Impeach Trump Y/N

it's to force a drumbeat of bad news about trump for months in the run-up to the election

it's to force republicans to defend him and shrink their base to only die-hard trumpers in the run-up to the election

it's to actually discover evidence of criminal activity and hold criminals to account

it's to finish mueller's job

p sure there are some other good reasons too

and you know, I wd've impeached every fucking president ive lived through

as well you should have because they are all war criminals

You know who wouldn't handwring and have internal debates for months and months over whether to impeach? Republicans. And yet somehow "the American public" doesn't hold their "partisan witch hunts" against them.

What are its chances in the senate?

Why this over emoluments?

"they're going after him for the exact same thing Hillary did"

I don't get where this is supposed to end up

the president of the united states is a criminal who leverages his office to enrich himself and go after his political enemies. he effectively got away with this in the 2016 election and is now doing it again, in plain view, even admitting to it on live TV. forget the political calculations for a minute - you impeach because it's objectively the right thing to do.

very fine reasons on both sides

you impeach because it's objectively the right thing to do.

Will he be removed from office? How likely, scale of 1-10

Will Clinton be removed from office? Prob not so hey let's just forget the whole thing

Well if he's not going to be removed from office then we have to ask what the purpose is? (if its to gum up the works I'm fine with that, but otherwise what is the actual goal here?).

And also if the goal really is to remove him from office, is this Ukraine thing the most reliable thing to get him on?

probably about a 2? again, the idea isn't so much removing him from an office (because we live with a stupidly broken political system) as it is exposing all his crimes, keeping his hands tied, and forcing every elected official to either vote for removal or endorse the corruption

it's to emphasize HE'S A CROOK for the next year, wtf is so difficult?

anvil - succeeding in removing him from office via the actual mechanism of impeachment is very unlikely - and so far down the list of reasons to impeach i didn't bother mentioning

do you think the other reasons aren't good reasons?

If he's impeached, it fails, his base is energized further and he gets re-elected - this seems a reasonably likely scenario? Would want at least some expectation of success before heading down this road - so seesms reasonable to ask "will this actually work?"

it's to emphasize HE'S A CROOK for the next year, wtf is so difficult?

a failed impeachment doesn't specifically emphasize this

Not impeaching looks like tacit approval or acceptance that this is normal now.

what I also want to see from impeachment is Republican senators having to stake their careers on the Trump project even further than they already have

More than anything in the near term, I hope this ruins Biden's run for nominee.

In the long view, good for them. You want to sort of try and make the office of president a little bit unattractive to supervillains? Let's go back to the days these guys had a little finesse, you know?

Does it make it harder or easier to credibly impeach again if (when) he commits a more serious crime, god forbid he wins a second term?

Would want at least some expectation of success before heading down this road - so seesms reasonable to ask "will this actually work?"

Who would

that's a risk that has to be taken imo

from the start, the message will be: trump's friends enabled him then, and they're covering up for him now. a failure to convict in the senate will prove their corruption. i wouldn't be surprised if articles of impeachment actually pass the house after all the creepy crawlies come out.

if the impeachment fails it will visibly, publicly, fail because the system is visibly, publicly, corrupt and will not exonerate Trump in the minds of anybody beyond his existing faithful.

So then isn't emoluments a much safer vehicle? This seems flimsy and destined for failure

If he's impeached, it fails, his base is energized further and he gets re-elected - this seems a reasonably likely scenario?

Nope. He was only elected in the first place due to a fluke - 70,000 votes in three states, at least one of which he's currently underwater in. His "base" is ~40% of the voting public. The other 60% are firmly aligned against him. No matter how "energized" they get or how much spittle they spray, they're not the majority of voters and they never will be. And if you demoralize a significant enough portion of them by repeatedly saying "Your guy is a crook and a loser and he's going down," it has an effect. See, a lot of them aren't actually fueled by hate. They're fueled by a burning desire to be on the winning team. If you paint Trump with the stench of loser-dom long enough and emphatically enough, a sizable chunk of his base - 10%, say - will peel away and say, "Fuck this loser," and even if they don't vote Democratic, they'll simply not vote, which will tank him.

his base is energized further and he gets re-elected

ah yes, his enormous base

ah yes, his enormous base

dont need enormity when you got gerrymandering

well if gerrymandering's gonna secure a trump win then that doesn't seem to have any fuckin thing to do with trying to impeach him

You think failing to be impeached will increase his vote? xp

Can you believe this whining little bitch still commands the respect of 30% of Americans? https://t.co/4YtLPIGEUi

— Roy Edroso (@edroso) September 25, 2019

well if gerrymandering's gonna secure a trump win then that doesn't seem to have any fuckin thing to do with trying to impeach him

― american bradass (BradNelson),

its not going to secure a win! But it does help to have it on your side, fine margins and all that

"they're going after him for the exact same thing Hillary did"

― anvil, Wednesday, September 25, 2019 7:19 AM (twenty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'd been wondering just how long it was going to take for this extremely incorrect take to start popping up.

If he's impeached, it fails, his base is energized further and he gets re-elected - this seems a reasonably likely scenario? Would want at least some expectation of success before heading down this road - so seesms reasonable to ask "will this actually work?"

Trump's base is already energized. He feeds them red meat all the time. If he's not aggrieved about this, it'll be something else. Kavanaugh, Russia, that one WaPo story showing empty seats during a campaign rally, etc. etc. Impeachment will also energize the Dem base, who have lately been disappointed in their party's inability to do anything whatsoever about the president's unchecked crime spree. As mentioned in this thread, continuing to do nothing is an implicit approval of his behavior. If they don't impeach it's easy for Trump/GOP to just say "if you thought this was so serious, why didn't you do anything about it then?"

Anyone foresee a considerably higher voter turnout in 2020?

(I'm lurking here from Canada)

So then isn't emoluments a much safer vehicle? This seems flimsy and destined for failure

I don't think they have to tie it explicitly to the Ukraine thing. from what I've read the Dems have a long list of impeachable offenses so even if this winds up being nothing they've got a lot to fall back on

I lean towards thinking impeachment is worthwhile and should have been done a lot earlier but, in this case, my concern would be less about motivating Trump's base than demotivating everyone else. The worst case scenario imo would be Trump surviving and everyone thinking he's corrupt but enough mud to be thrown at Biden (and by extension the Democrats spun as protecting him) that it depresses the turnout enough to make another fluke result more likely. Hopefully that won't be successful, though - and hopefully the Dem nominee will be seen as enough of a clean break to render that line of attack useless.

dont need enormity when you got gerrymandering

― anvil, Wednesday, September 25, 2019 8:39 AM bookmarkflaglink

Wtf does gerrymandering have to do with the Presidential election? Only states that aren't winner take all are Nebraska and Maine. Every other state determines it's winner by popular vote.

Gerrymandering affects House elections only.

Anyone foresee a considerably higher voter turnout in 2020?

Turnout was pretty high in 2016. I think it could be higher in 2020 but it also seems likely that some of the Republicans who just wanted to "give him a shot" or cast strictly anti-Hillary votes in '16 are gonna sit this one out. One thing that's gone a bit understated here is just how sick people here are of this guy. He might be the most suffocating American personality to ever exist.

I'm voting to impeach

Wtf does gerrymandering have to do with the Presidential election?

the electoral collage is a nationwide form of gerrymandering. Trump lost by 3,000,000 votes and still won the presidency.

The worst case scenario imo would be Trump surviving and everyone thinking he's corrupt but enough mud to be thrown at Biden

if this happens Biden probably won't be the nominee. he's already starting to get overtaken by Warren.

I lean towards thinking impeachment is worthwhile and should have been done a lot earlier but, in this case, my concern would be less about motivating Trump's base than demotivating everyone else. The worst case scenario imo would be Trump surviving and everyone thinking he's corrupt but enough mud to be thrown at Biden (and by extension the Democrats spun as protecting him) that it depresses the turnout enough to make another fluke result more likely.

Basically thats more or less my take. If you're going to impeach do it early or stfu. I'm not anti-impeachment per se! Just like, it needs to be clearer what the point is, what the end goal is

Emoluments was always there, and tying it to something specific IS a much better route than this grab bag of different things which boil down to "trump is a bad man"

Biden isn't going to last the primaries surely, he's shot

2016 turnout was 55.5% if I'm reading right, between the numbers for 2008 and 2012.

I keep seeing this argument: "If the House impeaches Trump and the Senate refuses to convict, as expected, the Dem base could be deflated."

My counter-argument, which I'm not seeing in any major media: "If the House impeaches Trump and the Senate refuses to convict, as expected, the Dem base will be enraged."

The mass media is intent on portraying Democratic voters as a bunch of weaklings who will cry and trudge despondently home. (Except when they're violent antifa maniacs out to burn America to the ground, of course.) But I don't think it's gonna work that way.

If he's impeached, it fails, his base is energized further and he gets re-elected - this seems a reasonably likely scenario?

No.

you're not wrong but don't underestimate Trump & the GOP's ability to absolutely own the media narrative and shut down any legit investigation into their own. I don't see how "emoluments" would necessarily go any further.

besides, the Ukraine thing seems significant since it's basically a repeat of the Russia thing, which was Trump's biggest and longest lasting scandal so far, a scandal which the majority of the country thinks he got off way too easily on. you can't claim "well maybe he didn't know you couldn't do that" anymore.

It’s really up to the Democrats how this gets spun. It needs to be about the Republican Senate protecting an obviously criminal president due to moral cowardice, not about the case not having legs or whatever the consensus on the Mueller report ended up being.

xp

Yeah, I imagine impeaching him will be the proxy version of taking back the house. On to the next step, etc.

I'm starting to think all the delaying was mostly due to Pelosi et al. madly scrambling to read all the instruction books about impeachment. Really, how many experts can there be? It really doesn't happen that often.

the electoral collage is a nationwide form of gerrymandering. Trump lost by 3,000,000 votes and still won the presidency.

Not really. The electoral college is stupid and gives disproportionate weight to small states, but that isn't gerrymandering, which involves one party manipulating boundaries for electoral advantage.

And Trump's victory largely came on the coattails of Comey's October surprise combined with depressed turnout, so I don't follow anvil's point.

I think she knows procedural stuff tbh. I think it was about not timing it too closely with the Mueller report bc, damning as it was, it wasn’t as damning as most hoped it would be.

xp