US Politics - Impeachment Proceedings

As far as I'm concerned Donald Trump's impeachment will only occur when the Republicans decide that Trump,as useful as he was gaining them power through his voting base,is longer required because his voters can't win him the election on them alone,he's become something of an eyesore and a liability for them,so make no mistake it's more about the self preservation of the Republican party then it is being patriots if they decide to vote for impeachment

Edited by Ultimatum on Sep 26th 2019 at 12:45:03 PM

Impeachment will happen.

Leaving office? No.

The only question is whether Donald will come outta this with his reputation in shambles or with a bigger following.

Indeed. The House can impeach all they want, but all Trump needs is 34 Republicans who don't give a shit about the law.

And this. The Republican news machinery is very good at spinning Not Proven verdicts as "completely innocent of anything."

Fox News at present, his bulwark dedicated to spin and news fuckery, is in the midst of a downright nasty civil war, with Lachlan Murdoch even saying some potentially interesting things, like Fox not being tied to a specific administration.

We've got the likes of Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity trying to continue spinning for the President, but even the likes of Napolitano have soured. Shep Smith and numerous others have gone against the grain and are commencing criticism of the President.

How is this vital?

Fox is how a large number of Trump's people get their news. If their messaging starts losing total unity, then that says something very particular to his supporters.

The thing we should be paying attention to, is whether it's actually ten or twenty percent of Republican voters that want Trump impeached. The latter number might convince some Senators it's better to just ditch Trump and start over fresh in the next election (unlikely).

Edited by Grafite on Oct 22nd 2019 at 1:23:37 PM

I did see the poll suggesting that Republican voters are perhaps shifting towards supporting Impeachment.

However unless I can see evidence that this isn't the same voting bloc that would willingly vote for The Rapture if it was an option I'm going to be sceptical. If there is a portion of the Republican party / Trump Administration that believe that Impeachment is a good thing for them then it stands to reason that there is a portion of the base that also thinks the same way.

I'd be more interested if the number of "Don't Knows" increase.

I said this before in the main politics thread, but how this plays out is going to depend heavily on how Senate Democrats focus on prosecuting the issue.

Mitch's Senate will not remove Trump from office. That is not a possible outcome. It shouldn't even be considered as a factor.

With that in mind, Senate Democrats need to take advantage of this opportunity. This is the biggest political event of the century. There will surely be news cameras there, eager for sound-bytes, clips, and other pieces of information they can feed back to their hungry audience. With that in mind, Democrats need to use this time to lay out The Case Against Donald Trump, from beginning to end, in a way that is easy for the lay-man to understand.

We must not seek to convict Trump in the Senate. That way lies ruin.

We must seek to convict Trump in the Court of Public Opinion.

A question: if impeachment succeeds, how much will it affect Trump's power? As Charles mentioned, it won't make him leave office.

That depends on how you define "succeeds".

If you mean that the Senate votes to convict Trump, then he is removed from the office of President immediately.

If you mean the more achievable positive outcome, then it will utterly ruin his chances of a re-election in 2020.

If it fails by every conceivable measure, then it will probably guarantee his re-election.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 27th 2019 at 7:28:20 AM

So still one giant gambit, then.

Just for clarity on the way impeachment works:

The House votes on articles of impeachment. If they vote to impeach the president it’s then handed over to the Senate, who hold a trial and vote on whether the president should be removed from office.

Theoretically the House could impeach Trump but the Senate could decline to remove him from office.

Quick question: With this new thread now, are we not supposed to discuss impeachment news in the General US Politics thread and instead do it all here?

Yes. All impeachment news and discussion goes here now.

Yes, Bill was impeached but not removed from office.

The Evil Turtle is going to be the one to watch, I'm willing to bet that if his post as Speaker or the Republican Senate Majority is threatened by NOT Impeaching Trump you can bet your ass certain that Mitch will pick up Trump and chuck him under the bus as far and as hard as possible.

Mitch's long term goal is to stack the federal courts with as many conservative judges in lifetime posts as he can get to do that he NEEDS a Senate Majority and the Speakers Gavel to do that even if a Dem gets into the White House he can stall the appointments (like he did with Obama) and try to wait them out till he gets a R in the Oval Office again.

Mitch cares about Mitch he is not loyal to Trump at all, he'll flip on him to save his job as Speaker and if that doesn't work he'll take Trump down with him.

The only possible way that Trump will be convicted by the Senate is if the evidence is so damning that a sizable portion of the Republican base turns on Trump. The instant that Trump becomes a political liability so that supporting him hurts their chances of getting reelected rather than helping, the GOP will drop support for him and lament how he's betrayed the conservative cause. Doubtless some will stick with him to the end and likely go down with him, but the main party will toss him like a hot potato the instant it's politically advantageous to do so.

Chances of this actually happening are small, but nonzero. You'd probably need recordings of him saying something that the average layman would consider obvious and overt collusion — ie, a conversation with Putin where he says "I want your help to win the election". Such a blatant exchange may or may not have ever happened, if it did happen recordings of it may or may not exist, and if recordings of it exist they may or may not ever be released to the public. I'm not going to write off the possibility entirely, but it's a slim enough chance that in my opinion it's not worth planning for.

Thankfully, conviction in the Senate and immediate removal from office is not the only way that impeachment can help make Trump accountable for his actions. There's a lot that you can do even without that sort of slam dunk smoking gun evidence. If you can't sway the Trump base (and thus the Senate GOP) away from Trump, you can turn everyone else against him and ensure that he loses the 2020 election, and likely drags a bunch of GOP candidates in vulnerable districts down with him.

This seems to be the House Democrats' plan. They've dragged their feet on starting impeachment proceedings because they know that they'll only get one shot at it, and they wanted to have not just an ironclad legal case, but evidence that's blatant enough to convict Trump in the court of public opinion. If you can get centrists and moderate Republicans to stay home instead of turning out to vote for Trump, he will lose the 2020 election. House Democrats seem to have decided that the call where Trump tried to strongarm the Ukrainian president into investigating his political opponents qualifies as that sort of evidence — though they may be stalling for time (which they've been doing for months, if not years), either to allow more time for ongoing investigations, or simply get closer to the 2020 election, where impeachment proceedings will be most effective.

As an aside, I think the most damning evidence out there (short of the kind of might-not-exist recording I mentioned earlier) is likely buried in Trump's finacial history. There's a reason that Trump has been so adamant about not releasing his tax returns, and it's likely because it reveals a lot of shady dealings. It's extremely likely that Trump has been laundering money for Russian oligarchs (possibly up to and including Putin himself), and a dedicated, thorough, impartial investigation into his finances would certainly reveal this, which is why he's been fighting so hard to block that for so long. While it wouldn't be quite as damning as a "let's collude together" recording, the narrative that "Trump has been accepting money from Russian interests for years, including during his campaign and possibly even during his presidency" would be almost as good. I suspect this evidence is what the House Democrats have been waiting for.

Anyway, one objection to the whole impeachment-as-political-theater strategy that will likely come up is "but didn't Democrats cry foul when the GOP did the same thing to Bill Clinton"? That's a fair point, but the difference is the nature of the charges being brought against them. The GOP impeached Bill Clinton for, effectively, getting a blowjob. (Yes, it was technically about obstruction of juice and perjury, but in reality it was about his sexual activities.) It was a naked power grab, using impeachment as a campaign tool because his actions did not legitimately rise to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors" as required by the Constitution. (IMO, at least — naturally one can make the argument that cheating on your wife with a professional subordinate and then trying to hide it does meet that standard.) Meanwhile, Trump's actions have absolutely risen to that level, making impeachment an appropriate response (I would argue that it's the only appropriate response). House Democrats should definitely do everything they can to get Trump convicted, removed from office, and ideally tried, convicted, and sent to prison by a conventional criminal court after his removal from office — but the political reality is that this likely won't happen due to the GOP's abandonment of any kind of principled stance, so using it to ensure that Trump doesn't win a second term is the next best thing.

Also worth mentioning: the Democrats should move forward on impeachment because it's the right thing to do. I would make this argument even if it was unlikely to have any political effect. Trump is undoubtedly guilty of impeachable offenses. Therefore, he must be impeached. Even if the GOP blocks convicting him, it's a moral imperative that the Democrats bring charges against him, make the best possible case they can, and force the GOP to display their blatant shameless partisanship in refusing to convict. If the Democrats don't even try to impeach him, then it's their moral failing for not doing the right thing. If they impeach him and the GOP refuses to convict, it's the GOP's moral failing for allowing partisan politics to trump rule of law and common human decency.

Could someone clarify this one for me - reading the other wiki seemed to suggest that Senators only act as jurors. They have no active role in the proceedings other than voting on the final outcome. Any official deliberations are held in closed session. They may have private discussions with each other to try and swing the vote but that's it.

(This fact has been one of the go to excuses for Republican Senators as they want the public to believe that Impeachment = Criminal Trial and so with that logic just as jurors can be struck off for expressing opinions in public / doing their own investigations as part of a criminal trial then Senators should also be struck off if they acted in the same way.)

It's House members that prosecute the case, so one would assume Adam Schiff or Jerry Nadler (or whoever is chairing the umbrella committee that Pelosi has set up) who will be the face of the Democratic Party in the Impeachment - not Senators.

I bring this up because I initially thought that Impeachment might give a stage for Warren, Sanders and Harris in particular (given her background as a prosecutor) that could help them in the Primary / election - but if they don't have an active role then really there is only so much that exasperated facial expressions can get you.

The reason I'm worried is that the news and average voter is aggressively both-sides. We say that Fox News is great at spinning "not proven" to be innocent, but that's largely because the people as a whole, more or less inherently believe that both sides bad and don't want a straightforward narrative on this kind of thing.

I actually disagree on his tax returns... I think the answer is much simpler: he's embarrassed by the fact he isn't as rich as he claims. I'd be surprised if there was something in his returns that actually revealed illegal activity because while they're new to us, it's not like the IRS hasn't already looked at them.

They'll be embarrassing, but not illegal.

A smoking gun of Trump asking for someone to interfere probably won’t be enough for Trump to be removed form office, we may well have such a smoking gun with the Ukraine situation, and it’s only enough for democrats to be willing to impeach.

I don’t see Trump being convicted by the senate unless he is directly proven to orchestrate a direct attack on someone, so he’d need to be recorded asking the Ukrainian President to have Ukrainian embassy security to physically attack Biden’s son so as to get Biden to drop out.

I agree on the Tax returns, they will show he's not nearly as rich as he claims and many of his businesses and investments are not as profitable as he claims.

So, what does everyone think, isn't this an extremely dangerous gambit? Most people polled don't think Trump should be impeached and I am absolutely terrified that the Democrats may have handed Trump his reelection on a silver platter. Most of the moderate opinion writers on the New York Times think this is horribly unwise, and they're usually more right about how the public will react than more liberal commentators.

Most polls have shown that support for impeachment has gone up over the past 48 hours.

How much support is there for Impeachment?