Impeachment Day
The day has finally come: The House of Representatives is set to vote on the Articles of Impeachment against President Donald Trump.
The House is poised to debate articles of impeachment against President Trump alleging he abused his power and obstructed Congress, setting the stage for an extraordinary rebuke from the chamber of Congress most responsive to the will of the American people.
The House will convene at 9 a.m. to begin debate leading up to the final impeachment votes. After an hour of debate on the “rule” governing the proceedings, six hours of debate on the articles will be divided equally between Democrats and Republicans, who could introduce procedural obstacles that would stretch the proceedings into the evening.
Once the debate has concluded, the House will vote on each article of impeachment separately: first the article accusing Mr. Trump of abuse of power, followed by a vote on the article alleging obstruction of Congress.
The votes are the culmination of months of investigation into the president’s efforts to pressure the government of Ukraine to announce investigations that would benefit him politically, including a probe into a company that employed the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, one of the president’s chief potential rivals in his 2020 reelection bid.
The number of Democratic members who said they will vote to impeach the president surpassed the majority threshold needed for passage on Tuesday, paving the way for Mr. Trump’s impeachment in Wednesday’s votes.
The actual vote will come after the debate, likely in the evening at the earliest. You can watch the proceedings here and discuss with the Commentareum here.
Impeachment Day! Seriously, it should be a holiday. In the Spring after the start of the second year of every presidential term, we all take a break, have cookouts, and vote on whether or not the House should draw up articles of impeachment against the sitting president. We’ll leave it up to the house as to what to impeach for, but impeach they must (Constitutional Duty and all that).Report
I propose May 15th.
Do we have any holidays in May? I’m drawing a blank… Memorial day at the end of the month? So, this would give us two. Although, April could use a little help too.
While dancing around the Impeachment Maypole, we could have two effigies: one for the President and one for the Speaker of the House. At the end of the penultimate dance, one of them goes into the fire. Then we dance the appropriate final celebratory dance. Not that I’ve thought about this much…Report
March or April. They kinda share Easter, but that’s it.Report
For fun and solidarity with various religious traditions, we could make our first variable lunar based national holiday such that it always lands one or two weeks after Easter. Which Easter and when Passover?… well, welcome to the family.Report
Remember, remember eighteen December, collusion treason and plot!Report
Well, if you’re trying to make a case for Impeachment day to happen during the mini-Lent of Advent, a time of vigilant waiting and contemplation… I could be persuaded. I suppose the liturgical structure would have to be different than the Maypole Impeachment festival, but I’m up to the challenge… like, we kick-off a season of scrutiny 4 Mondays before Impeachment day – let’s pick the first Monday after Christmas – that starts with 2 weeks of hearings, 1 week of gratitude for our Republic, followed by a final week of vigilance and a big reveal on Impeachment Monday?
Hard to chose, really.Report
But I can’t figure a reason why Donald Trump’s treason should ever be forgot.Report
Resignation prior to impeachment in 1974. An impeachment in 1998. And now an impeachment in 2019. One every other decade for the past 40 years. Despite two centuries prior where we only had one impeachment. I wonder what this means for the health of our fragile republic. There have obviously been intense phases of corruption, partisanship, and even civil war in our history. But in a way, they were all dealt with somehow. This present strain lasting decades seems endemic to the system, baked in with gerrymandering, information echo chambers, and extremely disheartening rationalizations for callousness toward the weakest people – not just politics. Report
Maybe.
But I also have become aware of how rose-tinted and heavily varnished our understanding of America’s past has been.
For example we are appalled at the treatment of immigrants, ripping families apart and caging children; but this and worse was done for decades to Native families, with the overwhelming approval of the American people.
Ethnic cleansing, horrific violence and massacres have never been absent from the American experience. Its just that now we are seeing it up close and personal.
The hopeful takeaway for me is that we struggled and overcame those episodes- and we will overcome this one too.Report
I’m glad we were able to overcome what we did to the Native American and African-Americans. I hope we can remain that resilient when it comes to what we’re doing to Trump.Report
When Trumpists have as much political and economic power as the Sioux, we will be magnanimous and merciful, and distribute government surplus cheese to them on their ungovernable tribal regions.Report
If there are a people who deserved the Sleep of the Just more than we do, I don’t know who they are.Report
I was told that Politico was one of the good ones that was worth quoting so… here:
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Isn’t there some Macbeth thing that’s applicable? If it were done twere well it were done quickly?
Smarter people than me have decided this is the right move. But since we all know the ultimate outcome seems better to let people vote their conscience then hope the good ol’ American attention span takes care of any negative impact on the election.Report
There’s also this bit from the Federalist Papers, responding to the argument that the Senate is an unfit body for trial, and a national committee would be better:
“The [alternative] will be espoused with caution by those who will seriously consider the difficulty of collecting men dispersed over the whole Union; the injury to the innocent, from the procrastinated determination of the charges which might be brought against them; the advantage to the guilty, from the opportunities which delay would afford to intrigue and corruption; and in some cases the detriment to the State, from the prolonged inaction of men whose firm and faithful execution of their duty might have exposed them to the persecution of an intemperate or designing majority in the House of Representatives.”
— PubliusReport
Color me convinced.Report
I think the Democrats find that this attempt to rig an election won’t be forgotten for a couple decades.Report
If there’s one thing the American public can be relied upon to do it’s forgetting stuff.Report
BREAKING: TRUMP HAS BEEN IMPEACHED! REPEAT! TRUMP HAS BEEN IMPEACHED!!!
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I would like to thank Batman for capturing the screenshot that captured the numbers for impeachment:
If you can’t read them for whatever reason, the screenshot shows:
Article I: Abuse of Power
Democratic
Yea: 227
Nay: 2
Present: 1
NV: 3
Republican
Nay: 185
NV: 12
Independent
Yea: 1
Totals:
Yea: 228
Nay: 187
Present: 1
NV: 15Report
Tying everything together:
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I assume the Republicans who didn’t vote had more pressing business to attend to, such as a veterinarian appointment or something.Report
“What about the other article?”, I hear you ask. I dunno! It sounds like Pelosi already gaveled the sesh so… we’re going to vote on those tomorrow?Report
The WashPost headlines say 230-197 for article 1, 229-198 for article 2.Report
I swear, I’m going to stop using Twitter for news.
(Thank you!)Report
There’s talk that the Nancy might “withhold” the articles of impeachment unless the Senate agrees to a bunch of conditions. I think that would be an excellent way to push GOP fundraising and polling even higher, especially among moderates and independents. I’m also not sure that Devin Nunes couldn’t walk his copy over to the Senate and say “Here ya go.”
It’s telling that in the post-vote press interviews, the Democrats have been sad and upset and the Republicans have been fired up and jubilant. I have yet to find a conservative commenter who thinks this is a bad thing, other than what it shows about modern Democrat politicians. I doubt many will be able to resist referring to Trump as “impeached” during their re-election campaigns, and I think that will backfire badly, especially in battleground states, because they never even tried to make the process look either fair, sane, or non-partisan. A typical view seems to be “Pelosi is wearing all black on impeachment day and says she ‘feels sad’. Understandable. She’s attending her party’s funeral.”
I’ve seen interviews with people who didn’t vote for Trump but who are quite upset that the Democrats want to undo the last election and rig the next one. That feeling is likely similar to all the Remainers and Labour voters who just voted Conservative because they were ticked off at a Parliament that seemed determined to ignore the votes of the people. For such people, who may have been sitting on the fence, throwing out the term “impeached President” might just push their buttons.Report
oh knock it off. That whole fairness thing is a big lie and you know it. Republicans sat in the room for every committee hearing that was held, both the closed and public ones. They were given equal time by their Democratic colleagues to question witnesses -most chose to rant and ramble. When the White House ordered underlings to defy subpoenas – underlings that Republicans claim would exonerate the President no less – Republicans sat on their hands instead of meeting with the White House and getting the President to participate. And the most recent statements by Mitch McConnell are that he intends to not actually run a trial with witnesses at all.
But sure, the Democrats are the only ones doing the nasty here.
And while we are at it, I seem to vaguely remember you ranting before the midterm elections about how Democrats were going to loose more seats. Didn’t work out that way, so your prognostications regarding electoral politics are at best suspect.Report
A lot fewer defections than I hoped/feared on the respective sides.Report
Does Cenk Uygur have an opinion on this particular situation? Why, yes! He does!
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Official Democratic Party response to Mr. Uygur:
{Insert jerkoff hand emoji here}Report
To be honest, I wish that the Dems had taken that attitude toward The Young Turks back in 2015.Report