we can be thorough and careful.

Impeachment is a process that takes time.
Lots of hearings.
Hearings that would receive far more media attention than regular committee hearings.
A different animal altogether.

We have ONE shot at this. We must steady our aim...

Last edited Mon Apr 22, 2019, 06:29 AM - Edit history (1)

as in "not thorough" and "not careful".

On edit.... I will never use the word "hasty" again.

We all want it over yesterday--or in November 2016--but totally agree. This must be pretty flawless.

"Hasty"?!!!!!

Just how many daily shitstorms of corruption and irrevocable destruction does traitor Trump and the GOP have to wreak upon us and our country, on all fronts, before you would consider us not being too hasty?! How many more avalanches of evidence do we need?

There will always be those who are afraid to "make trouble" as they're being marched to their own execution. If it was up to them, we'd still have a corrupt monarchy (resembling the present administration).

The Constitution has to stop him—if it can’t then it is not worth defending.

.....they don't give two hoots for the Constitution. They've been making that obvious since before the 2016 election.

Let the people see for themselves.

We all watched the Kavanaugh-Ford hearings and we walked away with two opposite conclusions based mainly on partisan affiliation.

I participate on a site that has both liberals and conservatives. I watched it unfold in real time as during each testimony, liberals and conservatives had their own takes. Not fed to them but self created and that happened to match their partisan interest.

Impeachment hearings will be the same. It's not just that the Senate won't convict, it's that we inhabit two different realities and both sides will see two different things, each convinced their own case is "proved," and the other is lying or brainwashed.

Not the Senate nor the media.

I understand what you are saying but what is your strategy if not impeachment?

rather than Constitutional Law or Democracy, which too many don't care about. And also ignoring both liberal and conservative orthodoxy. Both are moribund, making us vulnerable to demagogues like Trump.

Only a new progressive coalition could carry us forward. Personally, I think Buttigieg has the best and clearest vision for what this new coalition will look like, but I can see several other candidates as potential leaders of it.

Read "The Politics that Presidents Make," by Stephen Skowronek, or any of the many articles online about how it applies to Trump. Buttigieg has clearly read the book and incorporated concepts from the book into his campaign.

Vote can we rely on voting...when cheating at any cost is strongest suit. Trump wants everyone to about the elections. That is what he lives for.

During an elections he can is greatness strength...dirty raw politics.

But I don't believe that because if he was able to cheat that well, he would have won in 2018.

Because they wanted to put a check on all of his madness.

Republicans don't think cops killing unarmed black people in the street and getting away with it is a problem either, despite the clear evidence to the contrary. We can't stop trying to fix the problem just because Republicans refuse to acknowledge that it exists. We have to be smarter than this.

And furthermore, the Kavanaugh-Ford hearings are a completely flawed comparison. That was largely "he said, she said". Here we've got mountains of "you said vs you did", where both parts are clearly documented and incontrovertible, and opposite. Not to minimize the travesty of the Kavanaugh confirmation, but convincing people that Kavanaugh really was guilty of the crimes alleged is an entirely different proposition from convincing people that Trump really did obstruct justice, for one simple reason.

We have plentiful actual evidence that Trump really did obstruct justice, much of it provided by Trump himself.

It was just the most painfully obvious and in real time, that is, people wrote their reactions as the hearings unfolded, so there was no media or twitter overload to influence them.

But I've seen it on issue after issue. Reactions are predictable based on political affiliation alone. That includes reactions to Barr and now Mueller's report. Their opinions are fully formed. And it's not like they have no evidence for their side. They have plenty, and it's not all untrue.

I don't think we should do nothing though. We need to change the narrative. Past changes in public consciousness have come about through this process. I'm just not convinced impeachment gets us there. Because Trump's preferred narrative is "Trump vs. the World." Which is exactly what impeachment is. So it feeds his strength, not diminishes it. He wants that battle, because he knows he will win. So don't give it to him.

Fight him where he can't win. That was Pelosi's great insight. Fight him on policy, because he has none. Fight him on healthcare because he has no healthcare plan. Fight him on the wall because the wall is stupid. But impeachment will become a battle of those who "hate Trump" and those who "love Trump." It will automatically be about that because Trump will make it so. It's a novelty for America, but a tried and true method of authoritarian populists and even drug kingpins everywhere.

This is also the advice of an Italian who live through Silvio Berlosconi, probably the closest parallel before Trump from another country.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/opinion/the-right-way-to-resist-trump.html

The Italian experience provides a blueprint for how to defeat Mr. Trump. Only two men in Italy have won an electoral competition against Mr. Berlusconi: Romano Prodi and the current prime minister, Matteo Renzi (albeit only in a 2014 European election). Both of them treated Mr. Berlusconi as an ordinary opponent. They focused on the issues, not on his character. In different ways, both of them are seen as outsiders, not as members of what in Italy is defined as the political caste.

Those who love Trump will reject any policy we advance on healthcare, even if they came up with it. They've proved that.

But for all Trump and his enablers can be expected to call impeachment Trump versus the world, the actual proceedings, which everyone will be able to see, will be Trump's lies versus stark, verifiable reality. I'm also not sure that impeachment ever gets us to removal outside of the electoral process. I'm not even certain that the proceedings would progress far enough to learn the answer to that question before the election rolls around. There's an awful lot that demands investigation, and it would not surprise me at all if properly investigating it all takes longer than we have until the election gets here.

But I am sure that whether or not you can win a fight is not the correct measure for whether or not it must be fought.

I am sure that is the primary measure, at least as I've always understood strategy. The only other measure is "when you have no choice," but we do have a choice. People SAY we have no choice, but nobody is holding a gun to our head.

People seem to be treating political means as moral ends. They never are. If political means are ever justified, they are only justified because the end is good.

Maybe we just differ on whether there is such a thing as "stark, verifiable reality," anymore. It might exist in the abstract, but it seems have disappeared completely in politics. We are in true postmodern politics, where there is no truth, there is only what you can force on others. We will remain stuck here until the issue is decided either by war or some new grand synthesis that creates a new political truth. I'm hoping for a new grand synthesis, but I fear the war is coming.

Were we sure we would win a fight with the British Crown when we declared independence? Were we sure we would win a fight with Japan after they destroyed nearly the entire Pacific fleet in a single day? We had a choice in both instances, and could not be sure we would win, and we definitely incurred some heavy losses in both instances, but we fought anyway.

Why?

Because sometimes the cost of inaction is unacceptable, even if the appropriate action may bring with it loss.

Sometimes, we simply have to do the right thing because it is right.
Whether or not we can be sure we will succeed, we cannot afford not to try, because the stakes are too great.

This, I believe, is one of those times.

"Believe you can win," is the measure, and in the Revolutionary War, there was enough evidence to believe they could do it. We had the following advantages
- Fighting on our own territory.
- Officers and troops experienced and trained from the French and Indian War.
-British troops spread thinly over an area many times the size of Great Britain.
-Hoped for (and recieved) support of France.

So, sizing that up, they believed they could do it. Abd that was enough.

In World War II, we had no option. We were attacked. We weren't giving up Hawaii and then wait for California to be next.

The Japanese though had an option, and they made a huge miscalculation. I don't know what they thought would happen when you attack a country larger, with a larger industrial base, and more technologically advanced than you are.

They never really had an adversary like the US before, so maybe they just thought natural Japanese superiority would do the trick. Seventy years of rapid industrialization and winning wars will do that to you. Now that you bring it up, we Democrats remind me of the Japanese.

We have never had an adversary like Trump, so we don't understand what to do. We think that armed with the Truth and the Constitution we must prevail. I think very few Democrats actually understand Trumpism at all. Fortunately, Nancy Pelosi does understand it. Because she understands it, she has resisted impeachment. She has proven her abilities before, and she is about to prove them again.

And not only were we attacked, but that attack was at the very minimum aided and abetted after the fact by the sitting President of the United States. For that crime, there must be accountability, and the Constitution clearly proscribes impeachment as the proper vehicle by which to seek it.

Now that being said, let me be crystal clear here that I am only saying that we should begin impeachment proceedings.
I am not saying that we necessarily will reach the point where we should take those proceedings the additional step of passing Articles of Impeachment and forwarding them to the Senate for trial. We may or may not complete the investigations appropriately arising from impeachment proceedings before the election, and they may or may not move public opinion on actually removing him from office to the point where that might actually be achievable. And even if we reach the point where it might be achievable, it may be best not to, so that Pence can't swoop in and pardon him.

But even if impeachment proceedings never result in Trump being removed from office, they are still without any doubt in my mind, the appropriate course of action given what is already publicly known, if for no other reason than that the weight they would carry affording the greatest opportunity to get the people to actually see the facts.

What you are calling impeachment hearings I would call investigations. I am all for investigations. The more the merrier. During Watergate, a select committee investigated for a year before the House passed a resolution to hold impeachment hearings.

With that clarification, I agree with you.

And go through the evidence and key testimony.

The Senate can't do anything about it. Otherwise, they'll control what happens.

And the GOP folks in the hot seat won't be doing this based upon the evidence presented by the House courtesy of Mueller:

[link:http://

Link to tweet

As we speak, Trump is either planning or implementing retaliation against the witnesses. We have to protect the integrity of the system.

intimidate judges and taint juries and exaggerate the trump base and amplify the 'concerns' about what it will do to the country

that is why he paraded his pitbull limbaugh out on the golf course right after the mueller report came out- to keep the GOP in line

we need offense (see below)

we also tell witnesses that truth doesn't matter. In fact, we give Trump and his allies a big political win.

to vote on conviction.

Are you sure?

Yeah the constitution is pretty clear. I suppose they could test the clarity by ignoring the impeachment.

If you think there isnt a REAL chance McConnell might not bring that vote up you have slept through the last 10 years ... EITHER way, not a single R would vote for it.

And even IF that happens, laying out all that evidence and testimony in public means that every prosecutor and governor in like, six States is gonna have indictments to hand to Trumpy and the kids the second he walks out of official office.

At that point, I'd be surprised if the secret service doesn't get 'served' with them beforehand, and they just drop his fat ass off at the Manhattan DAs office heh...

I think we are going to impeach.
Public will demand it.

Get people talking about them.

Also noteMueller said NOTHING about financial crimes. He didn’t subpoena DeutschBank. Congress just did.
There will also be new stuff. But even if there’s not hearings will help.

Clinton was more popular after his impeachment, but Democrats still lost the White House.

If all the facts are laid out in a logical and methodical manner, I doubt that the public will swing in Trump's direction.

above the law, or he is not. Either the truth and morality still matters, or they do not. How Nancy Pelosi and fellow Dems go about answering those vexing problems in the positive is what they will have to decide. Personally l think they should aggressively proceed with open hearings as part of the public educational process, after which the impeachment decision can be made. The bottom line is that unless Kremlin tRump is held accountable we as a nation will lose what is left of our international credibility. Into that mix is the certainty that Russia will again be trying to elect their puppet. Between now and Nov. 2020 the future of our nation hangs in the balance and it will be a time for bold actions, not faint hearts.

But I also maintain that impeachment proceedings are the proper, and in fact mandated, vehicle under which to conduct these open hearings. Outside of impeachment proceedings, all they can do is refer people to the DOJ for prosecution, and we all know that's not a reliable avenue for achieving justice right now.

That may change. The house is in charge of the narrative now. Please do not pass the ball to the senate without convicting him in the media first.

that passing the ball to the Senate is the END of an impeachment process, not the beginning. It is premature to vote on articles of impeachment, but it is not at all premature to start impeachment investigations. We must maintain sight of the space between those two things.

If we go into impeachment, we go in with the understanding that it will fail in the Senate. The discussion then focuses on whether or not it should be done anyway.

escalates dramatically. Then hopefully their opposition can make an issue of it for an election cycle or two.

I think nearly everyone already knows where the R Senators stand on Trump, and voting to acquit wouldn't be a surprise to anyone. If voters aren't holding the enabling of Trump against the rest of the GOP at this point, impeachment is unlikely to change that. Nearly everyone picked a side on Trump a long, long time ago.

Many of the R Senators are in safe states with a lot of voters who aren't going to pay attention and/or are in with Trump for the long term. Many of those voters will want their Senators to vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Trump's solid base is largely in those states.

The ones for whom a Senate impeachment vote would be an issue are the few so-called moderates on the R side in the Senate. It would be a dilemma for them, but they can probably be counted on one hand.

AZ, CO, IA, ME, NM, MI and maybe even keep Alabama as Roy More is running again.

The only argument I hear about that is that if it happens Trump will use it to say he's exonerated. He's fucking saying that anyway, so what is the difference.

To your point pull all of this shit out into the sunlight and let them defend it every goddamned day.

We (meaning Democrats, but especially Democrats in positions of power) need to stop waiting until something has no risk of failing in any way before we do something.

Getting all of Trump's s#*t out in the open will, at the very least, be the best weapon that the Democratic candidate, whoever he or she happens to be, could ever hope for. It will also throw Trump and the Republicans into defense so hard that their lies will be clear as day. It will also put them in the position of having to defend treasonous, criminal and corrupt behavior. It would be a godsend for us in 2020!

We cannot allow the behavior of this idot to go unchecked, wether or not the Senate will convict is moot, the House will impeach based on a majority and he will be an impeached President, that message will be stark, and I think facing that his re-election chances are nil. The worst case scenario is not to pursue impeachment while the Mueller report is fresh front and center and 18 months from now when people are going to go vote they have lost faith that anyone will ever be held accountable and worse forgot about tRumps debauchery.
Call the Speaker and demand it.

Agreed.
Call!!!

The vast majority of Americans want tRump to pay for what he has done.

If Democrats waffle here then they do so at their peril.

we put the repugs on the WRONG side of history--we win. Let the repug Senators go down in history as the party of Putin and criminal conspiracy, and they will be lost for at least a generation.

the only reaso trump played golf with limbaugh the day after the report is to send a public message/intimidate republicans and even blue dog (talk radio state) democrats and keep them in line.

artificial intelligence means talk radio can be digitized, searched, monitored, and advertisers can be listed with little listening required.

it means stoprush x 100 is possible as soon and the left figures that out. it means the ad industry will have to start applying market forces to political talk radio - asking clients if they really want to support global warming denial and traitors in the white house.

that means the end of the rw monopoly and that would encourage dem reps, destroy this modern republican party, free a few cons to support impeachment, and make it a LOT easier to get trump in jail

all it would take is the left/dems to start

otherwise the conservadems are going to keep compromising and worrying and waiting and the media's going to keep bothsidering us to death

where most will see it with their own eyes. If that leads to impeachment, fine. I'd rather keep digging with more investigations and expose every bit of slime in his past. We must be careful, though, to continue to do important things for the people at the same time in the form of good legislation that will benefit average folks.

have an election in 2020 so let the people decide. Or to put another way, pull a Kavenaugh move.

if Trump is not tried by the senate after impeachment than the senate republicans cannot formally acquit him.

Just hold hearings. Go right down the list of shady players and witnesses from the Trump admin, and dig and dig and dig. Doesn't matter that they were interviewed by Mueller or that they are currently in jail. Did we really learn nothing from watching republicans dominate the political discussions and news cycles during the endless Whitewater and Benghazi hearings in the House?

It is just not OK. Even if it is a political negative, which for the IP reasons this is at worst a wash.

President Trump has committed the crime of obstruction of justice as described in the Mueller Report.
It is the constitutional duty of the House of Representatives to determine if Articles of Impeachment should be issued as a result of Trump's criminal action.
To do otherwise would tell the American People that the Democrats are not concerned by the president's actions.
It would effectively confirm Trump's long held belief that the whole thing was a "witch hunt", and there was "no collusion".
How will that play in November of 2020?
Well, Trump would probably win re-election, and the Republicans could possibly hold onto the Senate and degrade the Democrats majority in the House.

IN OTHER WORDS: It would be a disaster for the nation, and leave the Republicans in charge for a long time to come.

Taking no action is suicide for the Democrats and would endanger the Republic.
I would consider that to be an impeachable act by the Democrats.

We are at war with an internal enemy and some Democrats think we should surrender?
That is unacceptable!

Patrick Phillips

I think the disenfranchisement of the working class supersedes an impeachment. I would like to see the candidates championing healthcare and living wages and free education while exposing the GOP opposition to those issues. That is the impeachment I want to see.

Looking the other way while Trump continues to commit treasonous and corrupt acts is setting a very dangerous precedent.

Organizing the people to reclaim their rights will remove Trump and the GOP from office . That is not looking the other way. That is a proactive way to win elections. Trump is buying votes with his tax cut and the general acknowledgement that he has a good economy. Nobody is explaining the impending recession that follows every major tax cut. Trump boldface lied about his insurance for everybody whether people could pay or not. An impeachment will take away from the issues that need to be hammered into every working class voter. The transaction tax on certain trading that Sanders proposed and the high marginal tax that AOC proposed are totally forgotten. Both of those would lead toward prosperity. Trump is almost daily castigated and derided so there is no looking the other way. I would like to see the Democratic Constituency primed to vote their own legacy back into office. I haven't heard anybody say there are enough Senate votes to convict Trump.

Trump losing in 2020 is not a given. I'm sorry, but continually not standing up for principles and pushing everything to be about the next election is why most Americans don't have faith in Congress in the first place.

Most of the votes for 2020 are already dedicated. The votes that will determine the election belong to people that must be won over. People on forums are there because they care. The votes up for grabs belong to people who spend all their time trying to get by. All they hear even from even from MSM is the economy is great and unemployment has never been so low. They need to be reminded that the economy is temporary run by Trumps tax cut stimulus. They need to be reminded that they are not on a fast track to prosperity that is just around the corner. They need to be reminded that the liar in chief had proposed another 1 1/2 trillion dollar cut to SS, Medicare and Medicaid....... Trump is a dangerous showman that had spun lies into Gold. An impeachment has more chance of helping than hurting Trump. The Senate won't convict him so that would be another exoneration for Trump. He is not going to lose 40% no matter what. We need to capture the difference that makes 60%.

.. thrown back at the level of penetration into US state and local and municiple level electoral systems.

We MUST hold impeachment hearings. It is the not an "option" but it is America's blueprint and the law of the country. I will not budge on this, never ever!

[link:http://watergate.info/1974/07/25/barbara-jordan-speech-on-impeachment.html|]

Today, I am an inquisitor; I believe hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.

…The subject of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men. That is what we are talking about. In other words, the jurisdiction comes from the abuse or violation of some public trust. It is wrong, I suggest, it is a misreading of the Constitution, for any member here to assert that for a member to vote for an article of impeachment means that that member must be convinced that the President should be removed from office.

The Constitution doesn’t say that. The powers relating to impeachment are an essential check in the hands of this body, the legislature, against and upon the encroachment of the Executive. In establishing the division between the two branches of the legislature, the House and the Senate, assigning to the one the right to accuse and to the other the right to judge, the framers of this Constitution were very astute. They did not make the accusers and the judges the same person.

We know the nature of impeachment. We have been talking about it awhile now. It is chiefly designed for the President and his high ministers to somehow be called into account. It is designed to “bridle” the Executive if he engages in excesses. It is designed as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men. The framers confined in the Congress the power, if need be, to remove the President in order to strike a delicate balance between a President swollen with power and grown tyrannical and preservation of the independence of the Executive. The nature of impeachment is a narrowly channeled exception to the separation of powers maxim; the federal convention of 1787 said that. It limited impeachment to high crimes and misdemeanors and discounted and opposed the term, “maladministration.” “It is to be used only for great misdemeanors,” so it was said in the North Carolina ratification convention. And in the Virginia ratification convention: “We need one branch to check the others.”

we need the House to do its job. when I am at work, I don't shirk my duties if I don't think the people following me wont do their job. I do my job, we elect our representatives and senators to do their job, now do it. deal with the senate when it comes to that.

Right now we need leverage, and any card should be played - now.

Or Republican politicians political obituary reads traitor. A scarlet letter they can take to their graves.

right up thru the election.

We're trying to get rid of them, but maybe you voters can move faster than our elected repugs. would be a good message.

be given a chance to fill in the gaps in Muellerr's report by conducting its own investigations.

“Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right”-Rev.Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

One more quote:"The time is always right to do what is right."-ibid

I'd add that not deciding (is it safe, is it politic, is it popular) is still making a choice to do NOTHING and by abdication allowing "wrong" (evil, whatever you want to call it) to win.

Hang that millstone on the Necks of those Servants to our Constitution.

No One is Above The Law...If Repulsicans ignore their Oath, they should be called to resign.

Why does impeachment have to be the predetermined endpoint of Congressional hearings that use the Mueller report as a starting point and bring forth damning evidence against the Dump administration? Ultimately, if the hearings sway public opinion enough that impeachment is potentially doable in the Senate, then hold a vote on impeachment.

One problem is that if Congress votes for impeachment and McConnell quickly kills it in the Senate, we will have fired the impeachment bullet and then Trump may be even more emboldened, because it will be difficult to gear up the public support and momentum for a second impeachment vote.

Impeachment is more valuable as a looming threat with ongoing hearings that continuously damage Trump, than it is likely to be once Congress votes on it and it is then quickly disposed of in the Senate. IMO, it should only be referred to the Senate if the Congressional hearings have had a massive impact on public opinion and dropped Trump's approval to 30%.

Make them play defense- start a methodical, relentless impeachment inquiry that brushes off court delays and uses the full power of the Democratic congress to hold the Trump administration accountable.

An impeachment in the house, sent to the senate for trial this fall, would be perfect timing to put the GOP on defense, and even give them time to field a replacement candidate after Trump is removed from office.