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Cont: House Impeachment Inquiry - part 3

Skeptic Ginger said:
If you are just talking about his cult of suckers, they don't care.

That doesn't mean other people are not moved to act.
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Then why haven't they?

These aren't polls of "Trump cultist." These aren't polls of "100 Americans who already told us Trump can do no wrong." These aren't polls that are somehow only asking people who's mind can't be changed.

These are polls of all Americans, of all Republicans, of all potential voters, national, statewide, local... these aren't polls that are somehow going through and only asking people who's mind can't be changed these questions and the numbers aren't changing.

Again right now the entire Democratic Strategy is dependent on there being some meaningful block of voters who aren't taking polls, talking to the media, or being detected by political analyst.

I'm hoping this magical, undetectable demographic of voters who never take polls magically does show up in November.
 
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TragicMonkey said:
How did things come to this state? Can it be fixed? I was a teenager during the first Clinton term, and that's when I first became aware of politics. In the era of Rush Limbaugh's first blush of fame. Things were already pretty grim for nonpartisanship then, and that was the early 90s.
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I think that the rise of Limbaugh and the ideological media, especially but not exclusively on the right, is actually a major part of the cause.

Especially among Republicans, people don't dare cross the party line, because they will be attacked mercilessly by the yappers, and will fear being "primaried" for not being sufficiently ideologically pure.

It was during the 90s that it got really bad. I was an adult in the '80s. There were lots of important votes where the Democratic leadership lost in the House of Representatives even though they had a majority all the way to 1994. Can you imagine that today? Imagine a high profile vote today where Nancy Pelosi supports one position, and that postion loses. It won't happen. Similarly during the period when the Republicans most recently controlled the House.

That would be kind of an interesting statistic. Over the course of history, what was the percentage of votes in the House of Representatives where the Speaker of the House cast a vote for the losing side? I'm sure that, throughout history, it would be low, but I'm wondering if it is a lot closer to zero today. I assume it is.

Has Nancy Pelosi cast a vote that didn't win since she became Speaker? Tip O'Neil did.
 
TragicMonkey said:
How did things come to this state? Can it be fixed? I was a teenager during the first Clinton term, and that's when I first became aware of politics. In the era of Rush Limbaugh's first blush of fame. Things were already pretty grim for nonpartisanship then, and that was the early 90s.
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There was a steep uptick in partisanship during that time.
 
Upchurch said:
Yeah, I read it. I still don't see a defense for keeping Trump in office here. He committed a crime, he abused the power of his office, and, let's face it, the 2016 election already disregarded the voters' will.
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In my opinion, if he committed a crime, the House of Representatives ought to have included that crime in the articles of impeachment. They did not. We are asked by many to believe that of course they chose not to include it for some strategic reason. If so, that didn't work out too well.

Others have suggested that they didn't include it because Presidents can't be charged with crimes, so the charges shouldn't have been included in the articles of impeachment, because......I lost the train of thought that explained that, but regardless, in 1867, 1974, and 1998 when various representatives voted on articles of impeachment, they all thought it was ok to say that the president had committed a crime. I don't think this particular Congress had more wisdom than those. I think that the reason they didn't include a charge of a crime in their articles of impeachment is that they didn't think they could convince enough people that he had actually committed a crime.

In general, I think your response above has a highly partisan flavor to it, and I think reasonable people could dispute at least 2 1/2 of the 3 major points in the statement. (The 1/2 comes from the abuse of power. I don't think any reasonable person could say he did not abuse power. I think reasonable people could disagree whether he abused it to such an extent that he should be removed from office.) If you can't see the counterarguments, that might say something about your vision.
 
Meadmaker said:
In my opinion, if he committed a crime, the House of Representatives ought to have included that crime in the articles of impeachment. They did not. We are asked by many to believe that of course they chose not to include it for some strategic reason. If so, that didn't work out too well.

Others have suggested that they didn't include it because Presidents can't be charged with crimes, so the charges shouldn't have been included in the articles of impeachment, because......I lost the train of thought that explained that, but regardless, in 1867, 1974, and 1998 when various representatives voted on articles of impeachment, they all thought it was ok to say that the president had committed a crime. I don't think this particular Congress had more wisdom than those. I think that the reason they didn't include a charge of a crime in their articles of impeachment is that they didn't think they could convince enough people that he had actually committed a crime.

In general, I think your response above has a highly partisan flavor to it, and I think reasonable people could dispute at least 2 1/2 of the 3 major points in the statement. (The 1/2 comes from the abuse of power. I don't think any reasonable person could say he did not abuse power. I think reasonable people could disagree whether he abused it to such an extent that he should be removed from office.) If you can't see the counterarguments, that might say something about your vision.
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What you're doing is Monday morning quarterbacking. Second guessing infinitum. It makes little difference what the articles themselves are especially when the Senate was never going to really entertain having an actual trial. There are multiple crimes that were committed, but impeachment is not a criminal action.

What matters now is selling the corruption and why it is important for the voters to hold Trump accountable.
 
I wonder how Trump is going to react to shaking off the “witch hunts.” He is a sore winner. There are a few Republicans who plainly conceded that the prosecution proved their case. More than half the country still doesn’t like him. Dems will start getting more press coverage (please don’t use it to attack each other over details - there will be some provocateurs trying to make that happen). This will rankle Trump who will do something, anything, to grab the spotlight. I know this sounds like wishful thinking. Maybe that’s all this is. But IMO he’s not going to suddenly start using good judgment.

ETA: Whistling past the graveyard, I know. Still have some hope that he will turn out to be his own worst enemy.
 
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He helped our enemy during a war and senators know this. Who benefited from Trump’s delay in releasing aid? It’s pretty clear.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
I think that the Democrats played this poorly. I’ve said that all along.
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I think they did as best they could with the situation they were given.
Perhaps there was virtually no way to play impeachment that would have resulted in conviction in the Senate. Still, Mueller identified many cases of obstruction that to me were much simpler on their face.
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The problem with mueller is that at the very end he fumbled.

Yes, he was hired to investigate certain things (like Trump/Russia connections). Yes, he did a good job of investigating. Yes, he wrote a very comprehensive report. But in the end the report went nowhere. He was in a unique position to focus public opinion on some of Trump's crimes. But instead of a clear, concise layout of his crimes, we got a mealy-mouth "we cannot exonerate". He should have realized that Barr was not to be trusted with the report. He should have been willing to be more direct during his appearance before congress. But in his efforts to be "fair" he let Trump off the hook.
As were Emolument Clause violations. As blatant as those cases remain, going back now to charge them would just look desperate.
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The problems with the emoluments clause violations is that:
1) document requests from some lawsuits have been tied up in courts for a long time, and I can't see congress having any more luck getting anything in a timely fashion
2) The "crimes" may not be as obvious. Unlike a direct 'bribe', some foreign leader staying at a Trump hotel is a bit more fuzzy... there is no way to prove (outside of someone whistleblowing) that they were staying there simply because it was owned by Trump.
 
Venom said:
Marco Rubio explains his impeachment vote
However, for purposes of answering my threshold question I assumed what is alleged is true. And then I sought to answer the question of whether under these assumptions it would be in the interest of the nation to remove the President.
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So, it looks like Rubio, Lamar Alexander, and Republican senator Joni Ernst have all said similar things to some degree: Trump didn't act properly but they won't remove them. Are there any other congress critters who have made similar comments?

If I were the Democrats, I would put together a campaign ad, composed mostly of video clips of Alexander and Ernst admitting that Trump acted wrong, followed by 2 statements: 1) even republicans think Trump's call wasn't "perfect" and 2) you say its wrong but you won't do anything about it. Why are we paying you?
 
Segnosaur said:
If I were the Democrats, I would put together a campaign ad, composed mostly of video clips of Alexander and Ernst admitting that Trump acted wrong, followed by 2 statements: 1) even republicans think Trump's call wasn't "perfect" and 2) you say its wrong but you won't do anything about it. Why are we paying you?
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But there really is no "the Democrats" yet; it's all candidates running against each other in primaries. Bloomberg however is campaigning against Trump, so maybe his campaign will do something about it.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Then why haven't they?
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The election isn't until Nov. Why do you think he's going to win again?

These aren't polls of "Trump cultist." These aren't polls of "100 Americans who already told us Trump can do no wrong." These aren't polls that are somehow only asking people who's mind can't be changed.
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Which polls?
 
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