if Comey provides all the evidence needed for an obstruction charge and articles of impeachment.

...and republicans facing re-election aren't immune to pressure, in turn pressuring their peers to act.

Bar that, we need to make that election all about this tyranny and fight for a change in leadership.

Despite our best wishful thinking, I see little evidence that Republicans are scared. Annoyed, maybe, and not eager to meet with their constituents, but it doesn't seem that they're overly concerned about their reelection chances.

With that in mind, they have zero incentive to pursue impeachment.


My $0.02.

is to send out a platoon of idiots to shower media with this kind of rubbish. I would imagine that if you work in the WH, today your only assignment is to tweet, type and phone whatever you can to try to diffuse this testimony.

Or get Flynn to open his pie hole...

Be nice to see fuck boy Jared take the 5th as well....

blow to the president, all at once. Remember the disappointment with Maddow's discussion of Trump's tax return. I think some of those threads are about managing expectations. Real life isn't Perry Mason.

understanding of the process and how long this will take. Seems disappointed because their expectations are unrealistic.

Disillusioned and not expecting the tooth fairy anymore.

Congress. This will unfold slowly...

...in this presidency.

In many ways, this has the potential of moving more quickly than Watergate, most notably, in the unpredictability of Trump and the potential for some boneheaded action or statement that brings out the torches and pitchforks.

Even now, as he's hunkered down trying to manage and defend his past statements and actions, there's the very likely potential for him to either bug-out, or dig a deeper hole.

More importantly, we're building a thread, a case against Trump which we hope will end in his removal. Nothing is discarded or lost in the interim. Everything at this point is accumulative.

I can sure understand why some are wary.

...cynicism is a luxury.

There are plenty of reasons to believe in our potential to make a difference in this effort, most notably the amazing level of resistance we've seen, so far, to Trump's presidency.

There's no smoking gun in it, but there's a definite whiff of gunpowder. We are just going to wait and see how events unfold. We old folks who remember Watergate are getting a touch of dejá-vù. We remember that the evidence came out in bits and pieces. The revelation that there were secret tapes got everyone excited, but it took almost a year, and a trip to the Supreme Court, for those tapes to be produced. Some of the Debbie Downers could be trolls, bots, and right-wing disruptors. Others might just be people who haven't seen this movie before.

yet the practical side of not trusting the political process and 'leaders' of that process is a pragmatic exercise in cynical observation, human experience in american political corruption and obstruction, as recent as the last 8 years has proved this cynicism to be necessary. Yet I agree this could be very problematic and politically injurious for the dump and his administration. That's the hopeful side of this Comey hearing, for me. Otherwise I remain skeptical about the ultimate result of this testimony and the russiagate scandal in its entirety.

I remain ready to fight this fascist, racist oligarchic dictatorship to my dying day.

lived through the Nixon years - the biggest battle of our time, corruption in the WH...and ultimately the resignation submitted by Nixon..at least Nixon had some modicum of patriotism to the country - knowing he was wrong..we will have to fight hard to get the ASS out of the WH...

We are facing clear and present danger as a country and globally - not just at the hands of this despicable president, but the entire republican party -

I want to thank you for your post -

a Republican party that cared about the country as a whole. Now, we have the party over country people.

The smarter ones saw he was going down, but even after the "smoking gun" tape was released, most of the GOPers on the House Judiciary Committee voted against the three articles of impeachment that were about to go to the full House.

but I honestly don't believe that there is even one Republican these days who will choose party over country.

They will support this fool until the end and while they own congress, they can keep any action against him from moving forward.

I hope I'm wrong. I really do.

progressive policy,federal courts and the Supreme Court thanks to Trump's election and the take over of our government by the GOP...some young folks I know voted for Stein or stayed home. Now it is like...the Democrats need to save us...and I point out...you knee capped the Democrats out of concern for an email server, because of the GOP decades of lies against Clinton and Russian trolls... why Democrats were not pure enough for you...the parties are all the same...the parties are not the same...and many will learn a hard lesson in the next four years...no one can help them now...let this be a lesson...VOTE DEMOCRATIC ALWAYS.

So lots of causes for same presentation of symptoms...

but he thought it was more important to brief Congress on Hillary's emails. And now it's Tarmac time.

What makes you think this guy has anything worthwhile to say?

A little background on my thought.

My wife and I have been married for 41 years. That said I still have a hard time getting used to her way of dealing with the way she handles expectations.

She always downplays her wanted expectation. I'll compare it to her take with sports.
She expects the worst outcome, always, drives me nuts. If a play goes wrong, she'll say "See told ya". If a drive, say in football, is going great she'll verbally wait for something to go wrong.

This is her way of dealing with disappointment. Expect the worst then you are mentally prepared for that said disappointment. If the worst doesn't happen and things turn out great, well it's all good.

I believe that there are more of her ilk in this world. That may be the cause of those posts. Not that they truly believe or want what they say to be the outcome but then they are better prepared for disappointment.


Now with that said and my anology with football I must be truthful and point out that our football team is the Detroit Lions. Kinda full of disappointment. So she has had much practice.

we know that Republicans are in charge of anything coming of this.

Every last one of them will choose party over country 100% of the time.

They are happy to have Agent Orange at the head of the government and do not want that to change, so they will do nothing.

That Creature could literally murder someone on national television and Ryan/McConnell and every other congressional Republican would be on the news the next day declaring that it didn't happen and if a president does it, it is OK anyway.

Cynical? Maybe, but keeping expectations low makes it even sweeter if something actually does happen. I hope for the best, but expect nothing.

They're not gonna vote on articles of impeachment anytime soon/

I wouldn't call that a downer, necessarily. At least two branches of our government have been corrupted, and will be unable to act on our behalf with even their usual glacial speed.

partisanship. This is very unlike the unquestioning attack dog mentality our conservative neighbors have been trained to, and we're proud of it.

Virtually all knowledgeable observers believe, for very good reason, impeachment will not happen soon because

1) RUMP'S APPROVAL RATING AMONG REPUBLICANS IS @75-81%.

Please go read #1 again and think about it, remembering that the midterms are closer every day.

2 ) REPUBLICANS CONTROL CONGRESS. CONGRESS IMPEACHES.

Please go read #2 again and think about it.

And I'll offer another dose of painful reality: Even if they did impeach him, once his approval ratings dropped low enough to allow them to, he would be immediately replaced by a far-right anti-government/anti-progressive exremist: The Kochtopus's very own Vice President Pence. Don't bother to say he might be taken out also. That would give the presidency to the Kochtopus's very own (former) Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

Smart resistance is strong resistance. IT'S NOT OUR TIME YET. And it's really not a good idea to encourage people to get themselves all worked up with false hopes only to have them collapse in silly false despair, both well before it's even our time to take control of the field.

All that consternation was for naught.