Mueller Investigation pt 6

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JoeMorgue said:
Because the one thing Trump gets in that deformed 3rd testicle that passes for his brain in that there is a sizeable, marketable cross-demographic voter base in America right now that basically is going "Insult me, lie to me, just lead me. Act like you actually think you're right." They don't want a wishy-washy milquetoast goober who's going to talk back every statement they make the second it polls bad with a focus group.

Trump knows how to do that silent, unspoken "Wink, wink but I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about other women, vets, minorities, etc" when he's openly and without shame insulting someone to their face and that's a skill the Dems have never mastered.
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There it is. That is what Trump has that Clinton did not. He's an authoritarian and authoritarians will follow authoritarians. That's why Trump is drawn to the likes of Putin and Kim.
 
Upchurch said:
There it is. That is what Trump has that Clinton did not. He's an authoritarian and authoritarians will follow authoritarians. That's why Trump is drawn to the likes of Putin and Kim.
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I like to think there's some level of "Confidence" that the Dems could tap into that doesn't cross over into "authoritarian."
 
Meadmaker said:
Would anything be enough for the Senate? Absolutely. What do you think? They're loyal to Trump? Not a chance. The GOP leadership would thank their lucky stars if they had something they could use to throw him out without alienating their voters.
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That's exactly the problem. Trump could do anything and as along as Republican voters don't turn against him, neither will Republican Senators. There is nothing Trump could do that would be enough. It only takes what the Republican voters won't put up with.

That is sad, and shameful.
 
Trump and his supporters are a write off. A certain group of his supporters will buy Trump's version of reality regardless of what the Democrats do.

And if the House moves to impeach you can expect the GOP to fear-monger like crazy about this being getting even for Clinton's impeachment and it will start some kind of impeachment war to remove any POTUS not of the same party as the Congress. Kellyanne and Sarah will be out there every day claiming the case is over, Democrats lost, and there are no do-overs.

Do you want to listen to that for months, only weakly responding, when we know the truth is the Mueller Report has been quashed? Do you want to listen to that every time Nadler or Schiff hold a press conference with no effective rebuttal to the Mueller is done crowd?

The goals of impeaching Trump are to repeat the messaging of what his crimes actually have been because a lot of that really isn't in the public mind yet, and, to compete for news coverage. It isn't only about the end goal of impeaching Trump.

In 2016 Trump TV was a success for the news media and Trump. It was a disaster for Clinton and the rest of us. For 2020, Trump TV is off to an equivalent start. The Trump-fact soap opera* would be competing to drive the narrative.
This is not an all or none, get Trump impeached and removed from office. It's about public hearings where everything Mueller did was in secret. The mueller report is out. Trump et al have so far done an efficient job of controlling what the public knows about what's in that report. A couple press conferences by some Democratic Legislators does not leave a message in the public mind. But hearings with press coverage of the details leading up to the 2020 election can.


*I don't mean soap opera in a trivial way; I mean it as a label for glued-to-the-set TV coverage.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Trump and his supporters are a write off.
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If that's true then we've already lost and there's no point in even trying.

That sounds more like a "Planting the seeds for an excuse for a future loss" then anything else though.

The goals of impeaching Trump are to repeat the messaging of what his crimes actually have been because a lot of that really isn't in the public mind yet, and, to compete for news coverage. It isn't only about the end goal of impeaching Trump.
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Horse hockey. There's not a person in the developed world that isn't intellectually and emotionally aware of what Trump has done. There Venn Diagram for "Aware of what Trump has Done" is a circle.

Everybody knows what Trump has done. Reciting the list again is a waste of time.

What matters is the amount of people who don't care, have rationalized it away, see it as a net positive, or see it as acceptable losses in the war to keep the Libruls out of power.

I want to grab every Democrat by the cuff of the shirt and scream in their face "PROVING TRUMP WRONG DOESN'T WORK. TRY SOMETHING ELSE."

This goddamn pipe dream the Democrats have where if they just keep listing everything Trump has done wrong over and over is going to suddenly one day just magically work is starting to border on the definition of insane.

There is no, none, zero, zilch, nada, zip, chance that pointing out "Oh here's one more thing he did wrong" is going to matter.
 
There's one difference between Clinton and Trump that is being missed, either deliberately or not. I'm suspicious because it's rather obvious.

The Republicans where sure they had a good case before they opened the investigation and the independent counsel. After that investigation, the only thing they could impeach for was perjury. That was the only one of the crimes that had evidence.

At this point, we've already done the investigation into Trump. And the evidence points, clearly, to obstruction. It's not wishful thinking before the investigation is started, based on rumors and wishful thoughts. It's evidence laid out in the Mueller report.

And in the Clinton case they DID impeach him for what the evidence returned.

If they're analogous at all, they point to impeachment being the correct step.
 
The GOP should be for impeachment, it had two effects during the Clinton administration. It stalled legislation and increased public support for Clinton. That would fit nicely into there current agenda.
 
ahhell said:
The GOP should be for impeachment, it had two effects during the Clinton administration. It stalled legislation and increased public support for Clinton. That would fit nicely into there current agenda.
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According to Pelosi, that is exactly what Trump wants, selling a failed impeachment attempt as vindication that he did not actually commit any crimes to base that doesn't understand the difference.
 
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I think a lot of Democrats and liberals (yes there is a lot of overlap there) are disappointed in the results of Mueller's investigation. Many had pinned entirely too much hope on Mueller finding something so clearly criminal that even the Republican Senate would vote to remove. It appears that they have found no clear evidence of collusion with the Russians. As for the obstruction, it seems very possible that Trump was conducting a coverup even though there was no crime. Were it almost anybody but Trump, I would say that is a strong indicator that he was guilty of something. However, since it is Trump, I cannot rule out the possibility that he was conducting a coverup when there was no crime because he is really just that dumb.

ETA:
Don't get me wrong. I do not buy into Trump and friends' narrative that the Democrats were conducting a witch hunt. The whole mess is entirely of Trump's own making, first by publicly asking the Russians to hack Hillary's email (whether that was serious or a "joke" that backfired badly), and then by trying to suppress the investigation, in particular firing Comey. Firing Comey was the genius move that saddled him with the Mueller investigation. Even though he likely isn't a Russian backed Manchurian Candidate, Trump is still a sorry excuse for a human being, and an incompetent and unfit disaster of a President. The Democrats should concentrate on defeating him (and some Republican senators) in the next election, not on an impeachment effort that has no chance of removing him.
 
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Hellbound said:
There's one difference between Clinton and Trump that is being missed, either deliberately or not. I'm suspicious because it's rather obvious.
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You need a super-majority (67 people) to convict a President in the Senate in an impeachment.

The Republicans went into their impeachment of President with a 55-45 power balance in the Senate. They would have needed a minimum of 12 Democratic Senators to jump the aisle to convict Clinton. They didn't even get that, with 5 and 10 Republican senators voting against the two articles.

Right now the Republicans have 53 seats to the Democrat's 47 (well if you want to split the hair 45 Democrats and 2 Independents who vote Democrat). A Trump conviction would require the Democrats to find 20 Republicans to vote to impeach a sitting Republican President.

12 people crossing the aisle in the political environment of 1999 would have been a miracle. 20 people crossing the aisle in the political environment of 2019 is a pipe dream.
 
Meadmaker said:
Nor for the Senate.
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What the senate thinks is irrelevant. It has become so partisan, and the republicans have become complete scumbags.
In 1998 the Republicans sounded just as sincere, and their case was far more straightforward and far more obvious. He lied under oath, which he did. They also accused him of obstruction of justice, witness tampering and abuse of power, and they made it sound so good. All the radio yappers were convinced that Clinton was history, and the Republicans would pick up huge gains in the off year elections.

And, no one cared, and no one should have cared, and the Republicans looked like buffoons for pursuing it. Apparently, a lot of people weren't paying attention to the lessons of 1998.
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There are some significant differences between the Bill Clinton situation and Trump.

In the Clinton case, while the charges he was actually facing involved actual illegal activities like perjury, the underlying thing people could take away was "clinton had oral sex", something many people thing is something that is a personal issue. (Heck, half the men would probably give him a high-five over it.). In the Trump case, the underlying issues are a little more significant... allowing the president to be influenced by foreign powers. Can't see a lot of people lining up to say "You are Putin's puppet? Congratulations".

Then there is the issue of personality. Clinton is generally seen as a charismatic individual. People can forgive more if they like you. Trump has all of the charisma of a flaming bag of dog poop. If you're not a racist, you pretty much have no reason to like him. Harder to forgive someone like that.
 
I think we're all getting rather tired of explaining over and over the difference between getting a blumpkin from the chubby Jewish chick who brings you the mail and conspiring with what is pretty America's archenemy to rig an election.
 
Hellbound said:
There's one difference between Clinton and Trump that is being missed, either deliberately or not. I'm suspicious because it's rather obvious.

The Republicans where sure they had a good case before they opened the investigation and the independent counsel. After that investigation, the only thing they could impeach for was perjury. That was the only one of the crimes that had evidence.

At this point, we've already done the investigation into Trump. And the evidence points, clearly, to obstruction. It's not wishful thinking before the investigation is started, based on rumors and wishful thoughts. It's evidence laid out in the Mueller report.

And in the Clinton case they DID impeach him for what the evidence returned.

If they're analogous at all, they point to impeachment being the correct step.
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This is simply false. Obstruction of Justice was part of the articles of impeachment passed by the house. Just last night I heard a tape of Ken Starr reading aloud the Clinton misdeeds. It was a long list.

They were so sure that they had him.

If Trump is impeached for this, it will end the same way.

ETA:. I want to be clear that I don't believe Clinton was actually guilty of anything.
 
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Oh horse ****. Unless you want to believe in nonsense conspiracy theories about the Clintons running some sort of murder fest on their political enemies nothing Clinton did rose beyond the level of "His wife should make him sleep on the couch for it."

Trying to turn Slick Willie's Horndoggedness into the same thing as Trump being at best the puppet of, at worst the willing lackey for, a foreign dictator is shameless.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Oh horse ****. Unless you want to believe in nonsense conspiracy theories about the Clintons running some sort of murder fest on their political enemies nothing Clinton did rose beyond the level of "His wife should make him sleep on the couch for it."
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I think that's what I said.
 
JoeMorgue said:
You need a super-majority (67 people) to convict a President in the Senate in an impeachment.
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Right now the Republicans have 53 seats to the Democrat's 47 (well if you want to split the hair 45 Democrats and 2 Independents who vote Democrat). A Trump conviction would require the Democrats to find 20 Republicans to vote to impeach a sitting Republican President.

12 people crossing the aisle in the political environment of 1999 would have been a miracle. 20 people crossing the aisle in the political environment of 2019 is a pipe dream.
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You are right... the chance that the senate will act is pretty much null (the only way that might happen is if Trump's popularity drops due to scandal or economic conditions and they think a new leader will prevent their defeat, but even that is unlikely.)

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that trying to impeach Trump is a bad thing for the democrats to try.... it would highlight some of Trump's bad activities, and might sway some fence-sitters in the next election.

On the other hand, it might increase Trump's popularity since it gives him yet more to brag about.

Frankly, I don't think there is an easy answer either way.
 
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