OK, So Here’s the Deal…
Say what you will about Nancy Pelosi, but she is seldom wrong. Yesterday, the Noise Machine went nuts when she said that Trump was trying to goad the Dems into impeaching him. The Noise Machine went nuts for one reason, and one reason only: she’s 100% correct. Think about it: The latest ABC News/WaPo poll found that 55% of voters definitely will not vote for Trump; further, 85% said they were going to vote in 2020. High turnout is death for all politicians Republican. Trump’s approval is hovering at 39% to 41%. All these numbers are terrible for him. Terrible. I would say that Trump’s chances of getting re-elected now are low, unless the Dems are stupid and run HRC again in 2016, which is not going to happen. Biden, if he maintains his current intensity, will slaughter Trump, especially with a vibrant younger VP like Harris or Hickenlooper.
In short, the shine is off the fake gold plating, and Trump’s record as a fraudster and criminal is finally beginning to catch up with him, especially with those not in his drooling, Confederate flag wearing base. Indictments on a number of state and federal charges once he leaves office are a virtual certainty; he will be legally and financially destroyed once he comes out from under his rock in the WH. His only hope to fight off the wolves at the door is to stay in office as long as possible, and a new term will protect him until he’s too old to throw in jail for the rest of his life.
Because of these facts, Trump’s only chance of survival is to gain sympathy and support from low information voters by fighting off a huge threat. That huge threat is impeachment by the Big, Bad, Democrats in the House. So let’s consider what would happen if articles of impeachment were drawn up in the House. First, it takes a majority vote in the House on Articles of Impeachment, and that is not a certainty, especially if Pelosi continues to oppose. If Trump is charged by a majority of the House, he must undergo trial in the Senate, which requires a 2/3 supermajority to convict. With current Senate membership and leaders, Trump’s conviction has a zero chance of happening. Zero.
So, impeachment is exactly what Trump wants. He wants to play victim on Twitter and national television over a “witch hunt” and “coup attempt”. That’s why he’s begging for impeachment by blocking disclosure of the unredacted Mueller report, claiming executive privilege. That’s why he’s preventing Barr and McGhan from testifying. That’s why he’s ignoring every single subpoena and request for information. Since beating an impeachment charge is his only chance of winning another term, expect him to continue escalating his attacks on the House, Dems, and all things that are considered good and decent.
Though no other president has deserved impeachment more than Trump, the Dems must not take the bait. They need to continue bombarding him and his cronies with subpoenas, demands, requests for information and admonishments, but Pelosi is right. Impeaching this son of a bitch is the last thing the Dems should do.
If two corporatists run on the Democratic ticket in 2020, like Biden and Harris, many progressives will not vote or vote third party. “Trump BAD” still isn’t good enough. You’d think the DNC might have learned from 2016.
Third Way ain’t getting it.
1El Jefe, you forgot one of the players. Sometimes known as the bleacher section. New York State, now sings a song for you.
If your govt’s a bad dream
No request is too extreme
When you wish upon a star
New York is kind
She brings those secrets near
The sweet tax returns you need
Their secret figures now exposed
Like a bolt out of the blue
New York steps in and sees you through
When you wish upon a star
Your dreams come true.
Edit: New York State Senate passes bill to make Trump’s tax returns available to Congress
The TRUST Act passed the state senate by a 39 to 21 vote and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has said he will sign it. The bill goes to the state Assembly for discussion and a vote Monday.
In a statement, advocacy group Stand Up America said it hoped that the assembly passes the bill quickly. “Now that it has passed the Senate, it’s time for the Assembly to immediately act and make this bill law,” the group said. “We urge Assembly members to send this bill to Governor Cuomo’s desk and ensure that Donald Trump’s numerous conflicts of interest come to light.”
https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/new-york-state-senate-passes-bill-to-make-trumps-tax-returns-available-to-congress/
2Exactly right El Jefe.
Trump’s base likes him as a fighter. All’s fair in war. No rules in a knife fight. In battle he can say and do any stupid thing at 3 AM on Twitter and elicite sympathy and support.
Ignore him, and he looks like a slightly illiterate, bankrupt tax fraud, which even his base finds slightly less appealing.
3Nancy needs to let the public know that the real obstruction is Mitch. He needs to go.
4@Cheryl Those who will believe already know. Those who will never believe are a waste of time. The only people who can convince them about the evils that are Trump and McConnell are Trump and McConnell, and they’re refusing to believe the obvious because Demorats.
5I have no problem with another year of investigations which highlight Trump’s illegalities, incompetence, and so forth. The only caveat I’d put on that is if another Supreme Court slot comes open. In that case, it’s full-on press for impeachment.
6Sorry, I’ve got to disagree on both counts.
First, Nancy Pelosi is wrong on some pretty important counts. One massive austerity-inducing example: She believes the Federal government (the monopoly producer of dollars) has to get tax revenues before it can provision its programs. She actually believes dollars grow on billionaires.
But where do people get the dollars with which they pay taxes if the government doesn’t spend them out into the economy first? (Think about it…even a little).
It can’t be “tax and spend”… it has to be “spend first, then ask for some back in taxes. Logic!
So what do we call the dollars spent but not retrieved in taxes? Answer #1: The dollar savings of the population. Answer #2: National ‘Debt’ (it’s like bank debt–i.e. your accounts–not household debt). (For the history, see https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-federal-budget-is-not_b_457404)
Why have taxes at all? Answer: to make the money valuable. If you think this is my hare-brained scheme, Google “Beardsley Ruml, taxes for revenue are obsolete” Ruml wrote that paper in 1946, when he was a governor at the New York Fed. It’s a very old idea. People confuse government and households all the time, too, but Nancy should know better.
As for Biden beating Trump… Sounds like a replay of the Clinton / Trump matchup to me. Read this (and then get back to me):
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/joe-biden-is-a-phony-plain-and-simple/
7MY BAD ALERT. Mea Culpa. Also apologies to J. Cricket, W. Disney, et.al for butchering the rhyme. Copyright stuff.
There were two bills passed in NY today. I posted an Edit which did not describe the second bill from another source.
The second bill aims to close what’s known as the “double-jeopardy loophole.”
The bill, said Democratic Sen. Todd Kaminsky, would ensure “the corrupt use of the presidential pardon” won’t prevent New York law enforcement officials from bringing a case to a grand jury.
It applies only in situations “where the President had a conflict of interest in the case; for example, where the person pardoned is related to the President, or had previously worked for the President,” the New York Senate Democratic Majority said in a statement after the bill passed.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/08/homepage2/new-york-trump-taxes/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_latest+%28RSS%3A+CNN+-+Most+Recent%29
8Vibrant younger WOMAN (redundant, as all the women running are vibrant and younger)
9We cannot have a white male ticket
Did anyone just hear a loud gulp from Paul Manafort?
10Also, if the impeachment goes to the senate, Mitch the Bitch will have complete control of the proceedings.
11AND the narrative.
Also, they can always start a real war; they’re working on it right now.
Donny repeatedly said Obama would do that, so you know he’s thinking about it already
Impeachment is negotiable, but I want hearings hearings hearings and I want people held accountable when in contempt of Congress .
12El Jefe seems to have missed one tactical point.
Even if he and Nancy is right and impeaching Trump is a trap, the House can still open an Impeachment Inquiry. Pelosi won’t object to that even if she remains opposed to actual articles of impeachment.
The Impeachment Inquiry’s job is to uncover and document the evidence and come up with a recommendation. They are in control of how long that takes which is right up to the 2020 election if they so choose. During all that time they can drive the media cycle with their hearings and constitutional showdowns with the DoJ and the WH. Mitch can do nothing about it.
With each passing day something unforgivable totally actionable can come to light. Yes, even Trumpers in the Senate might desert him over it. If that happens it is game over and game on.
13I’m sick of knowing that the most corrupt president in our history cannot be removed from office because his party controls the Senate (and the Supreme Court as well) and there aren’t enough decent, moral, AMERICAN Senators in that crowd to vote the bastard out.
How did we come to this…?
Yes, I know, gerrymandering and vote suppression and f**ing McConnell running the United States Senate like his private playhouse had a lot to do with it. But they’ve gotten away with it, y’all. They’ve goddam gotten away with it.
14Rhea:
15It ain’t over.
He may also be simultaneously establishing a Vincent ‘The Chin’ Gigante defense if the ‘impeach me’ plot doesn’t work. I say let him be to stew for awhile. At some point, crying ‘Wolf!’ wears mighty thin – even for morons.
16Gazbo:
17Too true. Expect military action in Venezuela.
Maybe Iran.
Adam Eran:
18Not sure what Pelosi’s economic development plans have to do with the biggest constitutional challenge from a wanna be dictator we’ve faced in the history of our democracy. But El Jefe’s right.
Rhea #14 – do you remember how long it took Republican senators to stop supporting Nixon? Slowly one by one, over years, they admitted he was after all, a crook only after Nixon began to drag them down. When Nixon’s criminality became detrimental to them personally, the tide finally turned. With Trump, his skunklike actions, decisions, and predilections will have to not only stink up the swamp, but cling indelibly on members of the Republican side of the aisle, who then will have no choice but to crawl out, douse themselves with tomato juice, and hope the American voters have short term memory loss or are willing to get fooled again.
19Paul ADK:
20The time for these kind of fights about how far left we go is NOW. I love Joe Biden. He woulda wiped the floor with Donnie Douchebag in 2016. But it ain’t 2016 anymore.
I love the big Democratic field. IDEAS.
To choose the best candidate to beat the biggest threat to our democracy who also happens to be our president.
But make no mistake.
Any sorry piece of s**t who votes 3rd party or doesn’t vote at all as some sort of protest after witnessing what that choice has brought us to 4 years after doing the same thing?
I’m still respecting Mama’s guidelines.
As always, EJ cannot set fingers to keyboard without taking a shot at Hillary: “unless the Dems are stupid and run HRC again in 2016, which is not going to happen”. How many times does she need to say she’s not running before you believe her? This resemblance to Cornyn, for example, who bleats Butter Emails all the time, is really annoying in. Democrat.
21Paul ADK, the DNC does not select candidates, Democratic primary voters do. Flouncing off because you dislike the Democrats’ choice did not go so well last time, or in 2000 or in 1980, come to that.
Young John Hickenlooper? He’s 67. I’m 62, healthy and active, and I’m old. To a 20 year old I’m ancient.
22Rick, I think we have already seen that T-Rump was correct when he said he could shoot somebody and not lose support. This isn’t the Nixon Era. To R’s, Democrats are the enemy of all they believe in.
23Remember! Impeach the trumpkin and you get the very smart, totally insane religious fanatic incharge. It is better to hold on and VOTE him out.
24Paul..you are a dreamer…ALL candidates are corporationists to some extent. And if they deny this then look closer! A trumkin doing crap for the rich is not better than the green dude that puts in laws that prevents a house to be built cuz a little bird lives on the property! They are both aholes for different reasons.
Most important at this time is get the religious right/rePUKEians out of office, and any voter who can’t see that are rePUKEian enablers.
I agree that going ahead with impeachment is probably not a great idea–but I’d love to see hearings begin that expose all the lying, cheating, and criminality in which Trump and his family are involved. Public, well publicized hearings, of the sort that forced Nixon to resign would make me very happy, and might even reach some of the willfully ignorant voters who refuse to pay attention to what Trump is actually up to. No need to impeach; just drag it all out into the light.
25Tilting at windmills didn’t do any good for Don Quixote, It won’t help us now. Our only viable option is to drag out the investigations with bad news trickling out regularly, chip away at his base. But impeachment only helps him, not us.
26I hope El Jefe and the Speaker are right. I hope the institutions of government we want to preserve are not completely hollowed out by November 2020. I hope Benedict Donald can be evicted from the White House when he loses. To show she means business, Pelosi must not allow Barr and Mnuchin to get away with ignoring subpoenas. And even if he’s only a minority leader by then, McConnell must go. (It can happen — you heard the booing for Bevin on Saturday. The Democrats need to go big in Kentucky.)
27Harry Reid was the first US Senator for whom I ever voted. Never agreed with Harry 100%, but maybe 70-80% of the time. Speaker Pelosi deserves the same respect, and fwiw she tends to rate 85% with my issues. As for her political savvy she matches either of the Clintons with neither of their short comings or baggage both deserved and undeserved.
And, damn you El Jefe for placing me in the position of defending Hilz. j/k sort of. Again. But here’s the thing with our patriarchal political system, that is patriarchal is a politer euphemism for SEXIST. IQ4.5 exploited that in 2016. Gearing up to 2020, the media isn’t much better. If the media wasn’t both bought and lazy, Senator Warren would be receiving at least 10x the coverage of the ***king moron. What has been said about any and all of the women running for office would not have been used as a pejorative toward a man. President Obama was never treated fairly, yet even he did not encounter the level of BS still thrown at powerful women.
As one who would gleefully join an extraction team to remove Donnie from office, and with all of my patience exhausted awaiting the unseen Mueller Report, no patience with Congress as long as one Republicon remains in either the House or Senate, Speaker Pelosi has my respect and trust as to the handling of IQ4.5 and the Con traitors.
28As much as I’d enjoy seeing youth in the extremis on the Dem ticket alienating a shell-shocked electorate concerns me more. Defeating the sitting president should be a Dem priority. If the soothsayers say that means propping up Grampy Joe then by all means do that. The vice-president candidate should be the wild card. Youngish. Prolly black. Prolly female. But teflon coated and wearing Kevlar. The hits will just keep coming. Once 1/20/2021 noon goes by, regroup and figure on how to run a guerrilla war against McConnell from the Confederate State of Kentucky. And ask Jim Jordan what he knew and when did he know it about Ohio State. Maybe Congressional hearings should look at that sorry chapter of his sorry life.
29Start impeachment hearings and pass it on to the senate during the thuglican convention.
Make thuglican senators have to sit in d.c. listening to impeachment case during the campaign. Keep them from going home to campaign.
Work the ref’s as hard as possible and do not let 1 minor excuse from the press pass with out challenge.
Also remember historically it has been the so called “moderates” who have deserted d candinates nor progressives.
30Even last campaign progressives, including bernie supporters voted for Hillary even with a clothes pin on their nose th real turncoats were the “moderate” obama voters who flipped to demnted donnie.
Just as the DNC, and “moderate” d’s, sold out McGovern, Mondale, Lmont and so many others since they prefe to complain under a thuglican rather then allow a progressive to win.
The DNC has a long history of torpedoing promising progressive candinates, Cegalis is classic example, to prevent ensure that a thuglican will win.
During the last primary’s the DNC under dws did place a huge thumb on the scale to ensure that hillary won. In the end it damaged her legitimacy and played into the myth of a corrupt d party.
So please no more of this bogus urban myth promoted by rwnj’s that it is progressives who bailed when in fact it has been the “moderates” who have sold out the candinates, the party and the country lest the country moves forward.
Progressives have been historically more reliable d voters then the so called “moderates”