any legit investigation into their own. I don't see how "emoluments" would necessarily go any further.

besides, the Ukraine thing seems significant since it's basically a repeat of the Russia thing, which was Trump's biggest and longest lasting scandal so far, a scandal which the majority of the country thinks he got off way too easily on. you can't claim "well maybe he didn't know you couldn't do that" anymore.

It’s really up to the Democrats how this gets spun. It needs to be about the Republican Senate protecting an obviously criminal president due to moral cowardice, not about the case not having legs or whatever the consensus on the Mueller report ended up being.

xp

Yeah, I imagine impeaching him will be the proxy version of taking back the house. On to the next step, etc.

I'm starting to think all the delaying was mostly due to Pelosi et al. madly scrambling to read all the instruction books about impeachment. Really, how many experts can there be? It really doesn't happen that often.

the electoral collage is a nationwide form of gerrymandering. Trump lost by 3,000,000 votes and still won the presidency.

Not really. The electoral college is stupid and gives disproportionate weight to small states, but that isn't gerrymandering, which involves one party manipulating boundaries for electoral advantage.

And Trump's victory largely came on the coattails of Comey's October surprise combined with depressed turnout, so I don't follow anvil's point.

I think she knows procedural stuff tbh. I think it was about not timing it too closely with the Mueller report bc, damning as it was, it wasn’t as damning as most hoped it would be.

xp

Ok, so I think the consensus answer is more or less - its best to do this without expectation of success, because that isn't the primary purpose, the bigger picture is that it helps Democrats in 2020 regardless?

I can understand that

how come no one EVER envisions the Dem base being energized? as it almost never is bcz they don't do shit for people.

Energize ME, the last Dem I voted for in the general was Mondale.

The inquiry expanda their subpoena powers, no? Maybe they’ll get their hands on some really good shit and the Senate will be forced to convict.

Want an energized base, hire a populist

Also, doing nothing to him for nine months has emboldened this child. I don't want the next president to think soliciting foreign sources to help his election and profiting from his hotels is okeedokee. That's MY reason for supporting impeachment, and if the House does so, it'll energize every lib I know.

It’s really up to the Democrats how this gets spun. It needs to be about the Republican Senate protecting an obviously criminal president due to moral cowardice, not about the case not having legs or whatever the consensus on the Mueller report ended up being.

you'd hope. but the GOP generally are the ones who get to control the media narrative. I'm already seeing a bunch of MSM coverage referring to this as a "Biden scandal" which is....yeah

Not really. The electoral college is stupid and gives disproportionate weight to small states, but that isn't gerrymandering, which involves one party manipulating boundaries for electoral advantage.

true. but it's the same idea. the GOP cannot survive in its current form without a system that hands them power with a minority of votes.

Maybe they’ll get their hands on some really good shit and the Senate will be forced to convict.

Same old fanfic as before, eh?

and I don't wanna fucking see comparisons to Bill Clinton, whose approval rate hovered near 60 percent and wasn't up for reelection.

btw, another upside to impeaching: Trump is absolutely going to do more illegal shit in the wake of all this, just like he did with the Russia thing

More importantly, if I were Netflix I would give the Ukrainian president a stand-up special asap.

It’s really up to the Democrats how this gets spun. It needs to be about the Republican Senate protecting an obviously criminal president due to moral cowardice, not about the case not having legs or whatever the consensus on the Mueller report ended up being.

you'd hope. but the GOP generally are the ones who get to control the media narrative. I'm already seeing a bunch of MSM coverage referring to this as a "Biden scandal" which is....yeah

― frogbs, Wednesday, September 25, 2019 9:03 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

unfortunately this is what I expect as well. it always bears keeping in mind that even wrt to the likes of CNN, MSNBC, the Times, the shareholders, the higher-ups, they absolutely want Trump to remain president as long as possible. he's good for ratings and he makes them money.

Right. He’s like 9/11 every day.

Fortunately, even if this gets successfully spun as a "Biden scandal," there are approximately 100 other Dem candidates, some of whom are doing about as well as Biden and many of whom have a very good chance of beating Trump.

9/11 Every Day would be an excellent Trump campaign slogan.

yeah I remember all the post-election analysis showing that every major news network/publication (even the ones you think of as "liberal-leaning") dedicated 3x-4x more time to the Clinton email scandal than anything else. they showed empty podiums that Trump was due to speak at over Clinton's policy speeches. they are absolutely complicit.

I haven't heard #BidenScandal yet on any network -- their reporters and commentators have gone out of their way to stress H. Biden's innocence, unlike during the, say, BUT HER EMAILS nonsense -- but tbf I don't watch CNN.

don't forget the way they passed Barr's summary of the Mueller report as fact and even wrote several "Trump vindicated" headlines before they even read the thing

tb minimally fair, I want to say before the Barr memo he hadn't tipped his hand yet as totally in the tank for Trump.

lol I'm already starting to see polls claiming weak public support for impeachment or whatever. gtfo with polls.

support for impeaching Nixon was even lower at this point. like 17%

anyway gonna be interesting to see how the media reports on the transcript released today, which is only a small piece of the whistleblower complaint and will likely be heavily edited by the WH. we'll see if they learned anything.

I don't understand how this is supposed to go anywhere

― anvil

if by "this" you mean "capitalist democracy" i agree with you, unfortunately it seems like we're stuck with it for now

impeach, the president is a treasonous crook, i don't give a fuck about your "opinions"

It’s so weird to me that impeachment isn’t popular, even among non-Trump supporters. Don’t people want to be delivered from this horrorshow?

As far as I can tell, this "transcript" is nothing of the sort. If it's a transcript, there's a recording, but it's doubtful there is a recording (at least not on the US end). It's gotta be just notes or a summary again or something. And yet ... the whistleblower based their complaint on *something(s)*, so I'm more curious about that.

This is actually a reasonable question. The White House should formally clarify right away whether 1) any recordings of this call exist and 2) if it has authorized/requested that the government of Ukraine provide a tape if they have one. https://t.co/GxloSd9zOs

— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) September 25, 2019

Don’t people want to be delivered from this horrorshow?

― treeship.,

I want him gone ASAP. If this is the best way to deliver it, lets get on it. Otherwise, no point

continuing to do nothing is an implicit approval of his behavior.

this can't be repeated enough, jfc some of you are so goddamn stupid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hNr8WpVYI0

there are plenty of points, some of which you’ve acknowledged

Again, we don't even need the "transcript" because the president already admitted to what he did after lying about it.

At this point, given what we know, impeachment is both a professional duty and a moral imperative. Anybody who will not vote to impeach is both professionally incompetent and morally unfit to hold office.

so will we have two threads for this now

for now yes, but more are surely on their way

I Love Impeachment should be it's own board. Mods, it is your professional duty and moral imperative.

If this is the best way to deliver it, lets get on it. Otherwise, no point

So you only want Trump ousted in the best way and no other way? Great, let's bog down to paralysis for a few more months trying to determine the "best way." Meanwhile, I vote for "every way possible."

There is no option but to do it. No one can predict how it will go or what impact it will have on the election. But at some point they just have to have integrity and do it.

Like we need to stop gaming this out like we actually have the ability to figure out for certain how to deal with him. If there is a legit basis to impeach they should pursue it. If there isn’t then they should drop it. Period.

and the just-released transcript is even more delicious than we'd hoped

So you only want Trump ousted in the best way and no other way?

I want him ousted in a way that works. but not in a way that doesn't work

I'm not actually anti-impeachment, its completely fine as a tactical exercise if the end goal isn't actually removal

ousted in a way that doesn't work?

A view I don't nec agree with

It’s going to hurt Bernie and elevate Warren. This isn’t his turf. No fast food workers, teachers, or people with crushing medical bills will be at all those hearings or the trial. They will be disappeared. It’s 24/7 TV impeachment drama time now and that’s Harvard Law prof turf.

— Dan Kervick (@DanMKervick) September 24, 2019

Pretty sure there will be fast food workers on hand at a Trump hearing.

Lol the media pretty much erases Bernie and all of those people no matter what.

I dont think the people with crushing medical bills will forget about themselves that easily, even if NBC forgets about them

Pretty sure there will be fast food workers on hand at a Trump hearing.

Definitely fast food eaters.

ousted in a way that doesn't work?

― nashwan,

exactly, if its going to work, we should do it! But i guess there's no harm in doing it regardless if we're realistic about the outcome

I am hoping this Ukraine bungle was just the slip that starts the avalanche. It is a cinch that once the House committees draw up articles of impeachment, there will be a very long list of them. It is in their interests to load the shotgun with as many buckshot as possible, which will force the Senate to vote individually on each article. I don't think McConnell would be brazen enough to not bring the articles to a floor vote.

I don't think McConnell would be brazen enough to not bring the articles to a floor vote.

boy i sure do

i'm pretty sure he would burn the building down first.

he said that sabotaging the merrick garland nomination was his proudest moment in politics. i'm sure he'd be even more proud to sabotage an impeachment vote

when mitch mcconnell was young he took all of his shame and put in a giant suitcase, and hit it under a bed. then he found a bunch of small children who were democrats and locked them in the room, and burned the entire building down

Calls have grown for House Democrats to move forward with impeachment proceedings against President Trump, leading to sharp divisions within the party and the American public. The Onion looks at the pros and cons of impeaching the president. https://t.co/IEqFBD3a36 pic.twitter.com/Bm66797TyR

— The Onion (@TheOnion) September 25, 2019

I Love Impeachment should be it's own board. Mods, it is your professional duty and moral imperative.

― ☮ (peace, man)

it is no such thing

"I'm not actually anti-impeachment, its completely fine as a tactical exercise if the end goal isn't actually removal

― anvil"

can't you just take up warhammer 40k as a hobby or something, christ

it is no such thing

It absolutely is the duty of all the paid mods on this site to collaboratively generate and launch said board. They are profoundly derelict if this has not happened by COB GMT, and should be stricken of their performance bonuses.

there are paid mods on this site? damn. i feel sorry for anybody who's an internet moderator for money, that sounds like a really shit job

i don't speak sarcasm very well these days. could you eli5 the problem with what i said? thanks.

rushomancy, I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I was making fun of you - that's not what my post is about at all. I 100% support the impeachment for exactly the reasons that you laid out! But it is sort of my hobbyhorse these days that I continue to advocate for a separate I Love Politics board. It's almost as much of a thing for me as my belief in the superiority of Weezer's Green album to their Blue one. Definitely wasn't attacking you and again, I'm sorry.

I Love Weezer's Green Album

you are all on drugs

I can't help these feelings.

i can't control my brain

I don't know how to feel about it. A lot of people, myself included, have stopped talking about politics because it doesn't seem like there's a point. What is there to talk about? Do, or do not. My political engagement at this point consists of me going around saying "Hi, I'm trans" to everybody I meet while still presenting as cis. Which has fuck-all to do with impeachment... yes, I've been drinking.

Can anyone here email me the whistleblower report?

I heard it blows.

1/9 For the non-historians out there: I am a historian of US foreign policy who has read more documents like this than I can remember, so a few thoughts on the Trump MemCon.
1) This is not verbatim, as the document states. It is a sort of summary, which is very different.

— Brad Simpson (@bradleyrsimpson) September 25, 2019

you can tell by the pixels

"I'm no treason! You're the treason!"

*Licks lips, shifts eyes*

"No treason!"

GOP people in this hearing notably not defending Trump, kind of going in circles about perceived legal confusion or whatever.

This whole thing is like when you are suddenly added onto a telecon and no one seems to know what you do but they keep asking you the same stupid questions where you have to constantly explain your job.

This might be the first witness I have ever seen, especially under this admin, tell the congressperson that they still have time on the clock.

Rep. Ratcliffe stated that the president was seeking information from Ukraine on an ongoing criminal investigation. Is there a criminal investigation into either Biden or is this just 100% bullshit?

That's precisely the point that MSNBC interrupted yesterday's press conference to dispute (it's bullshit).

anyone still listening to this testimony? maguire refused to say whether he spoke directly with Trump on the whistleblower complaint, citing confidentiality of his conversations with any president. schiff says that he's not limited by that, that he can say whether or not he spoke with trump on the subject without divulging the contents of that conversation. schiff says it's a simple yes/no question that maguire is not legally prohibited from answering. maguire just repeats that he cannot talk about any conversation with trump.

i have no idea what's right. if he did speak directly with trump about it (and maguire already said earlier that he had spoken with trumps "several times" since the whistleblower complaint came out), that seems like yet another fatal blow

So the Republicans in this hearing have pretty much zero questions for Maguire. Seems like a somewhat weak strategy for them.

They are just letting the Democrats run with this. Kinda crazy.

"Is it or is it not untrue that you may or may not be a member or nonmember of what is often referred to as the 'Deep State'?"

GOP mostly running scared, it seems like. My guess is they are waiting to see how this shows up in the polls before making any real moves.

I mean I'm not surprised re: Hurd but other rumblings like from that Ohio rep don't bode well

they got their tax cut, can cut him loose whenever & find their next boss who'll cut taxes more

lol yes that was my thought too

Vermont GOP governor now also publicly in favor of impeachment fwiw (not much)

If they do their calculus and think they can save their own hides while throwing Trump to the wolves, they'll do it. But if they think turning on Trump will doom them at the ballot box, they won't.

I mean, people act like there's some weird cult of TrUmP but like people put "W" stickers on their SUVs before they got bored of the war & the economy died, the GOP cult of personality is a symptom rather than the illness itself

what if they are doomed either way, which is possible?

I mean, yeah, I've thought for a while that there must be republicans who are like 'we got two SC justices, maybe it's time to cut this dumbfuck loose'. You have to imagine that some of these preening sleazebags are capable of imagining a post-Trump landscape that will regard their cheerleading unfavorably if they don't start the damage control ASAP.

I've thought for a while that there must be republicans who are like 'we got two SC justices, maybe it's time to cut this dumbfuck loose'.

I think this is the majority of the GOP in the Senate tbh. (There's more true believer Trumpers like Nunes in the House)

first republican governor (Vermont) just called for Trump to be impeached

yeah, i know, it's Vermont. but still

Hm, I wonder if Larry Hogan (MD) will chime in? He's spoken up against Trump before.

He should be impeached for hinting at the death penalty for Biden and the whistleblower alone.

Look my entire political knowledge here is based on me having read "The Final Days" last year, but this sure looks a lot like what happened when the Smoking Gun tape came out. It's not 1974 though and I fully expect things to go down differently last time, if only because '74 had a Bad End and I refuse to accept that outcome.

still i look to find a treason to believe

that Brad Simpson thread:

Before getting on phone calls like this, both Trump and Zelenskyy will have gotten briefing materials with talking points and what the other party wants to talk about

and Zelenskyy probably read some of his.

I think the Republicans know Trump is the only person who can deliver them the presidency in 2020. maybe I'm wrong but I think it's going to be a long time before the party's base is going to accept some charisma-less dope like Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley (to say nothing of Pence). meanwhile, they don't have another carnival-barker madman waiting in the wings.

Trey Gowdy's got nothing going on ....

They will accept literally anybody who has an (R) after their name. Anyone who says "Guns for all, abortions for none, immigrants bad, God good". Someone milquetoast would have to be better at attracting "independents" and whatnot.

pareene:

A rush to a narrow impeachment strictly on the president’s attempt to coerce or bribe a foreign country into digging up dirt on a domestic political rival might sound strategically sounder than a lengthy and wide-ranging investigation into every other rotten thing the president and his cronies have done. A narrative that is easy to explain seems to be an essential part of a “successful” presidential impeachment (though the sample size is small). But the thing is, I want to know what is up with every other rotten thing the president and his cronies have done more than I want him to be impeached by the House.

https://newrepublic.com/article/155182/impeachment-trump-america-deserves-answers

that's a good piece. Dems need to be honest with themselves that none of this is going to result in Trump actually being removed from office, so why rush through impeachment?

which is also why a single-minded emphasis on Ukraine/Biden is not good strategery

Who wants to rush? We need to stretch this out as long as possible. I want it to take such a painful, devastating toll on him that he looks like Pizza the Hutt by the time the election rolls around.

there are 6 different house committee investigations, under the umbrella of impeachment inquiry, which were ongoing before the ukraine/whistleblower stuff happened, so i don't think they'll focus on just ukraine.

it's been like, what, 48 hours since this shit start bubbling up and he's freaking the fuck out even worse than usual. "Trump Increasingly Isolated" coming from the NYT in 3,2,1...

What about the swing voters (who always swing Republican)?

imho, the phone call notes released by the justice department is looking less and less like a smoking gun.

I watched the whole hearing today and listened to house minority leader, (R) Kevin Mccarthy, defend Trump. He made it seem like asking for dirt on Biden isn't akin to treason because Trump wasn't pressing Zelenskyy for dirt. It was more of an "oh by the way" comment at the end of the phone call (even though he wanted Giuliani and Barr to talk to him about it). If those phone calls were released there might be a smoking gun.

even in the edited summary released by the white house, it is not at all characterized that way. have you read it?

re: the actual recording of the phone call, it is likely that there is a recording on the US side (i doubt it'll come to light), and there is certainly a recording of it from Ukraine. doubt either one of them will be provided, at least until after the 2020 election

it's been like, what, 48 hours since this shit start bubbling up and he's freaking the fuck out even worse than usual

his recent implication that we should execute the whistleblower surprised even me

He was murmuring about joe biden and the electric chair the other day. He’s adopted a more murderous frame of mind recently. I hear he’s increasingly isolated

imho, the phone call notes released by the justice department is looking less and less like a smoking gun.

I watched the whole hearing today and listened to house minority leader, (R) Kevin Mccarthy, defend Trump. He made it seem like asking for dirt on Biden isn't akin to treason because Trump wasn't pressing Zelenskyy for dirt. It was more of an "oh by the way" comment at the end of the phone call (even though he wanted Giuliani and Barr to talk to him about it). If those phone calls were released there might be a smoking gun.

― brain dead operatus (FlopsyDuck),

i mean yeah total cool and legal so no need try and suppress the information from coming out until you had no fucking choice !

i think we should listen to more of what kevin mccarthy has to say, he is definitely someone who says things in good faith. we can trust mccarthy, real good guy

wasn't McCarthy the guy who basically admitted the whole point of Benghazi was to hurt Hillary Clinton

which is also why a single-minded emphasis on Ukraine/Biden is not good strategery

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Thursday, September 26, 2019 1

did you read Jonathan Schell's The Time of Illusion? All kinds of shit emerges no matter how small the focus.

Just like the testimony today. Much of it (too much) was focused on Macguire's decision process (I see the legal bind he was in), but some of it veered toward "Wait, why the fuck was Rudy involved at all? Does he have security clearance?"

I think the Republicans know Trump is the only person who can deliver them the presidency in 2020. maybe I'm wrong but I think it's going to be a long time before the party's base is going to accept some charisma-less dope like Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley (to say nothing of Pence). meanwhile, they don't have another carnival-barker madman waiting in the wings.

― Evans on Hammond (evol j)

oh look the Pivot is coming, these guys are totally unprincipled weasels and at some point it stands to reason they'll just look at 1974 and see how fucking well that worked out for them and work to replicate it. the party's base are just as unprincipled as they are and are permanently amnesiac.

to karl, yes I read the transcript. the actual "do me a favor" line has to do with a missing democratic server (conspiracy theory).

McCarthy is obviously a bad man but lies and spin have protected the president thus far. moving phone calls = protecting them -_-

That's why we need a better smoking gun then just the call notes we have so far. Sadly, there isn't a clear enough line between withholding funds and asking for dirt on a political rival. It is pretty fucking clear, but until the clear rate is 98-100%, republicans have reasonable doubt to work their magic.

we're not even 48 hours after Pelosi got off her ass, chill out

who's not chill?

It is pretty fucking clear, but until the clear rate is 98-100%, republicans have reasonable doubt to work their magic.

lol even 100% clear rate wouldn't make the Senate GOP turn around, this is all down to their electoral calculus re: their base and absolutely nothing else

yep

right, but this isn't just about the president's base, the senator's that are up for reelection might take a blow if they support a crime that is 100% clear

which is why I said (either upthread or on the other thread) most of the Senate GOP are hemming and hawing until they see some polling data

in the meantime they will continue to be either "deeply troubled" or happy about their "nothingburgers"

to karl, yes I read the transcript. the actual "do me a favor" line has to do with a missing democratic server (conspiracy theory).

That is an extremely narrow reading of the document. Moments before that line, he was talking about withholding the military aid to Ukraine, and he spent the first part of the call establishing that the US had done a lot for Ukraine and that the support had not been “reciprocal”

Wow. Tide is shifting *very* quickly. 22% of Republicans strongly support impeachment, 10% of Republicans somewhat support impeachment. Only 49% of Republicans oppose impeachment.https://t.co/FuLcXkaQxg pic.twitter.com/iGQ6NYBhbm

— Zach Wahls (@ZachWahls) September 26, 2019

oh cool

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/463233-voters-split-on-whether-trumps-actions-toward-ukraine-amount-to

“The poll shows that the public has serious concern over the Trump actions, with 50 percent favoring impeachment if he ‘pressured’ the Ukrainian leader but only 45 percent if he just ‘asked’ for the investigation,” Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, said.

“These are generally higher numbers than during the Mueller investigation and most consider his actions inappropriate even if not impeachable,” Penn added, referring to former special counsel Robert Muller’s probe into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russian officials to influence the results of the 2016 presidential election.

All kinds of shit emerges no matter how small the focus

not always, when it's Democrats doing the focusing

Flopsy, I'm not sure if you're willfully ignoring the much smokier gun of Trump & Co. apparently trying to hide the existence of this wholly-innocuous call but it is, perhaps, worthy of note.

notice how not a single person has said something along the lines of "this just does not seem like something the President would do". even his diehards are like yeah sounds about right lol.

Well tbf Lindsay Graham apparently didn't think he was capable of being so nice as he was on the call. And Lindsay's a smart guy.

The whistleblower claims that this was "not the first time" that a highly classified system was used to protect "politically sensitive - rather than national security sensitive - information"

i would guess this will be explored more in the upcoming hearings

He should have done a GWB and get a lawyer to write him a note that said it was cool to do this

The whole "would you do me a favor" mentioned immediately in conjunction with releasing a very large sum of money from our government to Ukraine's is just your basic mafia boss strategy. You toss a light veil over your demands through suggestion and innuendo, but you make the threat behind it clear enough it can't be mistaken.

Trump could just as well said, "will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" and claimed he meant nothing specific by "rid me".

The transcript is inaccurate inasmuch as Trump actually asked Zelensky to do him a flavor.

that kind of comment shouldn't be read quickly

he whistle-blower who revealed that President Trump sought foreign help for his re-election and that the White House sought to cover it up is a C.I.A. officer who was detailed to work at the White House at one point, according to three people familiar with his identity.

this guys life is gonna be turned upside down

score another victory for journalistic values, NYT.

The whole "would you do me a favor" mentioned immediately in conjunction with releasing a very large sum of money from our government to Ukraine's is just your basic mafia boss strategy. You toss a light veil over your demands through suggestion and innuendo, but you make the threat behind it clear enough it can't be mistaken.

Trump could just as well said, "will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" and claimed he meant nothing specific by "rid me".

― A is for (Aimless), Thursday, September 26, 2019 1:34 PM (one hour ago)

yes, it's thinly veiled innuendo bc that's what he has learned as a "great negotiator" lol. then he would say he was joking and imply that we should drop it. then he will start to make himself the victim again -- he goes through all of the stages of DARVO in one answer sometimes. i have been wondering what the whistleblower is doing to stay levelheaded while all this goes on. it's beyond my comprehension how intense it must be. like my brain fritzes out before it could even try to understand.

his name is Donnie DARVO afaic

that's exactly why mafia learned to make threats that way too xp

don't know what DARVO is?
deny
attack .
reverse victim/offender

it's why he reminds you (me) of every abusive person you (i) have ever known

It is pretty fucking clear, but until the clear rate is 98-100%, republicans have reasonable doubt to work their magic.

what you're missing is that nothing will ever be "100% clear" when literally half our government is actively attempting to obfuscate and obstruct whenever possible. these people defended him literally bragging about sexually assaulting people. they claimed it was "just locker room talk" even as women came out of the woodwork on a daily basis to claim that yes, this is exactly what he does. Trump is incredibly popular among the GOP base and that is all that matters.

fuck we've all seen the movies it's not mystery what he is doing there. It was that same thing he tried to do with Comey "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go "

I already regret posting itt but I do not regret conjuring DARVO. most useful acronym i've learned in years.

No reason to regret your post. Trump immediately denied doing anything wrong. He just as quickly attacked anyone who suggested he did anything wrong. He has openly cast himself as the victim and the whistleblower as the offender, who, incidentally, ought to be executed for their offense. Fits him like a glove.

a tiny glove

i really am more wary of the enablers than i am of the abusers at this point. people who are openly and actively abusive are a pretty tiny minority!

a very good guy. a good fella, if you will.

Here is the NPR/PBS/Marist poll trend on impeachment.
April: 39% support, 53% oppose
Today: 49% support, 46% oppose

— Marshall Cohen (@MarshallCohen) September 26, 2019

It gives me no pleasure to defend the Times. But the letter has "CIA Ukraine analyst who works inside" all over it. Once these things come out they're easy to narrow.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) September 26, 2019

That support for impeachment needs to jump to above 60% for the republicans to start looking for lifeboats.

yup, and that has definitely not happened to-date

I read the complaint. If it is generally true, that officials really told the whistleblower those things, Trump will be impeached.

The best Trump can claim is that he really believed that some Ukrainian stole a box and that finding it would prove that Russia wasn't involved in the DNC hack, and that Joe Biden was actually corrupt for complaining that Ukraine wasn't cracking down on corruption enough.

And when Trump gets that proof, we will all be very sorry.

obvious move for the Dems is to get testimony from first-hand accounts/ie people the whistleblower talked to.

Good luck with that.

Trump will just claim executive privilege, lawsuits will be filed with contempt citations etc.

like, someone in his inner circle has to actually turn on him, not just some random CIA guy

the Dems should be thinking of this like the FBI does w/mafia racketeering/RICO cases - you need an informant, and you need leverage over that informat.

If the whistleblower really had those discussions with officials, there are enough people in the know that I don't think the conspiracy can be kept a secret.

If the whistleblower knew about the Ukraine call and knew the open information about the Ukrainian relations, then made up the stuff about the discussions with officials, then the conspiracy might be better guarded.

The files, records, notes that are going to be required to understand this are not supposed to be open to the public for DECADES. But they'll pried open, the secrets they contain will ruin careers and roil the politics of allied and adversary countries. 5/x

— John A Gans Jr (@johngansjr) September 26, 2019

Does John A Gans, Jr. have an alternate suggestion on how to proceed?

This is such mueller deja vu

xp well from the rest of his thread i think there's just nothing to be done about that

Ooh, he invokes Iran-Contra. Yeah, that really tore the country apart, and totally ruined the careers of ... people.

I think that Οὖτις's recent posts are otm

Y'all should get out of this thread and watch some movies. Criterion has at least ten Naruse films.

you're right Alfred

but… impeachment!

It'll still be there in the morning.

...or mourning.

i legit had a great week because of the impeachment energy. bummer that poll is only 50 / 45 in support and yet a majority feels more significant than the numbers themselves suggest, somehow.

it's been only 48 hours!

So Giuliani went on Laura Ingraham's show and said some stuff. Make sure you look at the entire thread.

Wow. Rudy Giuliani is on Ingraham's show implicating the State Department in the Ukraine scandal.

"The whistleblower falsely alleges that I was operating on my own. Well, I wasn't operating on my own." pic.twitter.com/4o1feYTZFU

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 27, 2019

The look on her face as she realizes it's all going to shit is priceless.

i legit had a great week because of the impeachment energy. bummer that poll is only 50 / 45 in support and yet a majority feels more significant than the numbers themselves suggest, somehow.

― cheese canopy (map), Thursday, September 26, 2019 9:48 PM (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's been only 48 hours!

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, September 26, 2019 9:51 PM (fifty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's also rising quickly. just now i was reading the david brooks opinion piece "Yes, Trump is Guilty, but Impeachment is a Mistake", because i hate myself, and he was citing the quinnipiac poll showing 37% support.

by the way, his second argument is that impeachment is elitist because it puts the decision in the hands of 100 people instead of letting everyone vote on it

xp I don't really see a look on her face tbh, just a blank smile. I actually met her once, in a gay bar in SF when she was visiting her brother, she seemed ok in person at the time, I never would have thought she would become this toxic

If the US Constitution hadn't been written by elitists looking to keep the hoi-polloi well under wraps, there would never have been an electoral college and Trump would never have been elected. You say you want "everyone" voting on who's president, then first you must get rid of the fucking EC. Stupid goddamn David Brooks can eat a bag of dicks.

how can we impeach david brooks?

Stupid goddamn David Brooks can eat a bag of dicks.

OTM

it's crazy. here's the actual text (bold and italics in original)

This is completely elitist. We’re in the middle of an election campaign. If Democrats proceed with the impeachment process, it will happen amid candidate debates, primaries and caucuses. Elections give millions and millions of Americans a voice in selecting the president. This process gives 100 mostly millionaire senators a voice in selecting the president.

As these two processes unfold simultaneously, the contrast will be obvious. People will conclude that Democrats are going ahead with impeachment in an election year because they don’t trust the democratic process to yield the right outcome. Democratic elites to voters: We don’t trust you. Too many of you are racists!

er, i forgot putting that in quote formatting makes every word italic. the original has the last bit ('democratic elites to voters...') in italics.

(i don't know why i'm honing in on the italics, and the proper carryover of the italics to a new format, so much. seems important)

anyway, the wild irony of david brooks saying that supporting impeachment means supporting "democratic elites" sending the message to voters that "too many of you are racists!", in an essay arguing that the current completely racist elitist president should get to serve out the rest of his term

Thanks to the EC the muculent Infowars-hat wearing blob sitting on a porch in Wyoming with a shotgun on his lap gets jest as much a say in who's President than those godless pussies in California!

more of a say

Democrats are going ahead with impeachment in an election year because they don’t trust the democratic process to yield the right outcome.

Impeachment is bill of indictments for presidential crimes against the nation and his oath of office, and it results in a criminal trial by the senate. Does David Brooks understand what it means to have the head of state engaging in "high crimes" against the state, or the consequences of blithely choosing to leave him office for another 15 months?

Brooks' brain has turned to mush.

He is also the dude that said Whitewater was a more substantive scandal than Russiagate.

many people are saying that his brain is actually the direct descendant of mash potatoes and mush

mashed potatoes!
mashed!

goddammit this night's gone to mush

*italian chef kiss*

RIP David Brooks

I love these new rules wrt election years they pull outta their ass. No impeachment! No supreme court nominations! Why? Cause an election will happen in less than 2 years duh it's just common sense.

just trying to get some of my american facts right. impeachment (not removal from office) only requires the majority of the house, which the democrats have, and then the impeachment trial is done in the senate, which the republicans control. is this right? so it makes political sense for the democrats to drag the house portion out for a while.

it’s their way of helping out popcorn farmers hurt by the tariff battles

Except they apparently want to get it done as quickly as possible

are you basing that on the public statements of a politician?

just trying to get some of my american facts right. impeachment (not removal from office) only requires the majority of the house, which the democrats have, and then the impeachment trial is done in the senate, which the republicans control. is this right? so it makes political sense for the democrats to drag the house portion out for a while.

I thought the idea was to do things in as much public view as possible to help the public see the actuality of what had happened not the spin they were used to. So as much of the investigation being able to get out to people as possible through the better instead of speedily rushing it so it was concluded the wrong way.

huh?

The process of impeachment was supposed to be exposing how much wrong had been done so the public were fully aware of things instead of just dismissing them as just another nothing burger was supposed to be as important as getting things done as fast as possible.
So the weight would be the public actually wanting to make sure wrongdoing was punished instead of it being spun so they would see justice as being done if the Republican partisan senate dismissed it as an attack on their beloved President. That all the democratic party were ganging up on because they lost the 2016 election, not because there was an idiotic despot threatening the continued existence of the planet in a daily basis since he was allowed to get into power.

Re: speedy impeachment process

NEW w/ @rachaelmbade -- Dems eye impeachment sprint over coming weeks...
-Intel Cmte takes lead on Ukraine as other cmtes wrap probes
-Few, if any hearings
-No set timeline, but some Dems eyeing floor vote around T'givinghttps://t.co/u95zqb9K1k

— Mike DeBonis (@mikedebonis) September 26, 2019

from David Remnick's new profile of Pelosi:

Earlier this week, Pelosi said, she took a call from Trump, who started out talking about guns. “The President, as you know, is big on what he claims is the charm offensive,” she said. “And some of his charm offensive is very offensive. He was calling me ostensibly to talk about guns, and I have to take him seriously if that is the purpose of the call. I welcome any overture to talk about gun safety. He was telling me progress was being made with his work with Democrats and Republicans. My point was, ‘I don’t know what Democrats you were talking to. We sent you a bipartisan bill over two hundred days ago, and that’s the way to save the most lives.’ ”

That was the first part of the conversation. “Then he somehow segued into what was happening now—that this phone call [with Zelensky] was ‘perfect.’ ‘When you hear this phone call, it was perfect.’ And I said, ‘No, it was wrong. . . . You understand your words weigh a ton. The words of the President of the United States weigh a ton.’ ” Pelosi told me that she doesn’t normally talk about calls with a President—“It’s a historic thing, a call between the President and the Speaker of the House”—but this was different.

When I asked Pelosi if she thought Trump knows, in this instance or any other, the difference between right and wrong, she replied, “He knows the difference between right and wrong, but I don’t know that he really cares. I do think his categorical imperative is what’s good is what is right for him. In the campaign, he told us who he was. He said that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and nobody would care, that his supporters wouldn’t care. Well, he could violate our Constitution, the integrity of our elections, and dishonor his oath of office, as he did in this call, and think that nobody cares.”

I don't know, sounds to me like Rudy has it pretty much figured out. Soros, Hillary, 2016 Ukrainian election interference, Bidens, servers ... Dems should hold off and see where he goes with this, maybe save us all some trouble.

Pelosi on Morning Joe: "It's no use to say 'We'll finish by such-and-such a date,' but the administration is hastening this process by providing these documents."

Here, let me stave off these outrageous claims that I 'robbed a bank' by showing you the multitude of luxury goods I bought with the money. Now can we just drop this nonsense already? Sheesh.

I dont even really understand what they think happened with ukraine and the server to be honest

Here, let me stave off these outrageous claims that I 'robbed a bank' by showing you the multitude of luxury goods I bought with the money. Now can we just drop this nonsense already? Sheesh.

― Steampunk wasn't in my vocapulary 6 days ago. (Old Lunch),

This is, word for word, what the White House has in mind, and I use "mind" losely.

It's pretty clear to me that Hillary Clinton, with the help of George Soros, enlisted Ukraine to help interfere in the 2016 election that she lost.

But, as with Russian collusion, the objective of their crimes was never realized - so it’s more like they got caught in the bank vault and released the security cam footage and are saying “see we never walked out with any money, case dismissed.”

Why did trump say biden was given “millions and millions of dollars” from china after a “one hour meeting”?

They’re working from a whole different narrative

may have to sacrifice Biden here, you guys

Mueller wrote a pretty damning report over the last couple of years which would quite probably have sunk most incumbencies but it was heavily quashed by the Republican party. So a lotof the population aren't aware of the contents still or think its a libtard spin on 'the facts.
I thought the idea of any further moves towards impeachment was to bring as much of the current incumbency's wrongdoing to light as possible in a way that wouldn't be able to be distracted from. & that did bring as many people as possible from the current regime to public scrutiny so that a Republican senate couldn't be allowed to be presented with damning evidence and just dismiss it.
I know there is some time limit to whatever processes are followed, during which t will remain a constant threat to common decency and security for the US and the rest of the globe, but time needed to be taken to ensure all points were established as fully as possible.
Against which there will be a constant attempt at distraction/occlusion whatever by the Republicans who don't want their beloved leader to be taken from his throne.
JUst hoping that what is attempted will stick and this turd will be removed before he can do more permanent damage.

Increasingly clear that the House GOP are sticking with the "so what?" defense, which, tbf, is pretty hard to counter.

Heard a talking head or reporter yesterday who said he had spoken to a bunch of young people, 18 and 19-year-olds, and the element that jumped out at them the most was Trump trying to get dirt on someone, because that was something they definitely understood.

I dont even really understand what they think happened with ukraine and the server to be honest

I don't think Trump does either. afaik it has never even come up as a conspiracy theory before so it's either a joke or he's thinks the internet is like a series of tubes and Clinton may have diverted the trucks that carry the e-mails through the tubes to Dnepropetrovsk.

And since the first option would require for Trump to have a sense of humour, it's definitely the second option.

He absolutely has a sense of humor! Like how he always insists he was joking when he gets called out for saying something which, on the face of it, seems deeply unhinged. It's not his fault that we don't get the joke.

“Rep. Adam Schiff fraudulently read to Congress, with millions of people watching, a version of my conversation with the President of Ukraine that doesn’t exist,” the president said in a tweet.

“He was supposedly reading the exact transcribed version of the call, but he completely changed the words to make it sound horrible, an (sic) me sound guilty,” he wrote.

lol

sorry typo, I meant GODDAMMIT YOU FUCKING INSECT BEGONE FROM MY PRESENCE

In the absence of means to refute or corroborate his claim, I guess we just have to take the president at his word, huh.

DJP we’ve had our differences but harsh

The Democrats are now to be known as the DO NOTHING PARTY!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2019

...says the leader of our country, who has written eleven tweets already this morning.

Impeachment hearings are doin something

TBH I'm starting to get cold feet about this impeachment thing the more I read about the plans. So we're gonna do a quick-hit no-chance-of-conviction impeachment process based solely on a single abuse of power by a president who is actually endemically corrupt and unfit for the office for dozens of reasons? Is this basically just the equivalent of a public censure?

Increasingly clear that the House GOP are sticking with the "so what?" defense, which, tbf, is pretty hard to counter.

― Josh in Chicago

it's certainly a good conversation stopper.

I thought they were going to hold drawn out hearings on emoluments too

Its all connected. He uses the office for personal gain. He is not transparent.

I've got to assume at least some of the 12 or so witnesses, let alone the likes of Rudy Giuliani or the attorney general, will resist invitations to speak, if not outright flout subpoenas. what then?

So we're gonna do a quick-hit no-chance-of-conviction impeachment process based solely on a single abuse of power by a president who is actually endemically corrupt and unfit for the office for dozens of reasons?

I'd say keep watching the polls. The speed doesn't matter much to me (for now) because, elongated or accelerated, McConnell's Senate won't budge -- unless, of course, the polls change.

I hate to be the guy urging caution again.

he completely changed the words to make it sound horrible, an (sic) me sound guilty

This is so "Trial of Tim Heidecker"

That guy tends to be right.

What are we basing the “quick hit” strategy on again? Who said that? The reason I ask is that pelosi spoke of bringing all of the existing committee investigations under one impeachment umbrella. Why would she do that, only to fast track a single, narrow impeachment charge 24 hours later?

I have been wondering what happens if they go too fast and are rebuffed by a stagnant partisan senate. That would presumably be it wouldn't it? & be exactly what people have feared from past attempted impeachments.
Attempting to come back with other charges which t would no doubt have given rise to almost immediately after presumably wouldn't go too well.

xp the speed more matters to me in relation to how close to the election it ends. Maybe the best case scenario is just get it over way in advance so we can stop talking about it by the time the general election campaign is at its peak.

The polls won't change, not sure what you mean or why you would think that.

What are we basing the “quick hit” strategy on again? Who said that? The reason I ask is that pelosi spoke of bringing all of the existing committee investigations under one impeachment umbrella. Why would she do that, only to fast track a single, narrow impeachment charge 24 hours later?

― Sally Jessy (Karl Malone), Friday, September 27, 2019 9:10 AM (fifty-seven seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's paywalled but there was a Washington Post article yesterday saying that's what Pelosi and other top Democrats favor now.

My understanding is they want the House impeachment vote to happen around late November.

I thought the idea was that if impeachment processes were done overtly enough it might have a direct effect on the polling and the public would be brought along as things were gradually exposed. THought that was one of the things shown by the Watergate hearings development. 19% pro impeachment rising to 57% or whatever through the process of what people were seeing in their newsp[aers and tvs.
But those were different times and the polarisation and prevalence of the right wing element of the media wasn't as high.

The polls won't change, not sure what you mean or why you would think that.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive)

But they have aelready in the last 48 hours. If you start seeing a majority of Americans regardless of party supporting impeachment based on Ukraine, i.e. over 50 percent, you'll see more panic on the right.

I would be surprised if either scenario happened. Then again, I was in despair on Monday afternoon. Yet here we are.

I'm also not sure what the wisdom is in fast-tracking impeachment, I keep hearing from Dems it "has to be done before Iowa!" and it's like...why?

I also wonder how they plan on doing this by Thanksgiving w/o the full cooperation of the courts who are going to have to rule on WH withholding documents, witnesses etc.

The polls won't change, not sure what you mean or why you would think that.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive),

Polls do change, the mistake is expecting immediate change. People don't change view instantaneously but gradually over months and even years. Need to factor in lag time

DJP we’ve had our differences but harsh

actual lol

I also wonder how they plan on doing this by Thanksgiving w/o the full cooperation of the courts who are going to have to rule on WH withholding documents, witnesses etc.

― The Ravishing of ROFL Stein (Hadrian VIII)

This morning Pelosi said that she expects the courts to issue decisions next year, so I suspect she thinks "the process" will go into the election cycle.

TBH I'm starting to get cold feet about this impeachment thing the more I read about the plans. So we're gonna do a quick-hit no-chance-of-conviction impeachment process based solely on a single abuse of power by a president who is actually endemically corrupt and unfit for the office for dozens of reasons? Is this basically just the equivalent of a public censure?

I had dinner with a friend last night who is an attorney (which I think you are as well? iow I am not trying to tell you how your job works, just relaying info I got from someone who is more clued in than me) who noted that the other in-flight investigations can and likely will be tacked onto this as separate articles of impeachment, meaning that this is the initial spearhead and there are potentially up to six additional articles of impeachment that can be included in this.

"fast-tracking" is stupid but as Sotosyn says likely impossible

is this thread gonna be like the other political threads where DJP and I try to save you straight white dudes from your howlings of doom

Nah, I'm accustomed at this point to pulling myself up by my howling doomstraps, thankuverymuch.

I'd say keep watching the polls. The speed doesn't matter much to me (for now) because, elongated or accelerated, McConnell's Senate won't budge -- unless, of course, the polls change.

I hate to be the guy urging caution again.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

i get what you're saying and i've also adopted a vision of "politics" that has no reference whatsoever to what opinion polls say, because for me it is no longer a question of _when_ they will do what is necessary, but a question of what i need to do, and ultimately what we need to do, in order to compensate for their failure. it's the only way i can reclaim my own political agency.

after 2016 i'm yet to be convinced that polls have value beyond as an excuse. a lot of people trying to pretend to be "independent" and "open-minded" who aren't, who are just going to do whatever they are going to do anyway. trump's supporters have infinite capacity for cognitive dissonance, and what i'm waiting for is perhaps the moment of realization, the opportunity for healing, and perhaps the inevitable consequences of their actions. for some non-zero number of trump's supporters it will be the latter.

This is so "Trial of Tim Heidecker"

very otm

is this thread gonna be like the other political threads where DJP and I try to save you straight white dudes from your howlings of doom

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

i wonder if i still have "straight white dude" politics sometimes.

DJP is right, I've been hearing a bit of clarification that yeah, this whistleblower/Ukraine stuff is being "fast tracked" or focused on or whatever, but just to get it rolling. The next step is getting people to testify and so on, which will take a while and will each no doubt open up further avenues of investigations.

Man, Howling Doomstraps is an A+ band name.

The polls won't change, not sure what you mean or why you would think that.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive),

Polls do change, the mistake is expecting immediate change. People don't change view instantaneously but gradually over months and even years. Need to factor in lag time

― anvil, Friday, September 27, 2019 9:24 AM (twenty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I would say the absolute ceiling is the narrow popular majority with which Clinton lost the election. We're not in the Watergate era anymore where everyone reads the morning paper and there are like three channels that all take roughly the same center-liberal view on everything. We're not going to march the nation toward consensus unless there's something a hell of a lot stronger than the Ukraine thing that can be easily explained in a narrative that is not easily respun against Democrats.

I mean, when you said the polls would "change" you were talking about it in a context that the change would be significant enough to cause at least a couple of GOP senators to fear their seats. I am skeptical of that, but would love to be proven wrong.

And also that means not changing the national popular opinion but changing popular opinion in their home states.

I don't know, sounds to me like Rudy has it pretty much figured out. Soros, Hillary, 2016 Ukrainian election interference, Bidens, servers ... Dems should hold off and see where he goes with this, maybe save us all some trouble.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, September 27, 2019 7:41 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

What if Rudy went looking for the server and accidentally stumbled upon the missing WMDs?

He and OJ can go looking for the real killer

And also that means not changing the national popular opinion but changing popular opinion in their home states.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive)

Is America actually one country? Somebody persuade me because I'm not persuaded.

He and OJ can go looking for the real killer

This was funny
https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/this-guy-truly-has-no-idea-what-hes-talking-about-1838500602?%2Fsetsession

Is America actually one country?

It's a weird hybrid that normally functions externally as a nation, but functions internally as a collection of disassembled parts, that occasionally gets assembled into a nation.

A notion of a nation.

Sometimes a Grope Nation

-janet jackson

America is an imagined community, just like any other nation

David Brooks says the inquiry is a mistake, so thank you Mr Reverse Barometer

haha, i posted pretty much the same thing at the same moment on the US politics thread

The re-election campaign of Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan began selling T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Impeach the MF,” using a two-letter abbreviation for an expletive the first-term congresswoman used for the president when she uttered that phrase in a speech to activists in January.

i get it, and i have and will call him much worse, but, not helpful

I am relatively certain Tlaib, much like Omar, understands the people who voted for her and as such knows this shirt is something they want.

If you want "not helpful" go look at that dumbass Brooks column

I am also certain that the shirt makes sense to her supporters, and that it will be helpful for her fundraising campaign. I like her a lot, too, not that it matters. But her actions have an influence beyond her constituency.

not sure anything will come of this - claims seem substantively sound but a bit politically thin

sure impeach him, why not - however more important for the dems will be having an inspiring economic vision to sell at the next election. that's how we get rid of this lunk

AOC has it right. McDongface said, well, if they want to waste time with impeachment, then no legislation, and she responded about all the stuff they have sent to the Senate, from guns on down, that he has never bothered even scheduling a vote for. Guns legislation, she noted, was sent their way in February. They need (and will) run on all this shit he is stopping or slowing. Same with the president. Same with impeachment.

But her actions have an influence beyond her constituency.

This is your absolute dumbest and worst opinion, FTR. This repeated belief that we have to somehow worry about "riling up" people who have existed in a state of frothing rage since mid-2016. Who are these "middle ground" people you seriously think a) exist and b) will be driven into the arms of the Republican party by too-overt displays of anti-Trumpism from Democratic politicians?

Tell the truth - are you Rahm Emanuel?

Ok that's uncalled for

sure impeach him, why not - however more important for the dems will be having an inspiring economic vision to sell at the next election. that's how we get rid of this lunk

― stoffle (||||||||)

maybe they should run on a platform of all-day breakfast. after all, it worked for mcdonalds, and really, why should there be any difference than american government and mcdonalds?

America is an imagined community, just like any other nation

― Sally Jessy (Karl Malone)

ok, all nations are imaginary, and so when we cease to believe in the collective lies they're built on, like, say, that governments possess a monopoly on the legitimate use of force...

The rats are abandoning ship

The first Republican House member has announced support for the impeachment inquiry against President Trump: Representative Mark Amodei of Nevada

See the full list: https://t.co/nnYylNUBSA pic.twitter.com/7SUfyj48Sq

— The New York Times (@nytimes) September 27, 2019

Kurt Volker just resigned lol

what the...

Hannity is losing it pic.twitter.com/HTXgj0kQK1

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 27, 2019

the ship is made of rats

But her actions have an influence beyond her constituency.

This is your absolute dumbest and worst opinion, FTR. This repeated belief that we have to somehow worry about "riling up" people who have existed in a state of frothing rage since mid-2016. Who are these "middle ground" people you seriously think a) exist and b) will be driven into the arms of the Republican party by too-overt displays of anti-Trumpism from Democratic politicians?

Tell the truth - are you Rahm Emanuel?

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Friday, September 27, 2019 3:58 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i was in therapy for the last hour (unrelated to assholes i know on the internet), so just seeing this. i have waaaaaay dumber and worse opinions, you're totally wrong

also i'm not sure where you got the "riling up" quote because the closest thing i've said to that is when i "said hi to a neighborhood dog named riley" the other day

This Albert Burneko piece is good, and worth keeping in mind at all times.

Donald Trump is not trying to get impeached. He does not want to be impeached, and he definitely does not have a sophisticated dastardly plot to turn his impeachment into greater personal power or as a strategy to create a more solidified and motivated political base. He does not have a sophisticated dastardly plot to do anything, or any other kind of plot. The man is not capable of sophistication, or any but the basest sensation-seeking dastardliness; it’s all he can do to get the fast food from its cardboard container to the appropriate face-hole. He is a big stupid idiot, is what I am saying, and he likes things that feel good and wants them right now and doesn’t like things that don’t feel good and doesn’t want them ever, and that is the extent of him.

...

None of this is a part of some scheme. There is never a scheme. He is not sandbagging. He is not playing four-dimensional chess. Donald Trump is not capable of four-dimensional chess. Put Donald Trump in a thumb war against a department-store mannequin and he will be lucky to escape with a draw. He will call it victory. What’s infinitely depressing is how many of his nominal political opponents will believe him.

The weirdest, saddest, and most unhelpful people, maybe in all the world, are: boomer liberals (like the leadership of the Democratic party, for example) who look upon Donald Trump’s lifelong track record of failing at petty crook shit—doing petty crook shit and not only getting away with it but in many cases declaring his failure a great success, and then being rewarded with greater fame and stature in turn—and insist they are seeing the work of a mastermind, rather than the tides of American life and culture carrying yet another born-rich shit-for-brains white asshole past and above any and all demands and consequences. The idea of Trump is the sucker-ass belief in meritocracy, in hoary old Great Man bullshit, twisted into its most horrible gargoyle incarnation. He’s rich and famous, he’s the president of the country, and therefore it just simply must be the case that he has earned this station for himself, one way or another, via some expression of traits that make him equal to it. He has to be some kind of genius, even if it’s the evil kind. There is no way that a braying worthless dope, a man with no qualities of any kind to recommend him, could have ended up where Trump has ended up.

And now that investigations into Donald Trump’s campaign and also into his efforts to thwart and obstruct those same investigations—investigations about which he has been in a panicky and very public rage since well before his inauguration—have moved him into the crosshairs of impeachment, the meritocracy dead-enders in the opposition party believe that this must be happening because he wills it. His almost comically brazen and plainly illegal attempts to silence, discredit, and outright threaten the people doing and/or cooperating with the investigations must reflect some active and strategic desire to be impeached. He must be laying a trap: If Congress impeaches him, he will not be mad, he will be laughing actually. The alternative is that the very obviously hopelessly dimwitted lifelong failure currently sitting atop a pile of inherited and/or pilfered cash in the most powerful office on earth is precisely as stupid and balloon-handed and incompetent as he has spent his entire adult life proving himself to be. America just doesn’t work like that.

That’s the thing being fought over, ultimately. The question of whether to impeach Donald Trump is, among other things, the question of how to defeat him. The question of how to defeat him is, among other things, the question of what he really is in the first place: Is he just Donald Trump The Illiterate Racist Sex Clown or is he the Republican Party or is he the deeper and more fundamental articles of American life and history? That, in turn, is the question of what kind of society this really is. Is it one in which vast material inequalities are mere flukes of circumstance, or is that situation the just allocation of reward, or is it the residue of systemic theft by a class of cruel moral dwarves, or what?

Which is to say: When you credit Donald Trump, in the absence of absolutely any evidence, with possessing the Mephistophelian cunning to bring about his own impeachment, deliberately, for the purpose of bringing to fruition some long-simmering plot to consolidate his political support, you are finally saying that you agree with him. Not just on the baseless claim that he’s actually in possession of one (1) Whole Adult Brain, but on his broader infantile idea of what kind of place this country is. He believes that he deserves what he has because he has it, and his every decision flows from that belief; he believes that being rich and famous, alone, is proof that he should be rich and famous. To see him as he sees himself—as a sinister mastermind—and treat him as he believes he should be treated is to agree with him on all that.

otm x 1million

the first House Republican, Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) has come out in support of an impeachment inquiry, albeit in a somewhat mealy-mouthed way. “Let’s put it through the process and see what happens.” Amodei would not say whether he believes the President committed an impeachable offense.

the art of the deal

NYT reports that NRA could be willing to bankroll some of Trump's impeachment defense if Trump opposes gun control legislation. https://t.co/JU3XRUl8rQ

— Matt Pearce 🦅 (@mattdpearce) September 27, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/opinion/trump-economy.html#click=https://t.co/jeoiTNBOve

Krugman makes the economic case for impeachment

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-told-russian-officials-in-2017-he-wasnt-concerned-about-moscows-interference-in-us-election/2019/09/27/b20a8bc8-e159-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html

"President Trump told two senior Russian officials in a 2017 Oval Office meeting that he was unconcerned about Moscow’s interference in the U.S. election because the United States did the same in other countries"

Wtf?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5tnHqKk5ko

xpost Remember when he was on some show years ago (sigh ... ) and when asked about how Russia (or whomever) kills people it disagrees with, he more or less sneered "oh, and we don't?"

Beginning to think impeachment is actually a win/win for Trump. He won't have to be president anymore, he'll get pardoned by Pence, he'll get to go back to his shady bullshit family business, and he'll get to spend the rest of his life ranting with impunity about his innocence, the Clintons, servers, immigrants, whatever he wants. And people (barf) will keep listening, keep reporting on him, keep putting him on stage and on TV ...

Josh, go to bed.

you know a thing called "dying" exists, right? xpost

going to bed is another thing that does it, and it's temporary. the whole dying thing is so...fatalistic, you know?

lol I meant Trump wasn't gonna live forever

Okay so here's a thing that's only just now occurring to me for some reason: one whistleblower was so gobsmacked by the president's actions that he/she made a stink and now here we are, inching right astride articles of impeachment. So. The question now poking me in the side is: how many other people in a position similar to that of our whistleblower have held their tongues up 'til now despite severe misgivings but who may, given the evolving climate, feel emboldened to come forth with an absolute avalanche of dirt on Mr. Wonderful?

i have a special batch of popcorn waiting for the revelation that one of the transcripts filed in the Double Secret Server documents MBS offering dirt on Bezos in exchange for a slow-roll on Khashoggi

kay so here's a thing that's only just now occurring to me for some reason: one whistleblower was so gobsmacked by the president's actions that he/she made a stink and now here we are, inching right astride articles of impeachment. So. The question now poking me in the side is: how many other people in a position similar to that of our whistleblower have held their tongues up 'til now despite severe misgivings but who may, given the evolving climate, feel emboldened to come forth with an absolute avalanche of dirt on Mr. Wonderful?

― Steampunk wasn't in my vocapulary 6 days ago. (Old Lunch), Friday, September 27, 2019 10:31 PM

*fart*

farts are *kind* of whistleblowing

Alf, I am both disappointed and tickled by your response. It's a weird feeling, not altogether unpleasant.

Solid, sound fart.

a meh

xpost Remember when he was on some show years ago (sigh ... ) and when asked about how Russia (or whomever) kills people it disagrees with, he more or less sneered "oh, and we don't?"

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, September 27, 2019 6:21 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Trump otm

when asked about how Russia (or whomever) kills people it disagrees with, he more or less sneered "oh, and we don't?"

it's just a variant on the tu quoque argument, put into the service of excusing obvious criminality or immorality. Or to use more modern terminology "both-sides-ism".

it's an ideological barndoor left wide open by a multigenerational rejection by the entire political mainstream of any serious critique of US foreign policy premises or practice which u should continue to expect cynical adventurers to walk thru

“He’s a killer”

“There are a lot of killers. There are a lot of killers. What, do you think our country is so innocent?”

the way he embraced it was memorable

kinda semiswiped from The Godfather, which I bet he's seen more often than Citizen Kane

Giving him way too much credit there. Dude’s favorite movie is Bloodsport.

https://i.imgur.com/CBvwrYA.jpg

This was good

This interview was so good. pic.twitter.com/1jrPnr70Ou When the whole clip becomes available I will post it. Timothy Snyder is among the best we have.

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) September 28, 2019

Ooh, I like the theory that one reason Trump's people put all those communications in the classified server was to hide them from Mueller and other investigators. Maybe it's a Pandora's black box of misdeeds.

https://newrepublic.com/amp/article/155202/impeachment/

“Whataboutism” could still be a powerful weapon for the Trump side. His criminality is more explicit than the “soft” corruption that had dominated Washington forever, and was more or less enshrined into law by Citizens United. His corruption is far worse because he is clearly soliciting personal favors, using the power of the state as leverage, and trying to cover up evidence of it, but the Dems need to make sure the public sees that.

but the way things have gone wasn’t great either, which puts Dems in a weak position. Trump never coukd have rose in the first place if he couldn’t convincingly make the swamp argument

is there anything in your view that doesn't put the Dems in a weak position

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruaeusy4aOE

I just know pelosi lurks so i want to remind her of things to watch out for

good advice, also Nancy watch out for FlopsyDuck, I just don't think you should trust that poster

Trump never coukd have rose in the first place if he couldn’t convincingly make the swamp argument

I don't think so. He rose on the wings of the birther conspiracy theory.He rose by calling Mexicans rapists and criminals. He rose by pinning nasty sarcastic nicknames on his hapless opponents and claiming they would pay for a border wall. He rose by making outlandish promises about delivering health care that was better and cheaper than Obamacare and about winning so much we'd tire of it. He rose by pledging fealty to the evangelicals over abortion and federal judgeships.

"Drain the swamp" was just another empty slogan aimed at voters who hate national politics for a multitude of reasons, both petty and principled, but without ever having to make clear what "drain the swamp" would look like in terms of specific actions.

Damn. claiming Mexico would pay for the wall, not his opponents.

Trump is president because he triggered enough racists to vote for him.

sucks that we have no control over the political landscape and that it would be irrelevant to what is happening to us even if we did. sure hope no one triggers enough racists again

wat

JUST IN: Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe Pres. Trump's encouragement of a foreign leader to investigate a political rival and his family is a serious problem, according to a new @ABC News/Ipsos poll. https://t.co/RxPL49EOYi pic.twitter.com/68qjjuDyli

— ABC News (@ABC) September 29, 2019

(Does the quick math) Hmm, that pretty much directly reflects his consistent approval/disapproval numbers, doesn't it?

64 percent?

I mean, I like seeing that! But hasn't his personal approval rating hovered perpetually around 40%?

Oh, or you're saying my approval/disapproval ratio analogy was turned around? Well, yeah, OK. Consistently 60/40 against/support is what I meant.

good to know 1 in 3 Americans see no problem with holding back congressionally-approved aid to an ally until they manufacture some dirt on a political rival

1 in 3 americans need to get their shit together

I'd guess that a sizable number of those people don't even understand the question.

An excellent summary of the week.

That doesn’t mean the right won’t find its footing. But its machinery is actually slow and ungainly relative to the whistleblower story, while what the Democrats have working for them is speed. The impeachment inquiry feels like an emergency (because it is one, even if others have come before it and gone unrecognized). And the Democrats’ single-minded sense of urgency is somehow outpacing the hurricane of misinformation the right usually generates to drive American news cycles.

Indeed it is. Man, Giuliani is so fucked!

Giuliani is small potatoes. Trump is the epicenter of the disaster.

Old Lunch, there are also people who understand the question fine, and further know that it's asking "is orange man bad?" And they know their answer needs to be "fuck you, media."

The genuinely interesting poll is probably not possible today, because people know their answers are tribal signifiers. They will answer tribally.

In idle fantasy-land, if I had a time machine, it would be neat to go to 2014 and ask people "Is it bad for a President to enlist foreign help in discrediting his political rivals?"

Even the real-world sport of saying to Trumpites: "if this were a Democrat..." is pointless, because I know the answer: it doesn't matter. Tribals gonna tribe.

I saw this on Melania's plagiarized speech. "Well, when Michelle said it it was false, and when Melania said it it was true." I saw this on the topic of the Taliban Camp David meeting. What if a Democrat President had done this, etc. etc. The Trumper line was, "the comparison is invalid because Obama would have given away the store; Trump would have art-of-the-dealed their turbaned asses into the stone age, etc. etc."

sorry for long excerpt, but this is a fun, handy list of suggestions of who the house impeachment inquiry should talk to, from the nyt editorial board:

But here are a few notable figures — in addition, of course, to the whistle-blower himself — who could prove particularly useful to House investigators.

Rudy Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal attorney/fixer. As the point person on the push to get Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Mr. Giuliani likely knows more about the origins, scope and details of the effort than almost anyone. Some of the more targeted mysteries he could shed light on include: When and from whom did the president first get the idea to pressure Ukraine? How did Mr. Giuliani first become involved? Was he being paid for his work, and if so, by whom?

Mr. Giuliani loudly insists that he was working at the behest of the State Department. In that case, when did he first make contact with department officials? Which officials did he work with and in what capacity? How many people knew about his freelance project for Mr. Trump?

Bill Barr, attorney general. Mr. Barr is neck-deep in this mess. He features prominently not only in the whistle-blower’s complaint but also in the readout of the July 25 call, in which Mr. Trump told Mr. Zelensky that Mr. Barr, like Mr. Giuliani, would be contacting him about the investigation into Mr. Biden. The Justice Department has denied that Mr. Barr knew anything about this promise. But Mr. Barr should be pressed on why Mr. Trump thought it was proper to offer the services of the American attorney general to help a foreign government investigate his own political opponent.

When the whistle-blower complaint citing him by name was referred to the Justice Department, Mr. Barr should have formally recused himself from any involvement with it. Why didn’t he?

Mick Mulvaney, acting White House chief of staff. In July, Mr. Trump directed Mr. Mulvaney to arrange for Ukraine’s military aid to be put on hold. What explanation did he give Mr. Mulvaney? Whom did Mr. Mulvaney contact at the Departments of Defense and State to make that happen? What explanations did he offer them?

Mike Pompeo, secretary of state. Robert Menendez, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has already issued a raft of questions that he’d like Mr. Pompeo to address, including: Was Mr. Pompeo concerned that America’s Ukraine policy had been partially outsourced to the president’s personal lawyer? When did Mr. Pompeo first learn of Mr. Giuliani’s work? Did he approve it, and was he aware that State Department officials were involved with it? What explanation was he given for the withholding of aid to Ukraine?

Kurt Volker, former part-time special envoy to Ukraine, and Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union. Both men consulted with Mr. Giuliani about his Ukraine project. On July 26, one day after Mr. Trump’s call with Mr. Zelensky, Mr. Volker and Mr. Sondland met with Ukrainian officials and reportedly offered advice on how to “navigate” Mr. Trump’s requests. Did they, as the whistle-blower claims, at some point become concerned about Mr. Giuliani’s work and seek to “contain the damage”? Mr. Volker resigned his post on Friday. Why?

Mike Pence, vice president. In his conversations with Ukrainian officials, including his Sept. 1 meeting with Mr. Zelensky, was there any mention of Mr. Biden or of the delayed military funding package? When asked at a news conference on Sept. 2 if he could assure Ukraine that the two issues were not linked, Mr. Pence ducked the question. Mr. Pence should also explain why Mr. Trump directed him to cancel his plans to attend Mr. Zelensky’s inauguration in May.

Mr. Trump himself has suggested looking into Mr. Pence’s interactions with Ukrainian officials. “And I think you should ask for VP Pence’s conversation, because he had a couple conversations also,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

John Bolton, former national security adviser. Mr. Bolton was forced out of the White House in September. What did he know about Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign? Mr. Bolton is said to have pushed for the withheld military aid to be released. What explanation did he receive for it being withheld?

Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community. Mr. Atkinson reviewed the whistle-blower complaint, deemed it both “urgent” and “credible,” and forwarded it to Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence. After Mr. Maguire declined to pass the complaint along to Congress, as indicated by federal law, Mr. Atkinson chose to alert lawmakers to its existence himself. What explanation did Mr. Maguire give for not forwarding the complaint? How did he respond when Mr. Atkinson informed him that he would be alerting Congress?

Lawmakers will also need to hear from whoever was charged with moving the transcript of Mr. Trump’s July 25 call from the usual computer system to the special server, maintained by the National Security Council, reserved for “classified information of an especially sensitive nature.” Who directed this action? (On Friday, a White House official told CNN that N.S.C. attorneys did so.) Who else knew about it? Did anyone object at the time? Have other such conversations been improperly stashed in the system, as the whistle-blower alleged? (It has been reported that reconstructed transcripts of phone calls Mr. Trump had with the Saudi royal family and with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, were stored on the server as well.) It’s worth remembering that one of the biggest bombshells of the Watergate hearings came from Alexander Butterfield, a relatively obscure administration staffer, who shared what he knew about the White House taping system.

Then there are the “multiple U.S. government officials” whom the whistle-blower cites as his sources — the ones whom Mr. Trump has compared to spies and has implied deserve to be executed for treason.

meanwhile, election season starts to heat up. this year is going to the most insane, unpredictable season of must-see real life yet

Why are so many of the usual suspects in Italy right now? Barr, Pence, Pompeo, iirc Bannon ...

I hear Italy is often rather pleasant in early autumn.

just a fun weekend in italy with the boys

Trump’s been filling his diaper extra hard on Twitter the last half hour or so

ok, wtf is with him calling the phone call "perfect" over and over? this has gone on for days now

now openly accusing schiff with "Fraud and Treason" as well. wow, the state-sponsored executions for all this are going to be wild

Trump genuinely doesn't seem to get how bad that transcript is for him, which I guess explains why it was released in the first place. I almost think he may not have bothered to read it himself and has no idea what he said.

he didn't bother to read the whistleblower complaint, either. he keeps fixating on "the person" who provided the whistleblower with information, calling them a "spy". but the first page of the complaint cites "more than half a dozen U.S. officials" who provided the whistleblower with info. if trump would have actually read that you know he'd be making up a nickname for this group of officials.

i mean... nixon reacted pretty much the exact same way to the smoking gun tape.

I have no doubt he hasn't read the complaint, but would've thought he'd have some idea about what the transcript he released and keeps praising actually says.

Tbh, I don't know enough about the history of Watergate to be able to compare.

The diapers are all full, the president is in full on shitting on a paper towel mode

wtf is with him calling the phone call "perfect" over and over?

he probably fucks those calls up all the time, and half the call logs hidden on the codeword server are just embarrassing, so he is just genuinely indignant at having his real accomplishment for once be doubted

Tbh, I don't know enough about the history of Watergate to be able to compare.

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles)

well this isn't actually 1974 but it's similar enough that it's fascinating to see the parallels. nixon, as far as "the final days" has it, was absolutely convinced that the smoking gun tape exonerated him. now i'm sure nixon was a hell of a lot more intelligent than our current president, but i'm not sure intelligence factors into it, just the unrestricted ability for self-delusion... which nixon unquestionably had.

lol

Mr. President, don't do this. It looks like an attempt to obstruct justice, which is itself impeachable.

Alternatively, it makes you look small and weak. People will laugh at you. Don't go there, @realDonaldTrump.

— Sam Wang (@SamWangPhD) September 29, 2019

tweet thread eerily echoing the trial of tim heidecker again

lol he thinks his right is to meet his accuser

Grab 'Em By The Whistle!

ok, wtf is with him calling the phone call "perfect" over and over? this has gone on for days now

He has an extremely limited vocabulary, and does not have any ability to actually determine what is good or bad in any situation.

Like his murmuring “classy” over and over in the 1980s to convince idiots that his repugnantly tacky taste in decor was a mark of quality. He inherently believed that because it came from him, the grotesque obviousness of the tackiness indeed was classy, but ALSO believed that by repeating it over and over, people he thought were dumber than him would be persuaded of this. Here, he said all the words he intended to say, and another person gave him specific praise that he had asked to hear as an affirmation, therefore the call was perfect.

His greatest frustration as President is that everyone he comes in contact with no longer pretends to be dumber than him, so his repetition becomes more frenzied. He knows no other way of making his desires manifest, and has always thrown tantrums when they don’t.

Whistleblower under federal protection, reportedly. Which means ... Barr. Who did so well with Epstein.

well he/she is a spy, and we know how they used to handle spies in the good old days

I almost think he may not have bothered to read it himself and has no idea what he said.

Based on what he's done in the past, I think knows pretty exactly what he said, but he truly believes that the fact he did not literally spell out the quid-pro-quo, but instead merely hinted at it, insinuated it, and implied it, and had his surrogates like Giuliani repeatedly do the same song and dance to Zelinsky for months on end, means that he's covered his ass and can't be held legally liable for what he did. He somehow thinks that preserving that tiny fig leaf means he can claim 'perfect' innocence and everyone has to take him at his word.

i've been hearing the call was perfect

I was doing some reading on Joe McCarthy and noticed that his reign of demagoguery and disinformation lasted exactly 4 years, 4 months—from 1950 speech about communists at State to “have you no sense of decency?” It‘s been 4 years, 3 1/2 months since Trump’s announcement speech.

— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) September 30, 2019

rly makes u think

At least that would be a step in the right direction for the internet.

exhuming mccarthy

New Quinnipiac poll: Do you think President Trump should be impeached and removed from office?

NOW
Yes 47%
No 47%

LAST WEEK
Yes 37%
No 57%

— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) September 30, 2019

that's a very encouraging trend, but those numbers aren't yet decisive enough to strike dread into the hearts of republican senators. still, good news.

lmao this is convincing

Dems have already made up their mind that Trump is guilty, so they should just hold the impeachment vote now and get it over with. Spare us the sham hearings, the “investigations,” and the ridiculous grandstanding that will surely accompany them. @FDRLST https://t.co/GbHENeOJJA

— John Daniel Davidson (@johnddavidson) September 30, 2019

John Daniel Davidson has already made up his mind that Trump is innocent, so we should spare him the need to examine any new facts uncovered during any future investigations. He will only resort to ridiculous hand waving to dismiss them anyway.

WaPo quotes a retired teacher who “expressed nervousness” about impeachment. 27 years ago, she appeared in a Post piece about her husband, who was waging a legal battle to clear the name of his dad, a convicted Nazi collaborator pic.twitter.com/0diCXTFLgZ

— b r a d (@bshoup) September 30, 2019

uh oh, more breaking crimes

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/us/politics/trump-australia-barr-mueller.html

WASHINGTON — President Trump pushed the Australian prime minister during a recent telephone call to help Attorney General William P. Barr gather information for a Justice Department inquiry that Mr. Trump hopes will discredit the Mueller investigation, according to two American officials with knowledge of the call.

The White House restricted access to the call’s transcript to a small group of the president’s aides, one of the officials said, an unusual decision that is similar to the handling of a July call with the Ukrainian president that is at the heart of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into Mr. Trump. Like that call, the discussion with Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia shows the extent to which Mr. Trump sees the attorney general as a critical partner in his goal to show that the Mueller investigation had corrupt and partisan origins, and the extent that Mr. Trump sees the Justice Department inquiry as a potential way to gain leverage over America’s closest allies.

And like the call with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, the discussion with Mr. Morrison shows the president using high-level diplomacy to advance his personal political interests.

in previous eras, the main actors would have the dignity and self-awareness to resign in shame. it is amazing that bill barr hasn't stepped down already. in this era, you go down kicking and screaming and then start your own tv network which says you're always right

i'm guessing that call will be rated... near perfect?

starting to think that Mueller might have been incompetent

i hope that whoever reads the transcript in congress does so in an aussie accent

vol 2 of the mueller report is just one long list of things trump did and is doing that are clearly misdemeanors and high crimes. no one read the fucking report. even the people on the news will offhandedly say that this new ukraine scandal kicks ass because the primary document sources are so short, compared to the unreadable, war and peace on steroids, completely incomprehensible, impossible mueller report

Btw if anyone’s been seeing the latest messaging from the Federalist et al regarding supposed recent changes in whistleblower policy you will be shocked to learn it’s all bullshit https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-shows-russian-trolls-how-its-done-with-trump-inspector-general-whistleblower-smear

Just to back up: So it looks like the President, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of State are all implicated in a criminal conspiracy?

— Clara Jeffery (@ClaraJeffery) September 30, 2019

been out of touch a bit , what's going on now ?

more of the usual or something new ?

oh Australian PM doesn't want to be left out i see

Barr should resign, but I wish he would recuse first, just to see Trump's reaction.

oh more cool stuff

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took part in the Trump phone call with Ukraine's leader, a senior State Department official said https://t.co/twUmCMapOu

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) September 30, 2019

interesting Monday! this is a great start to infrastructureimpeachment week .

and where are the tax returns?

did we post this?

JUST IN: Mitch McConnell says Senate will put Trump on trial if House impeacheshttps://t.co/YL7H5T2TEP

— Axios (@axios) September 30, 2019

Sounds like good ship Barr has sprung some leaks.

well then that is a complete and obvious inevitibility. (xp)

how many republican senators do we need to convince to remove, if we assume all Dems and the two independents will vote to convict? My count is 28.

McConnell implies he’d rush a vote through though—acquitting with little pain to the president

lol remember this

Unless Bill Barr -- a former Attorney General under George H. W. Bush and a widely esteemed member of the DC legal establishment -- is one of the most blatantly sociopathic liars on the face of Earth, the Trump/Russia conspiracy theory is officially dead

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) April 18, 2019

Where’s Greenwald’s take

OK, so if Rudy or any of these chumps ignore these subpoenas, like so many others have, what then?

then the Sergeant at Arms of the United States House of Representatives is immediately granted the right to use lethal force to obtain any information that is missing

real answer, i don't know. turns out the US Constitution didn't provide much guidance on how to deal with an administration of trolls

The WaPo pays Kathleen Parker to write a political opinion column, officially making her a political pundit with wide national exposure. Today my benighted local newspaper printed one of her columns in which she frets that, although Trump's actions in regard to extorting the Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son were "inherently corrupt" but that said actions "didn't break any campaign finance laws" and might not break any federal statute, thus making his corruption entirely legal and therefore not grounds for impeachment.

This is now officially the stupidest and most ignorant take on this that I have yet encountered. I can only dread whatever greater stupidity will inevitably supersede it.

HOW GOOD IS COLLUSION!!!?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c_UO5PCklY

looks like Anthony Kenndy

I voted No because if we impeach Trump will get mad

if a video went up showing Trump eating poop, we would get millions of people eating poop to own the libs

Wasn't that the plot of Pink Flamingos?

exhuming mccarthy

disturbance at the orange house

Omg Moodles

if Rudy or any of these chumps ignore these subpoenas, like so many others have, what then?

This is that thing where we notice that Congress doesn't have an army at its disposal again. Pretty much all the people with guns work for the President.

Jesus fuck a pig, Joe Hockey (the second-dumbest man in the government, until he left for a massive government sinecure) promised in writing to assist in finding evidence of this non-existent crime, and threw Downer under the bus for good measure

BREAKING: Australian Ambassador Joe Hockey’s May 2019 letter to US Attorney General offering to assist with investigation @9NewsAUS @TheTodayShow pic.twitter.com/rhotnG00Dh

— Kerrie Yaxley (@KerrieYaxley) September 30, 2019

that's a very encouraging trend, but those numbers aren't yet decisive enough to strike dread into the hearts of republican senators. still, good news.

― A is for (Aimless), Monday, September 30, 2019 2:29 PM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

What poll numbers would it take for 19 republican senators to fear their reelection enough to vote to convict? There are only 23 republican senators up in 2020. I don't think that necessarily means impeachment is a bad tactic, but everyone realizes it is nearly impossible that he will actually be removed from office this way, right?

Nah we never thought of that, good looking out

i thought of it but i really appreciate the reminder, good looking out

ii think it's pretty unlikely he'll get removed but it's nice to dream. no reason not to drag him through shit for the next six months nonstop anyway and taint the republican brand for the next 25 years.

It's a good point that he probably won't be removed, so Trump should probably stop freaking out, huh?

wondered for the first time today if the corruption of this administration will all spill out

I’ve been hoping the whole thing makes him so panicked and angry that he strokes out and spends the rest of his life mutely drooling down his cheap, cartoonishly long tie. His twitter feed is fueling that hope. Go, Nancy, go!

ii think it's pretty unlikely he'll get removed but it's nice to dream. no reason not to drag him through shit for the next six months nonstop anyway and taint the republican brand for the next 25 years.

I remember someone joking that he will be the first president in history who will have less named after him after he leaves office than he did before.

I just want him to stroke out and die

I would much rather he be prosecuted, lose what of his wealth isn’t imaginary, have to make restitution for emoluments, and be imprisoned.

I mean that's my preference but given the unlikelihood of it happening i prefer the one thing he can't actually bounce back from

Until McConnell Weekend at Bernies him I guess

My opinion applies to Trump, too.

ii think it's pretty unlikely he'll get removed but it's nice to dream. no reason not to drag him through shit for the next six months nonstop anyway and taint the republican brand for the next 25 years.

― akm, Monday, September 30, 2019 9:12 PM (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean that seems exceedingly unlikely too. And if it's over fast I also don't see it having much impact on 2020? Doesn't it need to be at the forefront of people's minds to actually impact his chances or the senate races?

um idle speculation but he will commit More Crimes after this episode

and therefore...

they can just add it to the impeachment tab

and then...

leave outside but away from direct sunlight for 2-3 weeks before seeds germinate

And then along came Jones

He'll inevitably commit more crimes since he already has done since whenever the last one we heard about.
Would be good if the general malaise in the GOP that leaf to him being allowed to be President had a chance to be addressed as well as the corruption that's become visible during his incumbency. I would be worried that he is going to be treated as an individual bad apple and not a symptom of wider ill. So if he is thrown under the bus everything else gets left as is.
Would love to see McConnell gone cos things will be as bad as they were before if he remains. Would also love to see GOP recognising it has a problem and reforming itself. Utopian innit.

bizarro world watergate: the President confessing his crimes on a daily basis, scrappy WP/NYT journos trying to figure out which of his underlings cooperated

looking forward to the movie with a couple of Woodward-Bernstein types figuring out "It goes all the way to the BOTTOM!" and nailing WH janitor

The unindicted co-conspirator is going to be the people who were saying things.

looking forward to the movie with a couple of Woodward-Bernstein types figuring out "It goes all the way to the BOTTOM!" and nailing WH janitor

sounds hawt

WTF Is a “perfect” phone call ? God damn this is stupid!

I keep coming back to that too. Impeachable offense on its own, imo

"Perfect" phone call is when the mark gives you his SSN

so frustrating that we're still getting a deluge of articles on how this will "backfire on the Dems" in 2020. wasn't the prime motivator for Dem voters to turn out in 2018 "if we take the House, we can actually hold him accountable for his crimes"? and didn't the Dems wind up winning a ton of House seats based on that premise? so why would actually doing what people voted for you to do turn off your base?

I don't think turning off the base is what they worry about. It's turning off the purple district voters.

i just don't get being SO COMMITTED to our current political system that literally every decision is viewed through the realm of how it will affect THE NEXT ELECTION

fucking hell people, that's just plain sick

okay

Horse races and theater criticism are all some pundits have, rusho

There is literally no other way in which this impeachment process will have any impact on anything.

The next election will be held inside (what's left of) our current political system.

Currently, elections determine who has power to do shit. Including fix/change the political system.

People who want more good things to be done (and fewer bad things) need to obtain the power to do those things. The means of obtaining power will likely be... an election.

Also, if better people don't get elected, worse people continue to hold power. And hurt people with it!