It seems to me that…..
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s hearing has demonstrated that the Democrats should pass legislation that establishes an IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY/INVESTIGATION OF DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?
WHAT ABOUT YOU?
WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS REFLECTS YOUR CURRENT STATUS IN THIS MATTER?
I Agree. Set Up the Impeachment Inquiry.
I Remain Undecided
I Disagree. Do not Set Up the Impeachment Inquiry.
I WILL KEEP A TALLY…..THANKS.
I Agree. Set Up the Impeachment Inquiry AFTER the current items ( tax requests, subpoenas for live testimony) before the judiciary are settled.
This guy ( tRump ) will not fight a fair nor simple fight. It’ll be ugly, messy and long.
I’m with Speaker Pelosi on this, gather intel, information and garner impeachment sentiment so that when impeachment inquiry is begun, it’ll be rock solid.
Only fools rush in.
Yep. Only fools rush in….and Nancy is no fool. When your wrote: “Set Up the Impeachment Inquiry AFTER the current items ( tax requests, subpoenas for live testimony)….” did you mean they should not proceed without the tax info and the subpoenas answered? If so , don’t you think the GOP will use that to throw lots of obstacles in the way just to force a lengthy pause?
We’ve seen what Hope Hicks did, as one of the only Trump people to testify recently. She refused to answer questions, even where her desk was located in the office. Why would anyone expect anything other than this if a court did force other Trump people to testify?
So we are waiting months for courts to order Trumpers to attend hearings in Congress where they will refuse to answer questions and more complaints will then need to be filed by Congress and take more months to go through. The 2020 election could conceivably take place before all these cases are decided in court.
Which I think Pelosi is more than a little aware of.
All of that is true….which is why pulling this off is so damn hard….there is no example where it succeeded.
Trump has given us enough evidence and we have had enough time to examine the evidence, so it is not rushing in, to carry out justice. It is time to rush the hill and take our country back. If the House do their part in LEADING THE CHARGE ON THE GROUND, we have to have confidence that the American people will do their part in bringing in air support. It is time to shit or get off the pot!.
Your post from below read:
Only if it can be done without sucking all the oxygen out of the Congress and the Campaign. I doubt the Dems can be that disciplined and business like once the Impeachment genre is released.
Not enough room there so here is my reply:
If impeachment inquiry becomes the whole agenda for the House…bad news. It will take discipline but we saw that yesterday.
Impeachment will suck the oxygen out of Congress, it will become the one big story that goes on for many months. And I would argue that it’s not bad news, it’s good news. Trump’s criminality will be front and center day after day throughout the media for months. It will absolutely convince some people who are less informed to oppose Trump’s re-election or at least be less enthusiastic about going out to vote for him.
This manufactured fear Dems have that they will look “political” for impeaching Trump is as foolish as it sounds.
Did Repubs worry that they would lose the 2016 election by holding years of hearings against Hillary Clinton on her emails and of course, Benghazi? If they could have impeached Obama for wearing a tan suit, they would have.
The difference between Repubs and Dems is that they see the strong use and abuse of power as self-justifying. Dems seem fearful about using power because they worry about how they’ll screw it up and end up hurting themselves.
I hope we end up with a Dem nom who will be confident about wanting to use power to stop bad people and help the good people in this country. Fear of using power is giving it up.
Nate Silver reports that Trump’s resolute base is between 38 and 42 percent. No matter what is revealed that group will not budge.
That is a very solid start.
In the House: Republicans will need to gain 18 seats to win back the majority (or 19 depending on the outcome of a new election in NC-09), and have no shortage of good-looking targets, at least on paper: there are now 31 Democrats sitting in districts carried by President Trump in 2016 and just three Republicans sitting in districts carried by Hillary Clinton.
In the Senate: Senate Democrats face a narrow path back to the majority in the 2020 elections, running through Trump country in a year when the president will be on the ballot galvanizing his supporters.
Republicans cemented a 53-47 Senate majority with victory in Mississippi on Tuesday, and they must defend nearly twice as many seats in 2020 as they did in 2018. But only two of those Republicans are up for reelection in states President Donald Trump lost in 2016 — meaning that Democrats can’t win back the Senate without winning new seats in Trump states in the next election.
That includes some Trump-state targets where it’s been a decade or more since voters picked a Democratic senator. Democrats will need to find candidates who can outrun their presidential nominee, as Trump drives his supporters to the polls in 2020.
Bottom line for me: I just don’t see enough people taking enough interest in the issues that are at the core of the impeachment discussion.
I’m a bit confused by your comment, Murph. Trump has had the same resolute base of around 40% since 2016, that hasn’t changed. It’s not a start, it’s a destination. Trump has never polled at or above 50% (aside from the propagandized Rasmussen polls where he’s winning everywhere!).
Here is the most recent national polling on Trump vs. Dems by NBC/WSJ:
Sunday, July 14 – General Election:
Trump vs. Biden – Biden 51, Trump 42 – Biden +9
Trump vs. Warren – Warren 48, Trump 43 – Warren +5
Trump vs. Sanders – Sanders 50, Trump 43 – Sanders +7
Trump vs. Harris – Harris 45, Trump 44 – Harris +1
First, note that Trump consistently polls between 42%-44% against all these Dem candidates, his cult base plus a couple of points of less devoted voters. He does not have room to grow because they’re not churning out more people with enough moral deficits to support him.
The indies are not available for Trump, the majority opposes him. The women vote isn’t, the minority vote isn’t. There is no potential for Trump to attract the additional 6% minimum he needs to win. Where would it come from?
As to Dems having a harder time in 2020 to hold The House because Trump was on the ballot, he was essentially on the ballot and campaigning hard in 2018, howling about the killer caravans coming to invade us at the border and rallied his voters in campaign events across the country, that he was symbolically on the ballot in 2018 and that they needed to get out and vote for Repubs because doing so was voting for him.
Don’t overlook that Trump being on the ballot will also be a big GOTV motivation for those who oppose him and want a return to sanity.
His voters have been frothing at the mouth since 2016, they don’t need any more reasons to go vote but Trump has dredged up all the cultists he can. Have you met many undecided Repubs who aren’t sure they know Trump well enough to support him yet?
I think this is a bit of fiction, Trump wants to believe there are Trump cultists out there somewhere that aren’t already going to vote for him but history says he’s squeezed all the juice out of that lemon that’s there.
Yes, Dems have to do well in red states to take back The Senate but they did very well in red states in 2018, even if they didn’t win all the Senate races then that they needed.
But again, as we saw in 2018 in red states like Arizona, Kansas, Alabama and Montana, Dems can win big seats in red states in the Trump era.
It will be a challenge for Dems to win back control of The Senate but it is possible (especially if some of the Dem candidates for president who would make great Senate candidates drop out and campaign for Senate).
As for Trump, his negatives will go up, not down, as he continues his campaign strategies of being an immature bully, a destroyer of families, an ally of Russia over the US, a misogynist, a racist and a criminal.
The Repubs had been hammering Hillary for decades so she may have had negatives rivaling Trump but whoever the Dem nom is, won’t have that deficit Trump exploited in 2016.
And Trump has lost the “outsider” and “I’m not a politician” labels as an incumbent. He has lost the voters who said, “Maybe he’ll make things better” and “We should try someone new”. He can’t run on a “change” platform which was big for him. He’s lost many of his most effective aspects that brought over voters feeling it was a choice of the better of two evils.
Whoever the Dem nom is, despite the mud Trump and the GOP throws at him/her, that nom WILL be able to run on “change” and will be able to run as the “outsider” because Trump is now the “insider”.
Can Trump even reach his numbers from 2016? Doubtful, too many have left him. Will there be multiple independent candidates who could siphon off enough votes from the Dem nom to hand Trump a narrow win as in 2016? Doubtful, the energy and urgency behind replacing Trump is much higher now and will be much more powerful in voters decision making on voting Dem or throwing away their vote on Howard Schultz (who I bet won’t run in the end, like most of the wealthy, I think he’ll be too scared of looking like a loser…and the public reaction to his announcement was so negative).
2016 was a perfect storm. Both candidates began with high negatives, Russian attacks on our election were not known about by most voters, Jim Comey won’t be able to re-open any case against the Dem nom just days before the election and Trump is no longer the whimsical outsider celebrity that some people were willing to take a chance on.
Trump is headed for losing in 2020, let’s just hope the Dems don’t figure out a way to sabotage their probable win…as they have many times in the past.
Then why are the numbers in favor of proceeding impeachment so low……why after a bit of an uptick post Mueller’s “clarification” did they fall back again…why are the post Mueller testimony spot polls so disappointing…..
And why is his approval rating the highest it has been? Just because he is sitting in the low 40’s does not meal that the rest, the 50’s sitting solidly with anyone.
Everywhere I go, more people are talking about impeachment than ANYTHING else. Politicians need to get out of their bubbles and listen to their constituents. At this crucial time we don’t need a vote whip, but rather stateswomen and statesmen. I saw a bumper sticker the other day here in Texas that said, “Trump in 2020”. To me, that sticker said, “I am a racist”.
I think that one has to grow momentum in matters like this. Impeachment is a political process and it takes a mandate from the party base. This is the reality.
“Why Aren’t 2020 Democrats Talking About Impeachment? Because Voters Aren’t Asking”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/28/us/politics/impeachment-democrats.html
which contrasts with this: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/26/poll-impeachment-mueller-1437596
Democratic voters are strongly in favor of impeachment, with 64 percent supporting it, combined with 18 percent who oppose it.
Democratic support for launching impeachment proceedings contrasts sharply with Republicans (6 percent support, versus 86 percent oppose) and independents (34 percent support, versus 42 percent oppose).
In most all cases, the reporting of the public support for Impeachment is, I believe, intentionally misleading. For example, the poll you cite uses this question:
“As you may know, the first step toward removing a president from office is impeachment. Do you believe Congress should or should not begin impeachment proceedings to remove President Trump from office?”
But the real question is NOT asked! Do you support Impeachment proceedings that do NOT remove Trump from office. Another recent poll had that second question and it got all of 5% support. I like real numbers.
NOW that is really, really interesting…the point being that the first question does not properly present the reality by intimating that removal is a reasonably expected outcome of impeachment. When that expectation is removed……1 in 20 thing it is a good idea. Do you have citation for that poll.
https://www.scribd.com/document/419763495/Fox-News-Poll-July-25#from_embed
Go to 47/48 COMBINED near end. And this is the FOX Poll that Trump hated because it showed Biden beating him by 10 points.
Intriguing….esp. given the Fox polling sampling.
Hey, maybe if they can nail Trump & Company with 8Chan now he could be Impeached and removed by invitation like Nixon. I sure would support that! As would Pelosi and Biden I bet and Pence & Company…
Wishful thinking but pleasant nevertheless. As to Pence…..he is swimming with the other denizens of the Trump swamp.
Oh, well…
You mean the same republicans who say the Mueller investigation was a witch hunt and the REAL traitors were Obama, Clinton and the FBI? THOSE republicans??? The ones trump correctly said would support him if he stood in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shot someone? THOSE republicans??? Are these the people we are willing to trust our democracy to? REALLY???
Yep. GOP. Them’s the ones. And they all have votes. Independents…not so clear…..Even idiots and zealots have votes and those votes determine elections. A democratic candidate will not win with those numbers. As democratic support edges up, there appears to be a similar phenomenon at work among independents. The GOP not much movement there.
I have the utmost respect for you and your opinions Murph, but I think Pelosi and the Democratic leadership are gravely mistaken about impeachment.
I don’t think we need impeachment as a political strategy one way or the other. I think if Democrats put their efforts into getting people who share their values out to vote, republicans will be soundly defeated. The problem with not impeaching trump is more of a moral and principle problem. I know that is not as important as politics are to some people. However, I subscribe to the principle of remaining true to oneself. I have never been a person who worried about what other people do or think. Yes, I realize that opinions of others matter, but I have to be able to look in the mirror everyday and feel that I have done my best. I do believe that the very soul of our democracy is at stake, and I don’t say that just to be rhetorical. I am as serious as a heart attack.
We must defeat republicans at the ballot box in 2020. At the same time we must defend and protect our Constitution, REGARDLESS of the political consequences. Question: How do you explain to your grandchildren that it was better in 2019 to focus on the political consequences of impeachment than to focus on the patriotic consequences of impeachment?
Btw, I would not waste a second trying to convince republican voters to vote for Democrats. I would appreciate their votes IF they appreciate the values of Democrats. However, if they value what republicans stand for, whatever that is, I think they should vote for republicans.
Fundamentally I am a pragmatist. As a historian I have come to realize that high ideals re. government and the law in general fit hardly at all into most people’s lives. I think that most political leaders are the same. In the last few days taunting cries of Moscow Mitch are pushing McConnell to do something he does not want to do- endorse a bill that will tighten up the far too slack electoral system. He hates the taunts but far more importantly these taunts (unlike many others of which he is inordinately proud) are looking to hit him where he lives….in his reelection bid. Most pols do as they must.
And if today’s young people are barely aware of the political environment I have no doubt that in the generations to come (barring a return to real civics and history education and enculturation) that they will be the same.
It is not GOP voters who need to be swayed (although I know of some, several, a few who are so disgusted with Trump that they might vote Dem….esp. since they are realizing that their farms are in jeopardy, their health care covers less and costs more, and polluters are free once again to ravage their land)….no, it is the so-called “independent” which generally means those who are just not connected with either party in any significant way (such as voting patterns, or even voting at all).
I live in ultra red Mo. and being practical in the “Show Me” state is a necessity for this progressive.
Well, the last debate may help us. It was a winner for Biden because his opponents decided to attack Obama even more than Trump. And Gabbard decided to run as Biden’s VP.
The next debate in September will winnow the field to 20 with 7 having already qualified for a place at the podiums.
Biden
Booker
Buttigieg
Harris
‘Rourke
Sanders
Warren
The DNC Selection Process combines polling of 2 percent or higher from 4 listed sources, and Donations from at least 130,000 unique donors; and a minimum of 400 unique donors per state in at least 20 states.
Klobuchar has the 4 polls but falls short in the fund raising.
Yang and Castro had the fundraising but not the 4 polls
The rest are also-rans right now and a number of them are likely to be so from this point on.
https://ballotpedia.org/Democratic_presidential_primary_debate_(September_12-13,_2019)
I am donating to Klobuchar to do my part to get her on the stage.
It would be good to keep her in.
Just finished donating. She would be a strong VP choice too. Booker/Klobuchar?
If you want Trump to have a second term. Another Dem Black Prez candidate regardless of VP will get the Trumpites to swarm to the polls out of the rotten woodwork.
At most they are 35 percent of the electorate….the key is who else comes out to vote against Trump.
In the 2016 election, the demographic that was strongest for Trump, Whites who did not graduate from college, got 44% of the total vote. The three demographics making up our core support, Blacks, Hispanics, White Millennials, were hardly 30% of the vote. The potential of new voters from Trump’s core demographic is some 15 million and they are concentrated in the swing states. So they are exactly whom Trump is catering to and counting on to win next year. It will be much harder for us to counter Trump’s potential new voter draw. So best not to help him kick the rotten woodwork and let him help get out our new voters as he’s doing with his racism stirring up the Black vote.
I agree with most of what you say but there is a key piece that needs to be added. Those who we would think are predisposed to vote for Democrats are those who under-vote the most. Blacks, Hispanics, Millenials….need to vote and vote big to balance the impact of those who tend to vote GOP (and even more so Trump’s GOP)……I keep saying it…..had the black vote in 2016 been what it was in 2012 it would be Pres. Clinton right now but……”she did not go after that vote enough” is the counter that is tossed in reply to which I say “And how did that work out for you….?”
Whites without a college education also have a relatively low turn out, lower than Blacks. Also, they are the largest non-voting demographic and they are concentrated in the swing states. Millennials is not really a separate demographic because it includes Blacks, Hispanics, Whites without college. Anyway, my sense is Trump is helping our vote more than his own. But it is far from over yet. He can still find a way to gin up his base more than ours and the Dems can still do a lot of stupid things to freak his base and get them to swarm from the rotten woodwork. You know, like making a big thing of Reparations or nominating Harris, etc.
The figures I read show that Blacks, Hispanics and Asians have lower turnout rates that whites without a college education. I looked at Pew, The Voter Project and U.S. census…This article puts it into perspective. https://news.gallup.com/poll/248525/non-college-whites-affinity-gop-trump.aspx
Yep, Hispanics and Asians generally have lower turnout than Working Class Whites. But the stats I’ve seen indicate Blacks have a higher turnout. But this could have been definitional in terms of turnout compared to all eligible voters, registered voters or those who didn’t vote but might likely register and vote. When I have a chance I’ll check. But the rate isn’t as important as the relative numbers and the location. That favors Trump strongly, especially in those key swing states.
As an aside, the other connection to these mass murders isn’t just 8Chan with Trump but the Russian Trolls, Bots and fake comment sites. They have been pushing for mass murder and civil war for well over a year. Add this to their anti-vac disinformation campaign. Their cyber attacks are aimed at killing Americans, not just causing social and political discord. They are actually now achieving that. This is making war on the US physically as well as institutionally. As soon as Trump is out we must immediately go after Putin and the RF to at least bankrupt the SOB’s. Having the Chechens blowup the Troll Houses in Moscow and St. Petersburg might bring this home to them and get the point across.
You really have a way of framing this……have you considered doing a feature article here (a long post)…..now seems a good time to name 8chan and its fellow travelers given the sad events of the last 24 hours.
Finally, finally all the main media are picking up on 8Chan. There’s even a chance the site might be closed today or tomorrow since it’s main server company, I think it is, is finally pulling the purge on them even though they said they wouldn’t just this morning. But not one word by any of them about the Trump ads and the click link to Trump’s campaign site. If this can be nailed at this time there is a chance it might bring Trump down. But I think the media and Dems are chickenshit in actually going after Trump so directly. The best chance would be if Rep. Cummings had an investigation ASAP and tried to nail Trump with this even with guilt by association. Sorry, I’m not in a position or mood to do another article at this time. The one I did last time on Trump and 8Chan got nowhere and we have Trump and lots dead. For now I’ll spend my time pushing this with main media and Congress.