From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:
Start Impeachment Proceedings Now!
Anyone who has been paying attention has to know that Donald Trump has broken the law, and he should be impeached and removed from office. He colluded (conspired) with Russia to subvert the 2016 election, and he committed at least half a dozen acts of obstruction of justice in trying to kill the Mueller investigation. This was all after violating campaign finance law by paying off a woman he had sex with to protect his presidential candidacy.
Any of those things individually is worthy of impeachment. And I have been very disappointed in most Democratic members of the House of Representatives (including Speaker Pelosi) for their refusal to start impeachment proceedings.
I understand why the Republicans defend Trump. They put their party and their own political futures above the Constitution and their country. But Democrats are supposed to be better than that.
Yes! We should risk improving Trump’s chances of being re-elected, and put the House majority at risk, for the sake of a piece of meaningless political theater which has no chance of actually getting Trump out of office.
Do these idiots have any idea how many lives will be lost or ruined if Trump gets another four years and the Republicans recover unified control of Congress? Trying to prevent that is far more than merely “political”.
Trump passed the threshold of deserving to be removed a long, long time ago. But there’s only one thing that will actually succeed in removing him: winning the election. Impeachment would almost certainly blow up in our faces. Luckily Pelosi understands that. Unluckily, most of the liberal blogosphere has become so hotheaded as to actually be an impediment to the project of getting rid of Trump.
Thank you, Infidel.
As usual, your logic strikes me as sound. I’m not so sure about your last sentence.
Hotheaded discussion may actually become a patriotic service, a palliative to the maddening both-sides balance imitation we see in reporting and punditry. I do get tired of that endless search for news symmetry at any cost, even at the cost of truth.
You are right, of course. Impeachment would likely be damaging to the chances of removing this danger to the Republic.
But talk, even angry debate, about whether blatant wrongdoing is enough to impeach seems to me a good thing, perhaps even a very good thing. An incidental effect could be to focus public discussion on each point of wrongdoing.
I’d like to see news balance represented by both sides of whether Trump corruption is horrible enough to merit impeachment.
I’d like that balance to be on the minds of voters when comes the election.
Maybe impeachment would help Trump. But maybe not. It could put Republicans in the spotlight of supporting criminality.
And one other thing – – We see one reminder after another of how Donald Trump can become distracted by even trivial disagreement. Let’s give him something major to obsess about.
I’d rather see him occupy more of his time sitting in his bathroom exercising his thumbs on his cellphone, and less time figuring out how to launch airstrikes on the national enemies he has created.
The Republicans have been in the spotlight of supporting criminality for two and a half years now. Their voters like it, and the people who don’t like it aren’t their voters.
Politicians care about getting re-elected. Republican Senators who voted to remove Trump would not get re-elected, and they and their families would probably need bodyguards for the rest of their lives. They’ll be more concerned about that than about some judgment of future history (or of the majority of voters who aren’t Trumpanzees and aren’t their constituents), which they’ve clearly already written off.
This being Missouri, I haven’t seen bumper stickers saying “Impeach Trump”
Optimist that I am, I’m hoping to see a sign saying “Trust Pelosi”
What I mean by “hotheads” is the chorus of calls for impeachment at any cost, by people who clearly have not given any real thought to the consequences, and the relentless insults and denunciation aimed at Pelosi, who is the nearest thing to a leader we have at the moment and is being cautious because she can see what those likely consequences would be.
It’s the same mentality as all the politically-engaged, “woke”, internet-savvy, ideological-purist idiots in 2016 who couldn’t vote for Hillary because of her Iraq war vote or whatever, and played a key role in getting us into this mess in the first place. Now they’re trying to stampede Pelosi into a pointless act of political theater which could get Trump re-elected and give unified control of Congress back to the Republicans. It’s insane.
First, we have to avoid references to ‘the law’ as if it the same thing here as we think of in every day life. Normally, if you violate the law a cop arrests you or issues a ticket and you talk to what we hope is an impartial judge. You might get a jury of disinterested ‘peers’ and a decision is made and sentence carried out. In this case ‘the law’ is very different. Nobody gets hauled off in cuffs, not even a ticket. And there is no judge. Only a jury of, in this case, 100 senators of whom the majority are both not disinterested and profoundly disinclined to see anything wrong with what Trump has done. And Pence.
And no, the GOP cannot be shamed into voting for America and against their party. There is literally no violation that can’t be rationalized. It really doesn’t matter what the law says. Either he/they didn’t do it, or they did it but it is religiously justified (God allows sin to be used to accomplish a greater good), or ethnically justified (remember that Russia and the GOP are all Christian white guys), or the violation of law is just part of the game where the real payoff is making liberals cry and impeachment is just another failed attempt to smear the GOP by a feckless and ineffectual Democratic party.
Second, there is the timing. Start impeachment now and it will be all over before it has much effect of the 2020 election. Trump, after being exonerated, or claiming to be, will go into the point of maximum influence on a high with the entire GOP cheering his victory.
Timed better, the investigation hitting the airwaves while Trump and the GOP should be hitting their stride campaigning, and it is a major impediment. We still don’t win the impeachment outright and get to see Trump hauled off kicking and screaming but impeachment jams up the election for the GOP and the good guys prevail.
So when is the proper time to impeach? I don’t know when the optimum time is but I have a firm idea that thirteen months before the election is too soon. I would think five or six month, the beginning of May or June, would be better. I will leave the details of timing to people who know about such things.
I doubt it but perhaps they can slow-walk the inquiry for a year. A steady drumbeat of procedure with regular drips of lurid details releases well timed to throw off GOP favorable news cycles and momentum might work. That is a whole lot of detailed and nuanced work that requires a lot of discipline, communication, and coordination. Democrats don’t usually do discipline. Lockstep coordination seems a bit too much to ask for. May the cat wranglers prove me wrong.
I would assume I’m one of the pro-impeachment hotheads, yet apparently someone as calculating and cautious as Pelosi is now on board with the impeachment inquiry.
Hotheads are known to take the moral and constitutional high ground when others quake in their socks, fearing what Republicans might say, or dreading an “activated base”.
I can’t imagine anyone not already in the cult being swayed to Trump by an impeachment of Trump. Moderates don’t reason, “Gee the Republican Senators didn’t convict, so Trump is really a victim of a witch hunt. He’s earned my vote”.
Many more would likely have their eyes opened by a full impeachment inquiry. The majority is not in Trump’s cult. This fact will not change.
The case for caution and serious political considerations is well founded from that perspective. Yes, I do think certain reps are intimated by thinking they could lose their jobs for following the law and Constitution. This indicates the extent of the Right’s toxic infection, and its disease to the rule of law and the process of a democratic republic.
It is quite sickening that for a few reps, the possibility of winning by abdicating their oaths to the Constitution is preferable to the possibility of losing by upholding the Constitution and rule of law. All Dems need to do is repeat the truth. “We are supporting our Constitution and rule of law”.
Republicans are the ones playing the political theater game. Democrats would be the party of law and order and the Constitution.
We know the Right will call it theater, or a witch hunt, or socialism. Dems are too intimidated by what Republicans might say. We should also understand Trump would gloat about not being impeached, and it would be his final ace to play.
I happen to think an impeachment process is not only their Constitutional duty, but the best strategy. It’s amazing how so many Dems can’t find the gumption to loudly and incessantly repeat, “The Republican Party is abetting a criminal president and violating their oaths to the Constitution. We are standing for the Constitution and rule of law.”
Some are taking this stand. All of them need to. If this isn’t the time for Democratic unity, then there never will be.
Remember most Americans did not support the impeachment of Nixon when the process began. Like today, most Americans were not informed. An impeachment inquiry informs the public.
That’s why we need an impeachment inquiry. The public needs to know this “theater” is serious and real. And they need to know the crimes are real and provable with evidence. Those vacillating reps may find they have less fear of losing their jobs after this process is moving.
I may be a hothead, but I suggest taking a stand on the moral high ground is vital for the defense of freedom and democracy, and it is strategic in that we actually claim the authority that the Right has long framed as theirs alone.
Trump has been given enough rope. Giving him more rope is only clearing his way to committing more crimes and causing more damage to our country. An active impeachment inquiry process is the only check on his abuse of power.
It is time for an impeachment inquiry. There’s no hurry now that it has begun. And if the articles of impeachment are withheld until next year, all the better.
Let him twist in the wind.
Don the Con can yell “total exoneration” all he wants. What he cannot say will be “No impeachment”. And his “exoneration” will be only by his party loyalists, who will be seen by history as accomplices.
His arrogance and sense of impunity have been challenged. The impeachment will be his disgrace. I think even he knows this.