Like many white conservative Southern politicians, she's perfectly willing to trade advancing her political power for disenfranchising her own constituents -only 46% of Arkansans identify as Republicans (https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/state/arkansas/party-affiliation/). And while 62.4% of voters in Arkansas supported Mr. Trump, nearly 35% didn't.

Again, she doesn't really care (neither did her father) but she mis-reads her state if she believed Democrats don't exist among her own citizens.

Team Blue has always been "America First."

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2010/08/06/president-obama-pushes-made-america-boost-recovery

Interestingly Team Red wasn't always so:

Republicans urged President Barack Obama on Thursday to roll back “Buy American” provisions of this year’s economic stimulus package that they said were delaying public works projects and costing American jobs.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-buyamerican/republicans-urge-obama-to-roll-back-buy-american-idUSTRE5975VY20091008

An impeachment trial that takes a day or week is probably fine. Convict him and move on. I don’t think that’s what we’re looking at. A second impeachment that let’s Trump take all the oxygen out of the capital for a few months probably means not getting immigration reform.

This is a fiction promulgated by Mitch McConnell. Just like the Filibuster is a quaint tradition now honored in its breach for everything but legislation, the "inability" of the Senate to do anything substantive is purely a choice. Notice the Senate approved a Supreme Court Justice quite swiftly when it felt so inclined.

We’re not going to embarrass Trump because that’s impossible.

This is also a lie - Trump is very much and ego driven person, narcissistically so, and being mocked as a twice impeached and once convicted former President will indeed burrow its way into his skin and eat him up from inside.

Never mind reports that now that he's a loser again memberships to Mar-A-Lago are plummeting.

Because corporations do such a good job now on the rest of their self governance.

SMDH

SO fun fact - most of the authorizing statutes Congress passes to tell us wayward feds what to do have sunset clauses. Meaning if Congress doesn't do something to reauthorize them they supposedly go away. In actuality Congress only reauthorizes about 1/3rd of what's up in any year, and federal agencies keep going under the prior statutes because actually stopping stuff generally gets us in trouble with the appropriators.

We know the price of not opposing him. We have 4 years of data on that.

And don't forget - he's both subject to further potential trial jeopardy in the City and State of New York, and he HATES being a loser. Its why he's making noises about ginning up his own political party. SO the up sides to adding his Big L is still huge.

Republicans did exactly what they set out to do - cut taxes and install judges. They accomplished their goals and had no compunction about running over anyone who tried to stop them. Yes, they did it by bottling up lots and lots of legislation, but McConnell didn't care, and he and trump's surrogates managed to keep the story alive that it was Democrats who were the do-nothings.

That's my point.

I know I keep beating a dead horse, but too many Americans see Democrats a flaccid Not-Fighters. While we can spend days debating the psychology of it all, Republicans (many in the Trumpian camps) succeed in no small measure because they are perfectly willing to do what appears to the unwashed as "fighting" to get their way. Democrats have to stop rolling over and demanding more statistics and more commissions and more reports.

true, though occasionally there is an exception that proves the rule. AOC comes to mind.

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?

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?

Agreed.

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.

Pelosi seems to sense this, if reporting that she intends to send over the Articles of Impeachment on Monday are any indication.

You missed a key - Ivanka. She and Jared have moved to Florida, and she reportedly liked campaigning there so much she's mulling a state level run. If she takes on Rubio or Scott for Senate or runs after the governorship she could test that populism on a red state again, and with a refined gentile air. Notice she rarely got any negative press?

Bork Borked himself.

And unlike Merrick garland, he got committee hearings, he got a committee vote and a floor vote - where he was defeated in no small measure by members of his own party.

And the only people trying to steal Florida were Roger Stone's attorneys, who were ultimately aided by SCOTUS.

Hardly. Parler got in trouble because it refused to police its content. It refused to exercise even a modicum of restraint in a civil society - all the while claiming to be a home for people whose political leanings allegedly have the market on "law and order" cornered.

Not going so well for Parler so far:

"The Court rejects any suggestion that the public interest favors requiring [Amazon Web Services] to host the incendiary speech that the record shows some of Parler's users have engaged in," Rothstein wrote on Thursday. "At this stage, on the showing made thus far, neither the public interest nor the balance of equities favors granting an injunction in this case."

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/21/956486352/judge-refuses-to-reinstate-parler-after-amazon-shut-it-down

HIs workforce is certainly projecting that.

we leverage them where they are available, but we can't keep people on staff to develop new ones - Google and Amazon (among others) pay way better then we do.

The press release about the pardons says nobody was financially harmed by John Davis’s crimes. I disagree. He defrauded all of us, the taxpayers, of money meant for the health care needs of the poor, disabled, and elderly. When the high cost of health care is debated and lamented, remember folks like John and the owners of CPS who essentially stole tens of millions of dollars from Medicaid and Medicare under the guise of helping those who suffer from chronic pain.

This. So many financial criminals declare they hurt no one. And yet they are why the healthcare industry can't be trusted to regulate itself.

And yes, improper payments are an issue (https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/2019-estimated-improper-payment-rates-centers-medicare-medicaid-services-cms-programs) but they often lack context - for instance its nearly impossible to find trend data over time. There's a lot of reporting on total healthcare cost trends - ever upwards - but not fraud.

What push back there has been from actual historians hasn't really been on the facts the 1619 project presents - its been on the interpretation. The Atlantic had a pretty good summary, which seems to boil down to some historians don't like the 1619 project's conclusion that America hasn't made as much progress as we like to think we have on race relations, in no small part because we are STILL not really grappling with what being a slave nation means.

Lots of people work to end it. They even rebranded it as Human Trafficking to get more attention. Obama did a lot:

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/10/24/fact-sheet-building-lasting-effort-end-modern-slavery

https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/18/opinions/human-trafficking-progress-obama/index.html

Trump, not so much:

https://time.com/5905437/human-trafficking-trump-administration/

Pence is done as a political animal. The Republican Party won't nominate him for President even IF they get ride of Trumpism (and that will be a long time coming). He knows this. He won't be governor or Senator or anything else. So that last bow to civility and duty was all he had left to give.