Impeachment: A Briar Patch With No Rabbits

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Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his writing website Yonderandhome.com

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132 Responses

  1. Avatar Philip H
    Ignored
    says:

    No, the democrats didn’t move swiftly enough. Yes they want to hold this over republicans heads.

    But no, acquittal is not a given even this late. Democrats need to keep their caucus together and get 18 votes to ensure a conviction. McConnell wants to rid the Republican Party of Trumpism since he knows good and well it will impact his potential success in the midterms. Given that even Kevin McCarthy has now come out and blamed the insurrection in Trump there may well be 18 republicans willing to convict.Report

  2. Avatar Saul Degraw
    Ignored
    says:

    Forbidding Trump from ever running for office again and stripping him of all his ex-President perks is a plus. No unity without accountability. Roght-wingers push the envelope of authoritarianism again and again without consequences because fearful corporate types and “very serious people” get twists in their underwear over what would happen to their taxes without Republicans being around.

    Unity has to be more than asking Democrats to take one for the team again.Report

  3. Avatar Chip Daniels
    Ignored
    says:

    Democrats move to hold the President accountable for his crimes.
    Republicans en masse defend the criminal.

    Pundits: Democrats screw up again!Report

    • Avatar Andrew Donaldson in reply to Chip Daniels
      Ignored
      says:

      I know you like to wave “Dems in disarray” at pieces like this — a not unfair charge in many cases my own writing included I grant you — but I’m one of those simpletons who likes to judge things not just on stated intention but results. If the point of impeachment is to remove, or in this case punish in abstensia to prevent further acts, then conduct your impeachment in a way to get that result. If you conduct your impeachment in a manner that makes it impossible from the jump to achieve that result it’s fair criticism. Do it twice in a row, even more so.Report

      • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Andrew Donaldson
        Ignored
        says:

        It is possible to do something well. It is possible to do something poorly.

        There are circumstances where doing something well is better than not doing it but there are also circumstances where doing it poorly is *WORSE* than not doing it.

        The criticism that “you’re doing this poorly” having a response of “didn’t you say we should do it well? Well, we’re doing it!” is a response that doesn’t understand the criticism.

        (But maybe we’re in a place where we can’t do anything well anymore and not doing anything has always been unthinkable.)Report

        • Avatar DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird
          Ignored
          says:

          Or maybe the point is not whether it’s done well or poorly, or effectively or ineffectively, but that it be done at all. The American governmental system has no concept of a “vote of no confidence”, but the people demand that Something Be Officially Stated, In Writing, With A Seal, and impeachment is all we’ve got for that.Report

      • Avatar Stillwater in reply to Andrew Donaldson
        Ignored
        says:

        If the point of impeachment is to remove, or in this case punish in abstensia to prevent further acts, then conduct your impeachment in a way to get that result.

        Pelosi views everything through the lens of how it effects the most vulnerable Dems in the House caucus. Not even that much can be said for Schumer though.Report

      • Avatar Chip Daniels in reply to Andrew Donaldson
        Ignored
        says:

        My argument is that this piece assumes a Murc’s Law, where only Democrats have agency and worse, that Democrats are responsible for Republican behavior.

        There is no possible leverage that Democrats possess to force Republicans to do anything. A howling mob was only minutes away from murdering the Republican leadership, and yet they will still defend the one responsible.

        I understand the logic of not tilting at windmills but what we have seen is that a pre-emptive surrender is taken by pundits and the general public alike as acquiescence and acceptance of the behavior.

        We hear a lot, even on this very blog, comments to the effect of “both sides are the same”. We hear a lot of comments that the Democrats needs to show what they stand for and what their values are.

        An impeachment, even a failed one, clearly displays what the Democrats find acceptable and what they don’t, and just as importantly, what the Republicans find acceptable and what they don’t.Report

        • Avatar North in reply to Chip Daniels
          Ignored
          says:

          I don’t frequently agree with Chip so I’d like to second his sound points here. Consequentialism and practicality are important things so on most matters I have a lot of sympathy for Andrew’s viewpoint here but there is not a single paragraph that discusses the Republicans own culpability in this situation. Donald Trump himself gets called out, as if he’s a separate thing from the Republican Party, for approbation but not a word about Conservatives or their party.

          Instead, the thrust of this article is “the Democrats are to be denounced because they were too worried about realpolitik to strike swiftly and unerringly during the tiny window during which the Republican Party’s politicians would have been so rattled from the attempted insurrection that threatened their lives to worry about realpolitik.” And this is from a conservative writer no less.

          Donald didn’t drop out of the heavens like some swift meteor of death; he was invoked upon the polity one step at a time. Certainly, the left and the Democratic party have played some small part in Trumps’ genesis but the lions share of the cause of his fetid political career rests in the lap of the conservative movement and their dedicated political party and its media apparatus (or is it more apt if I say their dedicated media apparatus and its political party now?)

          Fie, fie indeed, on the Democrats for not towing conservatives ideology and party out of the tarpit they are mired in during the moment they were so shell shocked by their own grenade that blew up in their faces that they couldn’t struggle to stop them.Report

          • Avatar greginak in reply to North
            Ignored
            says:

            Lord knows the R’s are trying to forget everything about the trump era. The D’s have limited ability to do anything to him but if a second impeachment is it, then so be it. Not just for the coup but for two months of “stop the steal” bull shite he ginned up. Yeah we all know trump is an incompetent buffoon. We told everybody that in 2016 and R’s didn’t care then. Some people got so used to his idiotic corruption and bs that they didn’t see how bad it got. He was pressuring the GA official to just find votes. Right there F trump and everybody who supports him, that was impeachable. The R’s are to corrupt and power hungry to care, welp F them also but do what can be do to hold them responsible. The coup attempt, do whatever can to hold him responsible.

            Which is a long way of saying, even if it’s slightly delayed impeachment that the R’s will succumb to their characteological flaws on and acquit, do it anyway because it’s what can be done. And let every state AG whose eager have at it.Report

            • Avatar Michael Cain in reply to greginak
              Ignored
              says:

              The D’s have limited ability to do anything to him…

              The D’s probably don’t have to do anything to him to make me happy. I was reading on some business media that he has left the presidency but now has to deal with a company that appears to be in the process of imploding. I don’t think anything would pain him so much as being actually broke.Report

              • Avatar greginak in reply to Michael Cain
                Ignored
                says:

                Oh yeah i’m sure he grits his teeth over every dollar he has to pay out over settling lawsuits. He was the sleaze bag, when he was just a builder/casino owner in NJ, not paying contractors then telling them to sue. He has attorneys on staff who drag it out, make it cost a fortune so just take 10 cents on the dollar.Report

        • Avatar Andrew Donaldson in reply to Chip Daniels
          Ignored
          says:

          I respect your opinion, given evidence by how rarely I comment but want to answer this here:

          I felt I was pretty clear both in this piece and in my body of work I try my best to put the blame where ever it lies without regard to parties or any other consideration. And I expressly said in this very piece I would vote for the impeachment despite my quibbles with the particulars if I were in congress right now, and would if in the senate. If I’m guilty of wanting a rapid, by-the-book impeachment when that particular iron was hot to strike perhaps that is idealistic but I don’t think it wrong in principle. I do not find both sides the same, in fact I think the sides have never been more distinct than they are now. One side with very few exceptions has gone full-bore craven cult, witnessed by -like you said moments from being attacked themselves – the R’s proceeded with clown show pose of objecting to the certification and what’s more the speeches those same members gave during the impeachment show they learned absolutley nothing here – While the other side seems rather ill-equipped at the moment to deal with that reality.

          This impeachment was not a windmill tilt. It was something that had to happen, that the country needed to happen, that should have happened. That it is turning into a windmill tilt is my fear, that I hope I am wrong about, but doubt I am. Having anger at all involved for that is, in my humble but accurate opinion, full justified.Report

        • Avatar Saul Degraw in reply to Chip Daniels
          Ignored
          says:

          And now Republicans are very upset that Democrats are governing like Democrats. How dare we do something like that?Report

          • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw
            Ignored
            says:

            I don’t think that anybody will be surprised by the return to insurance lobbyists writing bills “improving” Obamacare or arguments for getting rid of college debt without, you know, doing anything about college costs.

            They’ll *COMPLAIN* about it, but not be surprised by it.

            It’ll be the return to Syria and using the AUMF as justification that’ll probably have eyebrows raised.Report

            • Avatar Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird
              Ignored
              says:

              Are we going to get four years of Rose Twitter Jaybird attacking Biden from the left?

              I’m not objecting. I just want to set my expectations.Report

              • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels
                Ignored
                says:

                I think that I’ll primarily be pleased if he doesn’t recreate the circumstances that made Trump seem like a decent enough gamble over competent (or competent-enough) malevolence.

                I want it to be the current year.

                Not 2008 or 2012.Report

              • Avatar Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird
                Ignored
                says:

                The beauty of contrarianism is that you don’t need to actually propose anything or support anything or any party or idea or candidate.

                The weakness is that it strips you of any ability to make an argument for or against anything.Report

              • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels
                Ignored
                says:

                I support ending the wars on drugs and terror.

                If Al-Qaeda becomes a problem again, we can pass a new resolution to take them on.

                If drugs become a problem again, we can declare war on them too.Report

              • Avatar Saul Degraw in reply to Chip Daniels
                Ignored
                says:

                I’m objecting.Report

              • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw
                Ignored
                says:

                Saul, I’m not saying “I hope the United States never fires a bullet in anger ever again.”

                I know that we’re going to be going to war all the time. We have bills to pay.

                The thing I want is for us to have a vote on them first. That’s it! Just vote on them! Then I’m good!Report

              • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird
                Ignored
                says:

                The thing I want is for us to have a vote on them first. That’s it! Just vote on them! Then I’m good!

                Preamble

                Joint Resolution

                To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.
                Whereas, on September 11, 2001, acts of treacherous violence were committed against the United States and its citizens; and

                Whereas, such acts render it both necessary and appropriate that the United States exercise its rights to self-defense and to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad; and

                Whereas, in light of the threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by these grave acts of violence; and

                Whereas, such acts continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States; and

                Whereas, the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States: Now, therefore, be it

                Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
                Section 1 – Short Title

                This joint resolution may be cited as the ‘Authorization for Use of Military Force’.

                Section 2 – Authorization For Use of United States Armed Forces

                (a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
                (b) War Powers Resolution Requirements-
                (1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION- Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.
                (2) APPLICABILITY OF OTHER REQUIREMENTS- Nothing in this resolution supersedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution.

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_of_2001#Text_of_the_AUMFReport

              • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Dark Matter
                Ignored
                says:

                Is there a point at which we can say that, hey, mission accomplished?

                Like, if we get out an actuarial table, we can reasonably guess that everybody involved in 9/11 will have died by 2066 or something?Report

              • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird
                Ignored
                says:

                Is there a point at which we can say that, hey, mission accomplished?

                Yes, unfortunately, the enemy gets a vote in what we do.

                We’re fighting an organization promoting an ideal. Islamic-fascism. It’s effectively an info-plague. Just killing everyone involved in 911 doesn’t deal with the problem.

                As long as the religious desire to murder, mass murder, and enslave their way to paradise remains popular enough that we need an army to stop it, war is the lesser evil. When it stops being that popular and the local police can deal with it, the problem will go away.

                Most of the world is now rich enough to go anywhere and informed enough to unify. Although this idea appeals to only a small group as a percentage, having them all go to the same place is a big enough problem that armies need to handle it.

                They have to surrender (or die, or become unpopular), or we have to live with AQ running an absurdly heinous country that believes in, and commits, country-level-crimes which instantly start wars.Report

              • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Dark Matter
                Ignored
                says:

                The whole “AQ is out there and it’s scary enough for us to do something about!” position is one that, currently, has the burden of proof.

                I don’t see that AQ is anything near a threat to anything worse than, say, people who believe in Q.

                I’m not saying they don’t exist and I’m not saying they’re harmless… I’m just saying that if we use keeping them to Antifa-levels of violence, then “mission accomplished”.

                Declare victory. Go home.

                If they get rowdy enough for us to notice again, we can count on the Congress passing AUMF2: Electric Boogaloo.Report

              • Avatar Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird
                Ignored
                says:

                This is why I say that contrarianism strips you of the ability to make an argument.

                Your Big Claim against Hillary was that she was so malevolent and her foreign policy was so dangerous that even Donald Trump was a better risk despite his threat to our democracy.

                Yet, you come out and propose what is a slightly bolder version of the Obama/Clinton policy of “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff”.

                My focus here isn’t on the details of policy. My focus is that your Big Claim seems bizarrely exaggerated compared to the actual distance between you and her.

                You find Trump’s destruction to our democracy preferable to HRC, all over a small niggling difference in foreign policy?

                That would require some sort of explanation or argument which you aren’t making.Report

              • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels
                Ignored
                says:

                No, my big claim against Clinton was that she was uniquely bad at retail politics. Remember the “we’re going to put a lot of coal companies and coal miners out of work” quote? My argument was that she should not have said that. She should have figured out something else to say.

                “Are you saying that she should have lied? The way that Trump lied?”

                “No, I am not.”

                On top of that, my argument was that the Democrats, instead of saying, “Yeah, there were better ways to say that”, said “she did nothing wrong and people who argue that she should have lied are being malevolent”.

                And then I get into how she probably got advice at some point in the 70’s or something from a mentor that said “if there is a train coming down the tracks, say something about how your policies will bring the train. The train is going to be there anyway, but you can tell people that you were part of it getting here” and taking that moment to use that technique (“we are going to put them out of work” vs. “this is going to happen and not even government can prevent it”) turns into “I can’t believe you wanted Clinton to lie to these people”.

                My big claim is that Clinton not only screwed up but there was an entire thought edifice devoted to being in denial that she screwed up.

                Which made me curious as to whether this thought edifice would be in denial about other truths in the future.

                That’s my Big Claim contrary to your inaccurate description of whatever.

                Yet, you come out and propose what is a slightly bolder version of the Obama/Clinton policy of “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff”.

                I am a fan of “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff”.

                I think that going back into the Middle East to bomb Al Qaeda qualifies as “Stupid Stuff”.

                On top of that, I think that appealing to the AUMF as justification for doing it qualifies as “Stupid Stuff”.

                We shouldn’t be doing Stupid Stuff. If we want to go back in there, hold a vote first! Don’t replay 2008/2012!

                I thought that Donald Trump was a buffoon and, even now, I see him as a bullet dodged (yes, even with the capital insurrection) rather than an actual threat.

                He is an indicator of a real threat down the road, though.

                And pretending that it’s 2008/2012 will move us further down that road rather than going somewhere else.

                You find Trump’s destruction to our democracy preferable to HRC, all over a small niggling difference in foreign policy?

                I see Trump as a symptom.

                I do not want the symptom addressed. I want the disease addressed.

                “a small niggling difference in foreign policy”

                How much effort would it take to *NOT* start bombing again against the existential threat of Islamofascism?

                Because I think that that much effort is worth expending.Report

              • Avatar Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird
                Ignored
                says:

                Again, you’re exemplifying my argument.

                You say she shouldn’t have said that remark about coal miners.
                But you also say she shouldn’t have lied.

                You see what’s missing here, right?Report

              • Avatar InMD in reply to Chip Daniels
                Ignored
                says:

                As someone who shares a lot of Jaybird’s views on this I want to give 3 specifics things I think team D could do that would destroy Trumpism. The best part is none of
                are ‘become Republicans’ and all are IMO broadly consistent with existing philosophies and principles.

                1. Recalibrate the relationship with big business/Wall Street. They can still be friends, but the quid pro quo needs to come with actual concessions that help American workers, not just campaign contributions for knee-jerk neo-liberalism.

                2. Actually reject racism and sexism as opposed to feeding the vicious PoMo intersectionality version of it. No more infesting the administrative state with these kinds of nutballs. Stay pro immigration but channel it in ways that help the American economy and workers (prioritize high skills, only bring in low skill when absolutely needed and where downward wage and benefit pressure is mitigated). Drop it as an issue of morality that on its best day makes no sense and on its worst is another excuse to engage in racism against native born citizens.

                3. Do the thing Jaybird says about war. We can defend ourselves and our long standing allies but stop dumping money in expensive pointless adventurism. I think it’s no coincidence that a number of people in the Jan. 6 attack had military ties. We’re sending them on pointless missions and vanity projects while serious socio-economic problems stay unaddressed on the home front.

                This will allow utter battering of the GOP to the extent possible in our system as they retreat to a rump of rural reactionaries and bloodless patricians.Report

              • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels
                Ignored
                says:

                The ideal is something like this:

                Coal Mine Jobs will become increasingly scarce because of technology. We the government will fight that but that will be like pushing against the tide.

                I, HRC, pledge to you that while I’m fighting for you I will also create jobs for you in the following ways.

                (Not in the speech)
                1) Job Training (learn to code)
                2) Something else
                3) Something else.

                This would let her try to appeal to both the Global Warming group and the Miners. And BTW I (Dark Matter) am seriously not good at this sort of thing so someone who is good at spin should be able to do a better job.

                Now if she mixed up her notes and was just virtue signalling to the GW crowd, she might have said something like “Hell yes I’m going to destroy as many coal jobs as I can.” (Saying things like this helps me a lot with the GW people and I need them but don’t need you”).

                Her real world statements were a lot closer to the later than the former.Report

              • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels
                Ignored
                says:

                I had a hint of one of the things that she could have started with. Here. I’ll copy and paste it:

                The train is going to be there anyway, but you can tell people that you were part of it getting here” and taking that moment to use that technique (“we are going to put them out of work” vs. “this is going to happen and not even government can prevent it”) turns into “I can’t believe you wanted Clinton to lie to these people”.

                Begin with “This is going to happen and not even government can prevent it.”

                Move to “Since it’s inevitable, we have a choice between mitigating the pain and living in denial.”

                Then jump to “here is my plan for pain mitigation”.

                See? Easy peasy.

                As it was, not only was there a “we’re going to put coal companies out of work” (right, Tim?), soundbite, there was an opportunity for “well, I’m *NOT* going to put them out of work!” counter-argument. Thus helping the whole “living in denial” thing.

                And my current issue is not “she should have done something else”.

                It’s that the people who supported her still cannot bring themselves to even see how maybe she might have handled it better.

                The only other option is Clinton lying.

                What Clinton did.
                vs.
                Clinton lying.

                And you don’t think that Clinton should have done what she did? You wanted her to *LIE*?!?!?

                It’s the inability to comprehend anything but that binary is what I see as the bad indicator.

                And, yeppers, it’s still there.

                It tells me that we’re not going to be good at dodging non-buffoonish bullets.Report

              • Avatar CJColucci in reply to Jaybird
                Ignored
                says:

                It’s that the people who supported her still cannot bring themselves to even see how maybe she might have handled it better.

                Name three. No one I know of thinks that, as a matter of craft, Clinton handled the issue well. But would it have mattered if she had? Given that we have an Electoral College, getting a few thousand more votes in the coal states by talking like Pamela Swearingen, who did it right but still lost handily, wouldn’t have made a practical difference.
                And, of course, there is the long tradition of politicians going somewhere that they will lose anyway, and using that venue to state some unpalatable truths and look courageous. Was Hillary doing that? Probably not. She was probably just inartful. But we know that she wasn’t the most artful candidate. We agree with that. You’ve been flogging this since 2016. The expired equine is starting to smell. It’s entitled to a decent burial.Report

              • Avatar Jaybird in reply to CJColucci
                Ignored
                says:

                No one I know of thinks that, as a matter of craft, Clinton handled the issue well.

                I suppose this is forward progress from “what, are you saying she should have lied?” but I still wonder if we’re not stuck in “is anything perfect, in this vale of tears?” territory.

                My criticism, remember, is not that Clinton should have done something differently.

                It’s that there seems to be an entire edifice built around not looking at what went wrong and not repeating the mistakes of last time.

                “Of course we made mistakes last time! Nobody’s perfect!”

                I mean, we’re arguing over whether we should re-ramp up the bombing in the Middle East to fight Islamofascism.

                Or, more precisely, whether critics of doing this have a leg to stand on.

                It’s not a defense of ramping up stuff, mind… it’s just an anti-anti-bombing argument.

                Which strikes me as one of the mistakes of last time. And if we’re replaying 2008, I can’t help but notice that 2010 is right around the corner.Report

              • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird
                Ignored
                says:

                It’s not a defense of ramping up stuff, mind… it’s just an anti-anti-bombing argument.

                I’ve made a “pro-bombing” argument.

                Whether or not we should be ramping it up will be situational. There will be times when it goes up. Ideally it’d fall to zero and the local police would have the ability to deal with this (like they do with Q followers).

                This is a very different argument than “HRC could be expected to fire up pointless wars” or “Trump didn’t fire up pointless wars” or “Trump was too aggressive”.

                The level of expected violence isn’t zero, but there is a lot of stuff that happens that we can ignore.Report

              • Avatar CJColucci in reply to Jaybird
                Ignored
                says:

                It’s that there seems to be an entire edifice built around not looking at what went wrong and not repeating the mistakes of last time.

                What “edifice”? Lots of people talked about the mistakes HRC made in 2016 and how to avoid them in 2020. There’s even a good book about exactly that, Seth Masket’s Learning From Loss. And if further evidence were needed, we just had a campaign in which the Democrats did not repeat HRC’s mistakes. But you can’t fit that much reality into a tweet.
                Look, I get that you didn’t care for how the discussion you wanted to have here didn’t go the way you wanted it to go, whoever is to blame for that, but your Edifice Complex looks like that big, beautiful wall paid for by Mexico.
                By the way, my “Name three” is still open.Report

              • Avatar Jaybird in reply to CJColucci
                Ignored
                says:

                Well, CJ, there are plenty of ways to talk about the mistakes made in 2016.

                The mistakes that take the form “I was too trusting”, “I believed that people were better than they are”, and “I loved too deeply” are not particularly interesting. “Hillary Clinton was too good of a person, too willing to reach out to Black people, LGBT+ people, and Hispanics” is not a particularly interesting post-mortem.

                When it comes to Biden, I have been arguing that he’d beat Trump for years. I even had a silly little formula for it: “Does he win Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania? Then he wins the election. Easy peasy.”

                The Democrats absolutely did *NOT* repeat the mistakes of 2016! They ran someone who was not historically awful at retail politics.

                My criticism, as ever, is not that “The Democrats can’t win elections!”

                They can and they do. Indeed, they did.

                My criticism is that if they cannot tell why Clinton was a bad idea and if they cannot figure out why she screwed up, they won’t be able to tell the next time something gets screwed up.

                Biden beat Trump! Hurray!

                Trump is arguably on the list of worst three Presidents of US History.

                Biden beat arguably one of the worst three Presidents in US History! Hurray! (Razor thin margin in a handful of states, though…)

                If the Democrats can’t explain that Clinton was actively harmful on a handful of things without wrapping it in “she loved too much” framing, they won’t be able to tell whether things are going wrong when Kamala Harris starts loving too much.

                And that’s just around the corner.

                (As for “name three”, I can probably find you some threads where people argue against Clinton doing a handful of things differently, if you’d like. But, yeah, that is a conversation *HERE* and not a book about how Clinton did too much outreach to Black people.)Report

              • Avatar CJColucci in reply to Jaybird
                Ignored
                says:

                My criticism is that if they cannot tell why Clinton was a bad idea and if they cannot figure out why she screwed up, they won’t be able to tell the next time something gets screwed up.

                Assumes facts very much not in evidence. There’s plenty of evidence out in the meat world and old-fashioned print media that people whose business it was to worry about these things did worry about these things and, in 2020, did something different.Report

              • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Jaybird
                Ignored
                says:

                Oh, I found a speech I wrote for “Uncle Joe” back in 2017! Let’s see if it holds up:

                “Man, I look at how communities in these communities have been devastated by the communities changing because the mines close. That’s awful and it’s terrible for the communities. I want you to know that I have policies that will help these communities. Move them from the industries that are going away and into the industries that will be replacing the old ones. New jobs to help revitalize the communities. By the way, I’d like to point out that I have nothing to do with these industries going away, which is why I used the passive voice back there. Communities. Jobs. Revitalizing.”

                C’mon, man!Report

              • Avatar Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird
                Ignored
                says:

                See, every time you get close to making an actual argument, you end up parroting vaguely Democratic Party boilerplate (in this case, about mitigating the pain of economic disruption).

                Which drives you farther away from your Big Claim that Trump was a better gamble than HRC.

                Why not drop the contrarian stance and just say “Yeah, the Democrats are better than Republicans”?

                Because ultimately it seems to be where you end up.Report

              • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels
                Ignored
                says:

                Why not drop the contrarian stance and just say “Yeah, the Democrats are better than Republicans”?

                The Democrats *ARE* better than Republicans.

                “I’m glad that you agree that the Democrats are good! That they’re above criticism!”Report

              • Avatar greginak in reply to Jaybird
                Ignored
                says:

                2021 and peeps are still going on about clinton. Not kink shaming, whatever you are into that is consensual. But holy mackerel. This is for Chip also.

                Less bomby and warring isn’t all that new a position. In fact it’s been around for a while. Shame trump suckered people into thinking he would be less aggressive though. Fantasy trump might have been that but, you know, that was fantasy.Report

              • Avatar Stillwater in reply to greginak
                Ignored
                says:

                2021 and peeps are still going on about clinton.

                Remove Clinton from the equation and focus on the political content being expressed. Clinton’s error wasn’t her personal failing (i mean, it was, of course 🙂 but reflective of how Democrats – especially Democratic leadership – views politics. Think of Hillary as a product of 30 years of Democratic party politics. The question/issue then is: have Democrats learned any lessons from HIllary’s campaign about priorities, messaging and policy, and if so, what?

                Consider this: by most accounts the Trump presidency was a disaster, his unfavorables throughout his presidency were historically low, yet had 20,000 some odd votes in three states flipped Biden would have lost the election. On top of that Pelosi managed to *lose* seats in the House. Americans don’t like the Democratic party right now.Report

              • Avatar Jaybird in reply to greginak
                Ignored
                says:

                A fun thread from March 2016.

                I was wrong about a lot of things! But right about a handful.

                There are dynamics at play in the country that seem to have gone to sleep rather than having been abandoned.

                If all we’re playing is 2nd Foundation after a diversion into Foundation and Empire, then we’re going to find ourselves with another Mule.Report

              • Avatar Michael Cain in reply to Jaybird
                Ignored
                says:

                The way that Trump lied?

                I’m going to push back just a little on this statement, since it’s applied to coal jobs. The Trump administration did lots of things to try to prop up the market for coal, which would have required expanding mining. They relaxed rules on CO2, fine particulates, heavy metals, and ash. Rick Perry tried to put in a requirement that a larger portion of the electric supply must be generated at plants that could store six weeks worth of fuel on site (ie, coal or nuclear). Some of the federal lands where they expanded leasing weren’t oil/gas, they were coal. They looked at opening coal terminals at West Coast military bases to support exports. Indirectly, the push to force more raw steel to be produced in the US would have driven up demand for metallurgical coal. The coal promise was one of the few things where they really tried.Report

              • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Michael Cain
                Ignored
                says:

                I didn’t know that.

                Huh. You’d have think that that would have been covered in the news differently.Report

              • Avatar CJColucci in reply to Jaybird
                Ignored
                says:

                Where do you think Michael found out about it?Report

              • Avatar Jaybird in reply to CJColucci
                Ignored
                says:

                He’s exceptionally well-read and has a lot of connections with a lot of people in local government who do stuff like “talk about this sort of thing”.Report

              • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird
                Ignored
                says:

                I don’t see that AQ is anything near a threat to anything worse than, say, people who believe in Q.

                The number of dead bodies suggests otherwise. That countries have come close to falling to them also suggests otherwise.

                If they get rowdy enough for us to notice again, we can count on the Congress passing AUMF2: Electric Boogaloo.

                Obama thought exactly like you do, tried implementing that reasoning, and almost handed AQ Iraq and Afghanistan. AQ is on a different level than the followers of Q. Insisting that we need another AUMF because the fight is over ignores that the fight isn’t over.

                This is a slow burn war, that’s unusual but there are lots of historical examples.Report

              • Avatar InMD in reply to Dark Matter
                Ignored
                says:

                Who the hell cares who runs Iraq and Afghanistan? It has no bearing on the day to day life of the average citizen and even if it did our ability to control those countries is negligible. The best we can do is dethrone at the cost of a whole bunch of money, wasted American lives, regional chaos, unintended consequences, and breeding more AQ.Report

              • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to InMD
                Ignored
                says:

                Who the hell cares who runs Iraq and Afghanistan?

                Unfortunately, 911 proved we need to care. That’s over and above the various treaties that we’ve signed claiming we wouldn’t allow genocide.

                and breeding more AQ

                911 didn’t happen because we stayed, it happened because we left.

                The best we can do is dethrone at the cost of a whole bunch of money, wasted American lives, regional chaos, unintended consequences,

                We’re garbage men, buying time until they get their act together. “Regional chaos” is preferable over letting AQ have its own country.

                Obama, to his credit, figured out a way to run this on the cheap. I did the math once and decided that it was MUCH cheaper to stay there collecting garbage for decades with drones than it would be to go through another 911.Report

              • Avatar InMD in reply to Dark Matter
                Ignored
                says:

                Do you have evidence to support any of these assertions? The people who committed 9/11 are dead, including OBL. Their beef with us was our boots on the ground in SA and support for various odious regimes in the region.

                Now AQ is better characterized as one of many radical insurgent movements primarily interested in overthrowing middle eastern governments or fighting ethnic/sectarian civil wars on the other side of the globe. We should do our diligence to keep them out of the country but this ‘fighting them over there so as not to fight them over here’ is the stuff of pure discredited propaganda. AQ will never have their own country and the closest they ever come to it is when we decapitate nationalist dictatorships in our incoherent moral crusading.Report

              • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to InMD
                Ignored
                says:

                ‘fighting them over there so as not to fight them over here’ is the stuff of pure discredited propaganda

                Discredited how? Wasn’t 911 “over here”?

                Their beef with us was our boots on the ground in SA and support for various odious regimes in the region.

                This is repeating their propaganda about their motivations, which points a finger at Israel. However, their behavior doesn’t match their rhetoric (i.e. they never attack Israel themselves). Further the odious regimes which they supposedly oppose are less odious than themselves by our standards and often by their own.

                The “boots on the ground in SA” was OBL beef with SA because they kicked him out (he wanted to “protect” SA with his personal army, SA believed (correctly imho) that this would lead to OBL taking over).

                Do you have evidence to support any of these assertions?

                Obama proclaimed them to be a JV team and walked away. We saw what AQ running a territory would look like.

                AQ will never have their own country…

                AQ had their own country for a while after we walked away.

                The people who committed 9/11 are dead, including OBL.

                Suicide attacks do tend to get the people committing them killed. If you view that as a “lone wolf” thing, then there’s not much to do after the “lone wolf” is dead. If you view this as a technique by an army then we have a different problem.

                Now AQ is better characterized as one of many radical insurgent movements primarily interested in overthrowing middle eastern governments or fighting ethnic/sectarian civil wars on the other side of the globe.

                Sure. However, you can be several things at once. Being a mammal doesn’t mean you can’t also be a wolf.Report

              • Avatar InMD in reply to Dark Matter
                Ignored
                says:

                Dark, take it back to the most basic issue of correlation and causation. What evidence do you have to show that our overseas interventions have prevented a single attack on American soil? Vague assertions to that effect from spooks and politicians don’t count.

                The lone wolf stuff if it happens will be home grown and not come out of Pashtun separatism or the millenia long feud between Sunni and Shiites. At most it’s a local law enforcement problem that dwarves urban drug crime and probably even mass shootings.Report

              • Avatar Stillwater in reply to InMD
                Ignored
                says:

                If OBL is to be believed 9/11 was a *response to* American interventions in the ME. Pretty sure Dark won’t agree with OBL though.Report

              • Avatar InMD in reply to Stillwater
                Ignored
                says:

                I know it’s unfashionable but I’ve never understood the pathological need to reject the explanations they give for their own actions. I guess I can see why politicians and folks in the government do given how embarrassing it is for them but not regular people.Report

              • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to InMD
                Ignored
                says:

                Comment in mod.Report

              • Avatar Jaybird in reply to InMD
                Ignored
                says:

                If you go back and re-read the 9/11 letter that Osama wrote, it talks about America in Saudi Arabia and how Israel treats the Palestinians. (Like, there was *A LOT* of stuff about the Palestinians in there.) It gets into some weird stuff about sex and some weird stuff about usury.

                I mean, I know why *I* would read that letter and say that, okay, *MAYBE* he’s got a point when it comes to 10-20% of it, but the rest of it is just *NUTS*.

                I mean, Ted Kaczynski had a pretty good essay.

                Osama’s essay? Nowhere near as good.

                So, of course, everybody scanned the letter, wadded it up and tossed it in the trash, then started explaining that if only we had followed the advice I’ve been yelling for the last decade, we could have avoided this.

                Personally, I think we should have legalized pot.Report

              • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird
                Ignored
                says:

                Time for a quote:

                The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you. (a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honor, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and trading with interest.[15]

                He was also solidly against “Sanctions imposed against Iraq” and Israel in general.

                Note he seems to have never acted against Israel and ABL and Saddam was a Ba’athist and VERY much at odds with political Islamism. ABL offered to “defend SA” against his forces. To the extent they had a relationship they would have hated each other.Report

              • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Dark Matter
                Ignored
                says:

                Yeah, back in 2002, I was pro Afghanistan, pro Iraq… and I got into arguments with Democrats who explained that it was our meddling in the Middle East in the first place that caused 9/11. We just need to stop meddling, they told me!

                That was the part of Osama’s letter that I quoted to them.Report

              • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird
                Ignored
                says:

                We just need to stop meddling, they told me!

                When I picture a world where we use a reality editor to see the ME without us meddling, I see a nuclear armed Saddam. Then all of his rivals get nukes. And then all of their rivals.

                So… does having the bomb mean these countries become more democratic? More stable? Less likely to engage in state terrorism? Less likely to become a failed state?

                Some of these strong men have had no hesitation about using WMDs and/or at firing up wars. Does that remain a thing?

                The world is very small, we have interests there. Nukes, terrorism, and oil are three examples but there are probably others.Report

              • Avatar Stillwater in reply to Jaybird
                Ignored
                says:

                “I read the letter written about the insurrection at the Capitol building. It was a lot of nonsense about voter fraud and stolen elections and Venezuelan communism. I just tossed it in the trash. Those people are crazy don’t think like I do.”Report

              • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to Stillwater
                Ignored
                says:

                If we’re going to put an explanation on the riot at the Capitol building we have…
                1) What Trump claims (voter fraud, stolen elections, etc).
                2) Trump being but hurt that he lost the election (very much NOT what Trump has said).

                I see no reason to think OBL is way more honest than Trump.Report

              • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to InMD
                Ignored
                says:

                If you ask someone beating his wife why he’s doing it, he’ll explain it’s her fault. That’s not a good explanation.

                Everything OBL said was carefully crafted to an ends. That ends was making AQ more popular and powerful.

                OBL works very well as a power hungry megalomaniac. I don’t see a reason to credit “American Interventions” as the reason why he did what he did any more than I credit…

                …Western support for attacking Muslims in Somalia, supporting Russian atrocities against Muslims in Chechnya, supporting the Indian oppression against Muslims in Kashmir, the Jewish aggression against Muslims in Lebanon…

                Which are black letter among his claims on why he did it.

                He strung together a list of “causes” that are popular among the group he is trying to recruit and are politically useful to his cause and claimed that was why he was doing it. This is very similar to Saddam Hussein’s claim that he invaded Kuwait because of Israel.Report

              • Avatar InMD in reply to Dark Matter
                Ignored
                says:

                And yet you think making him more popular by unleashing collateral damage in Muslim countries and perpetually destabilizing governments that would suppress his cause is the answer.

                You also still haven’t shown evidence that any of this prevents attacks in the US. It’s almost like you don’t even care to dig into the efficacy of your own policy preferences.Report

              • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to InMD
                Ignored
                says:

                And yet you think making him more popular by unleashing collateral damage in Muslim countries and perpetually destabilizing governments that would suppress his cause is the answer.

                I think the alternatives to doing these sorts of things is often worse than not doing them.

                88% of Egypt thinks Death is the appropriate punishment for leaving Islam. There are a large number of other really bad ideas floating around.

                The idea that there’s something we can to do to make this a sane and stable place is wishful thinking. Bad stuff is going to happen. We’re going to have to go play cop and/or garbage man again.

                The idea that it would be much better if we’d allowed a nuclear Saddam or AQ with a country or whatever seems like the line of reasoning that needs to be justified.Report

              • Avatar InMD in reply to Dark Matter
                Ignored
                says:

                There was no AQ in Iraq until there were Americans in Iraq. Saddam destroyed his capabilities after the Gulf War.

                Regarding the nature of these countries and our capabilities there you’re the one saying we need to be involved not me.Report

              • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to InMD
                Ignored
                says:

                There was no AQ in Iraq until there were Americans in Iraq. Saddam destroyed his capabilities after the Gulf War.

                “No involvement” means “no gulf war”.

                So Saddam would still have Kuwait and his nuclear program and his various WMDs (which he repeatedly used).

                If the US doesn’t stop him then no one does. He could easily take SA.

                Various people would cry about “US support for strong men and how that makes us unpopular” but there is no way forward that isn’t an unpopular mistake.

                If our reality editor has “Saddam the nice guy who doesn’t do all the things that Saddam traditionally does”, then things are clearly much better. The problem is he had a habit of starting wars and using WMDs.

                The way to bet is his neighbours go nuclear because Saddam has bragged that he has and the US won’t protect anyone from him. Then things get interesting.Report

              • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to InMD
                Ignored
                says:

                What evidence do you have to show that our overseas interventions have prevented a single attack on American soil?

                You should go read the wikis on AQ before and after 911.

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Al-Qaeda_attacks
                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda
                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant#Human_rights_abuse_and_war_crime_findings

                30 million dollar a year budget for terror operations. The assassination of Obama in the planning stage. A seriously bloody and heinous history.

                This is not a group that we want backed up by the resources of a country. It’s also not a group that is going to let us not be at war with them.Report

              • Avatar InMD in reply to Dark Matter
                Ignored
                says:

                Yes they are bad. I do not dispute that. I’m asking for proof that these policies actually prevent terrorist attacks in the United States.Report

              • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to InMD
                Ignored
                says:

                …proof that these policies actually prevent terrorist attacks in the United States.

                Have there been any 911s recently?

                Or maybe a better question is what would you accept as proof?Report

              • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Dark Matter
                Ignored
                says:

                How many 9/11s do you think it’s fair to expect?Report

              • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird
                Ignored
                says:

                911 took about what, 4-5 years to pull off?

                I think, if we hadn’t gone in, they would have done something like that every 4-5 years as it was.

                However I also think they would have expanded on that “success” and put more resources into it and the rate would have increased.

                Of course a big part of why we needed to go in was to show that a country pulling this sort of thing would be punished, so that other countries don’t simply copy it.Report

              • Avatar Michael Cain in reply to Dark Matter
                Ignored
                says:

                911 took about what, 4-5 years to pull off?

                And would have failed if the protocol for attempted hijackings had not been stuck in the 1960s. And would have failed if the FBI had followed protocol for people taking weird sets of flying classes. And would have failed if people who overstayed student visas were apprehended and deported.

                The proper response was not military, the proper response was improved policing.Report

              • Avatar Murali in reply to Michael Cain
                Ignored
                says:

                Lots of students have legitimate reasons for overstaying their visas. Basically, lots of students want to continue working in the US after getting their degrees.

                Here is a complicating factor: The US immigration services is a massive bureaucracy that is at times either stupid, evil or both.

                This has 2 implications

                1. Applications take forever to process because they are needlessly complicated

                2. It is nearly impossible to get things done outside of the united states

                So, lots of foreign students are going to be sitting around with expired student visas waiting to get there H1B.

                And also, it is pointlessly cruel to make someone fly back to their home country and then fly again to the United states a few months later. Not only is the plane ticket an unecessary cost, there is also the cost of moving all of one’s things across at least one continent.Report

              • Avatar North in reply to Dark Matter
                Ignored
                says:

                It bears noting that the window of availability for 9/11 style attacks to occur began to close when AA flight 11 crashed into the North Tower and finished closing when UA Flight 93 crashed in a field- brought down by its passengers.

                Up until 9/11 the understanding among all air travelers was that in a hijacking situation if you sat still and caused little fuss you’d be taken on an unpleasant detour and then eventually be released back to your life. 9/11 destroyed that paradigm and air passengers were swift to respond. The new paradigm is that if someone hijacks the plane, or behaves oddly, or looks funny, you rise up en masse and beat them down. Do they threaten you with box cutters? Do they claim to have a bomb? You mob them. Someone might get cut but the accepted knowledge is that if they get to the cockpit you all die.

                The basic reality is that it’s not possible to smuggle enough weaponry onto an airliner for hijackers to commandeer the plane if the passengers refuse to sit still. It’s an enclosed space and a simple numbers game.

                Remember the shoe bomber? The underwear bomber? Utterly dogpiled before they could accomplish anything. Forget keeping hijackers from banging on the cockpit doors- airline protocols’ biggest challenge, currently, is for the flight attendants to keep passengers from killing the fish out of suspected hijackers before the plane gets landed.Report

              • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to North
                Ignored
                says:

                I’m an engineer. I thought about it for a while. I came up with some answers.

                That’s as much detail as I’m willing to put onto a public forum and I don’t want anyone else putting their thoughts in here either.

                However imho you’re seriously kidding yourself if you think that’s the only hole in society.Report

              • Avatar North in reply to Dark Matter
                Ignored
                says:

                I didn’t say that society is a seamless wall of security. I simply observed that there’s another explanation for the lack of 9/11 style airline attacks other than that the War on Terror prevented them- and that reason is that (in addition to hardened security on the airplane) passengers will no longer permit airplanes to be hijacked and that presents an enormous obstacle to would be hijackers.Report

              • Avatar Oscar Gordon in reply to North
                Ignored
                says:

                That, and locking the flight deck door.

                But yeah, dealing with an angry and frightened mob of passengers in cramped quarters is no small thing. I believe even OBL knew that he’d only get to use that tactic once.Report

              • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to North
                Ignored
                says:

                We will never have another 911 airplanes-used-as-weapons attack. It was a one off.

                That’s not the same thing as never having a terror attack with those numbers of civilians killed… or even more.Report

            • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird
              Ignored
              says:

              It’ll be the return to Syria and using the AUMF as justification that’ll probably have eyebrows raised.

              If Al-Qaeda in Syria starts to win, what do we do?

              My expectation is we stand back and let Russia do the evil acts, but what if they don’t?

              BTW Al-Qaeda in Syria is a real organisation, they’ve occasionally been described as successful but I’ve no clue if they currently are.Report

            • Avatar Saul Degraw in reply to Jaybird
              Ignored
              says:

              Jaybird, Rose Twitter represents less than 1 percent of the American populace. Biden has already rejoined WHO, rolled back Trump’s anti-LBGTQA legislative actions, ended the Muslim Ban, and done many other things. He is going to be a good liberal President.

              You need to get over your psychological hatred of the Democratic Party.Report

        • Avatar Brandon Berg in reply to Chip Daniels
          Ignored
          says:

          We hear a lot, even on this very blog, comments to the effect of “both sides are the same”.

          Note that neither “both sides are bad” nor “this particular form of bad behavior is exhibited by a subset of people on both sides” (AKA BSDI) implies that both sides are the same.Report

  4. Avatar InMD
    Ignored
    says:

    I agree. Pelosi and Schumer never seem to outsmart anyone but themselves.Report

    • Avatar Stillwater in reply to InMD
      Ignored
      says:

      Republican Rep Katko asked the Pelosi-led Dems for 10 minutes of floor time to make the conservative argument for why Trump should be impeached and convicted. He was hoping they’d agree on seven minutes. Pelosi gave him one.

      Pelosi is a good leader of a caucus, she’s a very good vote counter and a pretty good whip. But she’s an absolutely awful retail political leader. Schumer is even worse on all counts.

      {{Adam Schiff’s instincts are lightyears better than Pelosi’s.}}Report

      • Avatar InMD in reply to Stillwater
        Ignored
        says:

        Yea that’s fair. I’m not exactly dying for a scorched-Earth progressive agenda (I don’t think it would work) but they never try for the kill shot when it’s there. It would go a lot farther I think at checking current GOP strategy, or at least force the GOP to play them more honest.Report

    • Avatar Saul Degraw in reply to InMD
      Ignored
      says:

      Pelosi and Schumer’s political instincts are much better than the average OTer gives them credit for.Report

      • Avatar Stillwater in reply to Saul Degraw
        Ignored
        says:

        Pelosi *lost seats* in 2020.Report

        • Avatar Saul Degraw in reply to Stillwater
          Ignored
          says:

          2018 was a wave election and those involve marginal seats, some of which were likely to go back to the GOP with Trump or not. Regardless of the speaker or not. Attributing every win or loss to the Speaker is the height of green lanternism and a bad understanding of demographics and gerrymandering. But by this variant, Schumer should get credit for Democratic victories in Arizona, Georgia (x 2), and Colorado.Report

          • Avatar Andrew Donaldson in reply to Saul Degraw
            Ignored
            says:

            Credit for winning of course. It is hard not to see Georgia as anything but a giant self-inflicted gunshot wound for the GOP: If you designed how to lose two senate senates I’m not sure what you would have done differently. And they will not be easy flips back. Especially Senator Warnock who is up in 2022 since his was the special election. That race got personal and will be very fresh in folks mind, especially the African-American church community that — rightly — took personal umbrage to some of the attacks on faith and the ignorance of how powerful the social structure of church culture is there. He will be very hard to beat next years. As for Arizona the state party is so ingrained with wackadoos like Kelli Ward they will not be competitive this cycle or any other unless/until they get some adults back in that room, and like Colorado their demo’s are rapidly changing.Report

            • Avatar Saul Degraw in reply to Andrew Donaldson
              Ignored
              says:

              My main point is that election results cannot be credited or blamed on one on individual but this seems to be an insidious trap in American punditry both amateur and professional. As polarized as the country is, some districts are around the edges and others are changing. Democrats picked up three former Republican suburban districts by significant margins. They lost districts that are largely rural and white but were staying in the D column for reasons of an old hand.

              I just have a hard time seeing why it is hard to grasp the concept that wave elections involve a lot of wins in marginal districts that might switch frequently for a large number of reasons.

              But American punditry likes to give all the blame or credit to one individual because American punditry is very lazy. Plus there are large doses of sexism in Nancy hate or hating on Democratic women in general. This week I saw a few Republicans gloating about how Bobert (nuts-Colorado) was more attractive than Pelosi and Biden’s press secretary. Never mind that voting for someone based on looks is very stupid.

              During the early years of Trump, there were a few libertarians who were dismayed about their Trump curious cohort and surmised that these folks “hated liberals more than they loved liberty.” A lot of anti anti Trumpism still seems based on hating Democratic voters more than anything else. We amplify the volume of nobodies like Michael Tracey and cosplay socialists Walker Bragman because they dunk on the Democratic party because people see the Democratic party as the mean mom party. The eat your vegetables party. So much of American politics is stuck in pouty adolescent rebellion and we are not great for it.Report

      • Avatar InMD in reply to Saul Degraw
        Ignored
        says:

        Maybe so but that doesn’t mean they aren’t also outmatched more often than not.Report

  5. Avatar Michael Siegel
    Ignored
    says:

    Meh. This will all be forgotten by November. I remember how the first impeachment was supposed to be a huge political thing and it ended up not mattering at all. I mean, granted, pandemic. But I still think the downside for Dems on this is fairly small.Report

  6. Avatar gabriel conroy
    Ignored
    says:

    I pretty much agree with this take. I have a post in queue (submitted it just before I saw this one) that discusses what I see as the challenges of impeachment now that Mr. Trump has left office.Report

  7. Avatar Doctor Jay
    Ignored
    says:

    I’m wondering just whom they might call as witnesses to what happened that day, and what they might have to say.

    I have a strong dislike for Monday Morning Quarterbacking and second-guessing. Can we perform the controlled experiment, where we do both things and compare results? We cannot. We can imagine, we often imagine, that what we would have done would have been better. However, in hindsight I think it’s clear that where I could tell, Speaker Pelosi’s choices are generally better.

    And by the way, she’s far from being the fire-breathing radical lefty that so many love to portray her as. That’s not at all how she’s led her caucus.

    Finally, if not enough Senators vote to convict, and that fails to send the desired message, isn’t that on them? They are grownups.Report

  8. Avatar Jaybird
    Ignored
    says:

    I have some vaguely disjointed thoughts.

    Trump will probably get impeached.
    Trump won’t get impeached because of the insurrection but because of his threat to form The Patriot Party. Oh, you’re going to run against *US*? Here are the votes to impeach! Now Trump can’t run ever again.*

    I mean, the *OFFICIAL* reasons will be because of whatever is in the articles… but that won’t be what inspires the votes to change.

    This will leave a bad taste in everybody’s mouth because it’s like the whole Tax Evasion thing for Al Capone. Yes, he *WAS* guilty of evading taxes. He was put on trial for evading taxes and was found guilty of evading taxes.,

    But that wasn’t why they went after him in the first place.

    *Maybe Article 1 could be read the same way as the 2nd and we can parse the meaning of “hold *AND* enjoy” and ask if he could hold an office if it were a pain in the butt.Report

    • Avatar Philip H in reply to Jaybird
      Ignored
      says:

      Trump has already been Impeached in as much as the House passed Articles of Impeachment. He is to be tried and may or may not be convicted.

      Lets call a spade a spade shall we?Report

      • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Philip H
        Ignored
        says:

        Yes, of course. This is one of those things that showed up a lot in the year 2000.

        “Clinton wasn’t impeached!”
        “He was impeached!”
        “They didn’t find him guilty!”

        Yes, of course. Trump was impeached twice.

        Please allow me to amend my vaguely disjointed thoughts and change “impeached” to “found guilty by the senate trial” or whatever the proper term would be.Report

    • Avatar DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird
      Ignored
      says:

      “Trump won’t get impeached because of the insurrection but because of his threat to form The Patriot Party.”

      Although it would be pretty funny if that happened and a hundred years from now they’re writing history studies about how Donald Trump and Teddy Roosevelt were basically the same person…Report

  9. Avatar Dark Matter
    Ignored
    says:

    Biden should pardon him before impeachment goes any further. That’s lets him…
    1) Claim he’s “unifying” while throwing shit on Trump.
    2) Let everyone focus on getting Biden’s stuff enacted.
    3) Prevent Trump from claiming victim-hood.

    Does anyone know if you can pardon people against their will? If not then Trump would actually have to accept his pardon and that’s probably the only way to get him to admit his actions.Report

    • Avatar Philip H in reply to Dark Matter
      Ignored
      says:

      The beauty of impeachment is its a political process cloaked in judicial trappings. Trump doesn’t have to admit guilt to be convicted by the Senate.

      Pardons do no good. Ford pardoned Nixon, and where’d that get us?Report

      • Avatar Brandon Berg in reply to Philip H
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        says:

        The problem with impeachment is that it’s a political process cloaked in judicial trappings. If a third of the Senate thinks it’s in their best interest politically not to convict, they probably won’t convict.Report

      • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to Philip H
        Ignored
        says:

        Ford pardoned Nixon, and where’d that get us?

        It let the country move on. Unification is supposed to be a thing right now.

        With the benefit of hindsight it’s mostly viewed as the right move… although it probably cost Ford his re-election. Biden is not Trump’s successor so presumably he wouldn’t have that problem and that’s if he runs again (he’s said he won’t but whatever).

        We’ve waited long enough that Trump’s trial will (more and more) be viewed as a way to divide the GOP and make them cast politically painful votes. Fun for Team Blue, but if they have other priorities (like immigration reform) then maybe those should take priority.

        How long did Trump’s first impeachment trial take? Weeks? Months? Is that really what Joe wants to do with his first 100 days?Report

  10. Avatar Ken S
    Ignored
    says:

    The Constitution says explicitly that the President cannot pardon an impeachment. It’s one of the few points upon which there is no room for creative interpretation.Report

  11. Avatar Kazzy
    Ignored
    says:

    This reads like Democrats need to get impeachment — and, more broadly, everything — perfect or they are failures.Report

  12. Avatar DavidTC
    Ignored
    says:

    I find the theory that Pelosi actually wants to get _rid_ of Trump an interesting idea.

    Why on Earth would she want to do that?

    The sole danger of Trump is that the Republican party fell in line behind him. That is…GONE. I don’t care if they don’t vote for barring him from office, but he is clearly _way_ too risky for the Republican political establishment.

    Right now, Trump has crossed quite a lot of lines, and ripped the Republican party in half. This will happen again during the impeachment, but it seems best to save it for later.

    This will continue to hurt Republican unity over the next four years as corruption Trump did repeatedly gets uncovered…we’re about to have ‘Republicans investigating Hillary Clinton for four years’, except it’s _justified_ and a hell of a lot of people are going to jail. Trump quite possibly included.

    So…I don’t see why Pelosi wants to impeach Trump…the sooner she does that, the sooner Trump is denied at seat at the table, and, well, to paraphrase the Art of War, don’t solve your enemy’s problem for them. Trump is the Republican’s problem now, and he’s going to be their problem for _years_.

    Meanwhile, if Pelosi wants to bar Trump from office in 2024, even if this conviction fails, there are at least two way to get there from here. Wait until he’s actually been arrested, and impeach him again later while in prison(See followup post). That’s going to be a lot harder for Republicans to justify voting against.

    Or she might not do anything at all, depending on if Trump is charged with inciting things at the Capitol. You can’t be president if you have ‘having previously taken an oath…to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof’ under the 14th amendment, and 18 U.S. Code § 2383 is the specific law implimenting that. I don’t know about actual insurrection, but ‘giving aid or comfort’…well, crap. (The _law_ also forbids inciting an insurrection, which Trump also did, but that isn’t in the constitution so such incitement wouldn’t bar him.)Report

    • Avatar DavidTC in reply to DavidTC
      Ignored
      says:

      ‘But, DavidTC, Trump can’t be impeached again now that he is out of office’.

      Yeah, no.

      A lot of people, including some people that seem very smart, seem to think that Congress can only impeach people while they are in office because of Article II secton 4.

      They are _very seriously_ misreading what the constitution says about impeachment, because they assume that the constitution is laying out what impeachment is and giving the government that power. This is not correct. The power of impeachment is not granted by the constitution.

      Impeachment is an _inherent_ unlisted power of governments, it means ‘prosecution by legislature’, and as such the power itself is not spelled out anywhere. It’s exactly like the ability to suspend habeas corpus is not spelled out, it just is assumed to exist…and then it is limited to certain situations.

      These are things that just _exist_ as a government power under English law, because England has an unwritten constitution with centuries of history. And the US constitution is written as if those things exist as a power of the US government, even if no one ever explicitly said they did. And, impeachment, under English law, was an already-existing trial by legislature that could be targeted at anyone, with any punishment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_in_the_United_Kingdom

      Here is the very first sentence of that, and note the word ‘normally’ in that: Impeachment is a process in which the parliament of the United Kingdom may prosecute and try individuals, _normally_ holders of public office, for high treason or other crimes and misdemeanours.

      And notice that their impeachment allowed actual criminal punishment. So if you read the US constitution knowing that, then you will understand why our constitution explicitly limited it to two specific punishments, removal from office and barring from office, as the possible outcomes.

      Article II section 4 is not, in any way, restrictive of who can be impeached and convicted. It appears to mostly exist to make clear that it is possible to remove the President via impeachment, which is something that otherwise could be confusing under an English understanding of the law…you can’t impeach and remove the King, after all.Report

    • Avatar Dark Matter in reply to DavidTC
      Ignored
      says:

      I don’t see any reason why Team Blue would want to prevent Trump from running in 2024.Report

      • Avatar DavidTC in reply to Dark Matter
        Ignored
        says:

        Having him barred from the presidency _and still out there_ tearing the Republicans in half is sorta the ideal situation for the Democrats.

        But…you’re right. The Republicans would end up wasting a lot of time and energy stopping him from winning the nomination.

        On the other other hand, I don’t think there is a chance of him getting a nomination, regardless of what any political actors do.

        I think the question is if Pelosi agrees with my thoughts on this.

        My logic is: By the time we get to that point, his entire universe will have been dismantled. All the loans are being called in, and the media and business world has panicked and stopped supporting him.

        As you pointed out during Trump, there were people who supported Trump for business reasons, with the idea he’d be better for business than the Democrats. I disagreed their conclusions, but I could see the concept.

        No one thinks that anymore.

        Almost very US business and real media outlet that exists, even conservative ones, wants the US government to peacefully continue to operate, and Trump managed to threaten that. And that’s…wow.

        And while we can debate deplatforming in general, it now seems clear: If you incite an attempted coup, every single entity with some incentive to see the US continue to operate in a lawful and steady manner (aka, all of them except the MyPillow guy) will go ‘Nope’ and walk away.

        Deprived of a platform, Trump has nothing. And by the time the actual election rolls around, he _really_ will have nothing, and he’s not getting any free airtime, ever again.

        Again, this is just me guessing. I’m not very good at Trump-guessing, I assumed he’d lose the first election. So I’ve tried to not predict what will happen with Trump, although I will ask for partial credit for my idea that he would notice and mobilize q-anon after losing the election to build a new insane base that constantly caused Republicans problems. I just failed to consider that ‘after the election’ included ‘while he was still in office’.Report

    • Avatar Saul Degraw in reply to DavidTC
      Ignored
      says:

      Considering the Arizona GOP just censured three Republicans for not being sufficiently pro-Trump including their governor, I think the GOP is between a rock and a hard place. I think there are other reasons to want him gone beyond electoral politics. You can think he did commit acts that deserve him being barred for office, you can find him dangerous to democratic norms.Report

  13. Avatar Oscar Gordon
    Ignored
    says:

    Our political leaders are never as clever as they think they are.

    One of the more significant failings of humans is to assume that the ability to win a popularity contest maps directly to the wisdom/intelligence/ability to do anything else. And it’s not just the political class that has this failing.Report

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