Someone has to be the adult in the room, and it appears to be the Democrats at the moment.
Part of the dysfunctionality of the White House is that all competent people (AKA "the adults in the room") have been driven out, leaving the most incompetent president surrounded by an incompetent staff, AKA "The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight". One item of evidence of this situation is their attempt to cover Trump's signature phone call to the Ukraine by releasing their documentation on what was said in that conversation
which demonstrates that Trump did indeed do what the whistle blower had reported.
Not only that, but then after days of the WH and Republicans constantly denying that there had been any quid pro quo in that conversation, Mick Mulvaney freely admitted in a press conference that that had been quid pro quo and insisted that it was normal so get over it, people (he later went back out and back-pedaled, but the cat was already out of the bag).
When I was in the war (USAF-speak for when I was on active duty in the Air Force, whether there was an actual war going on or not, though I did serve in the Cold War), a running joke went something like: "What is the difference between the Air Force and the Boy Scouts? The Boy Scouts have adult supervision." The Trump Administration has no adult supervision.
ICANT writes:
If the house were to recommend impeaching Trump today the Senate would never convict him (that takes 67 votes) so why waste the time and run the risk of losing the majority in the house?
Because it is the right thing to do.
To correct a detail that ICANT got wrong:
The House does not recommend impeachment, it
does impeachment! Impeachment is like an indictment,
not a conviction! When the House does
impeach the President, then it goes to the Senate who must conduct a trial to decide whether to
convict, which would result in removal.
In this entire process, it is the House that impeaches and the Senate that tries and removes.
Historically, Andrew Johnson
was impeached, but not convicted and hence not removed from office. Bill Clinton
was impeached, but not convicted and hence not removed from office. Regardless of those historical outcomes,
they were both impeached.
First, the dangers of not impeaching are far greater than of impeaching. Trump's offenses are so many and so wide-spread and so egregious and so unconstitutional that, if we were to
not impeach him, then that would send a clear signal to all future presidents that they could do whatever they want to do and never have to be held in account for any of their actions. We cannot allow that to happen, so we must impeach Trump in order to set the example for future presidents that they will still be subject to oversight.
Second, the Clinton impeachment was different from the current situation, so the outcome need not be the same. Basically, the Clinton impeachment was a true witchhunt in which Ken Starr tried desperately to find something, anything, to use against President Clinton but couldn't (NOTE: this is where that Whitewater conspiracy theory came from). But then Starr's assistant, Brett Cavanaugh, suggested using Clinton's affairs and even himself wrote the highly detailed and salacious questions to pose to Clinton virtually guaranteeing a perjury charge. OK, that was one telling of the tale that I heard, but still almost all that the Clinton impeachment was based on was a charge of perjury.
Those fairly flimsy grounds for impeachment were not enough to get the public behind what the Republicans were doing, which is why they suffered such defeats in the polls afterwards. That was the lessons learned, which many feel may apply now,
but do they? The situation is very much different now, in that there is no actual witch hunt (in which no witches are actually found -- must work better when spoken aloud). Trying to find something, anything, as an excuse to unseat a president is entirely different from dealing with a president whose abuse of power and actions endanger the very security and existence of our country. The provisions for impeachment were clearly placed into the Constitution of the United States of America for the latter reason, not for the former.
It has been stated repeatedly that conviction of a crime is a judicial act, whereas impeachment and removal is a political act. That latter term has been strongly tainted by partisan politics. It doesn't mean an action of one political party against another, but rather that it is a process within the machinery of government by which someone acting against his oath of office and against the public trust placed in him may be removed from office. That is why I had tried to explain to Faithless in my
Message 3210 what impeachable offenses, violations of the law, and crimes against humanity are -- typically and sadly far too predictably, she completely misconstrued everything, typical of creationists!
So since impeachment is fundamentally a political process, the public, who are being represented after all, need to know what's going on. For impeachment
and removal to work, the public needs to be behind it. For that, they need to know what the president had done and why it's a bad thing.
In the case of Nixon, who was never impeached only because he had resigned first, which speaks to how damning the evidence and public opinion was against him that would force him to decide to resign. It was his actions (eg, the Saturday Night Massacre) and the testimony and the tapes that turned public opinion so much against him that even his own party had to urge him to resign instead of dragging it out. Public opinion mattered!
In the Clinton impeachment, the public was not behind it. As a result, the GOP took massive hits in the next election. Those lessons learned must be analyzed to extract the actual lessons learned. On the surface (which is what ICANT is reading), the lesson is that if you impeach a president then you will suffer defeat in the next elections. But that is only true when your impeachment does not enjoy popular support (part of which depends on whether your actions had any merit to begin with). The GOP suffered in the next elections because they did not have strong public support, nor did their grounds for impeachment have any merit which soured the public against GOP candidates even more.
So then the actual lessons learned from the Clinton impeachment was that you need to get public support for the impeachment. Trump's multitude of violations have been plainly evident to any thinking person, but most of the public doesn't have that much time to stop and think, being far too busy trying to work and make ends meet (something endangered by the GOP, but they don't have the time nor leisure to think about it).
A great many have become frustrated with Pelosi's apparent inaction against Trump's multitude of impeachable violations (my best friend for example, so I've had to suffer through her rants against Pelosi's reticence on the subject of impeachment), but she is a politician and she knows how to do the calculus. You need the numbers and you need the commitment behind those numbers. And you need the public support (lessons learned from the Clinton impeachment). And now that is all finally starting to come together.
Part of the problem with gaining public support for anything is akin to a quote attributed to Mark Twain: "If you make people think that you've made them think, then they will love you. But if you actually make people think then they will hate you." We've been going through the inquiry state gathering evidence and testimony. Now about mid-November we will enter the public hearing phase in which the public starts to be educated in what's been going on and what the evidence is. So far, the evidence has been so overwhelmingly damning that no congressional Republican has been able to even begin to offer any defense of Trump based on the evidence, despite Trump's insistence that they do so. How can you possibly defend the indefensible? (mind you, I am not a lawyer)
Even if the Senate decides not to remove Trump for cause, a small portion of his many crimes will have been presented to the public. That should result in a rejection of both Trump and of the senators who had voted to not remove him. In this calculus, I do not see the Democrats losing.
Earlier this month at a free-thinker/skeptic/atheist breakfast, somebody pointed something out. According to the Constitution of the United States of America (sorry, but I have sworn THE OATH at least seven times, if not more), in Article One, Section 3, Clause 6: Trial of Impeachment (emphasis added):
quote:
The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.
Members present.
Republican senators who know that Trump should be removed from office but who cannot afford to take that position and remain in office could opt to call in sick on the day of the vote. When police go on strike by calling in sick, it's called the "blue flu". Maybe we could call this the "red flu."
Edited by dwise1, : Typo: "Then police go on strike" should be "When police go on strike"
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