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Kavanaugh and Bill Barr on record that Congress should hold the President accountable though it’s pretty clear Kavanaugh only meant this to apply for Democratic Presidents.
Sorry but after debt ceiling chicken, Merrick Garland, and the Comey presser and letter I don’t care about any misgivings about doing it before the election. Political calculus wise the closer to the election the better-just like the Comey Letter.
As usual we see Greg Sargent’s hardball gap. The Dems always have to be Mr. Nice Guy Ms. Nice Girl-‘we can’t ever play hardball, can’t flout any meaningless convention.’
I’m not saying in the big picture we don’t want to get back to norms but the Democrats have aptly proven the way to protect norms is not to continue to observe them while the GOP does whatever it wants.
The reality is the only way to get the GOP to stop it’s sociopathy is to make them pay a price for it.
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-watergate-impeachment-laurence-tribe-1357020
I do totally agree with what Tribe says here however:
It depends on what facts are uncovered and how close we are to the 2020 election by the time we uncover them. In general, letting someone hold onto the presidency after committing very serious high crimes and misdemeanors that endanger the republic is probably worse in terms of the survival of democracy than the upheaval that impeaching and removing the president would be.
This is why I’m so adamant that Trump must be impeached if we find he’s committed High Crimes and Misdemeanors. Tribe agrees that letting a ‘President’ who’s committed H&C hold on is a terrible danger to the Republic. Yet he seems to qualify this with: unless it’s too close to the election.
No the only question is if he committed H&C. If so then you must impeach. If the Democrats fail to impeach him in that case for any reason-‘too close to the election’ or ‘the Trump voters will riot’ or ‘it will backfire on us like with Clinton’-an particularly stubborn zombie idea as there’s no factual evidence, alas, that the GOP paid any price for impeaching a very popular President who most of the country said should not have been impeached.
Political expediency can not be allowed to overrule this imperative-a misplaced expediency as there’s no basis whatsoever to believe it would hurt the Democrats-in reality it would hurt the Republicans-much less fear of the Trump Deplorables rioting-as some commentators have suggested.
As for the Trump Worshippers feeling aggrieved-why is it that the Dems respect the feelings of the Trump base more than their own? I don’t agree with her on everything, but on this, at least Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is right.
“I think you endanger your majority by not doing what got you into the majority,” she says. “And this is something that the Republicans often are in tune with that the Democrats are not. We seem to be afraid of our own shadow. We’ve become too afraid, I think, to actually listen to the people, and to recognize who our base is,” she says. “I’m fascinated by Republicans. They seem to have, for good or bad, a full understanding of their base and complete loyalty to them. We have a bigger base, but we seem to not understand them or have loyalty to them. When you are constantly trying to figure out how to appease everyone, you end up not appeasing anyone.”
For more on Omar:
"The fact that Rep. Omar, a progressive Muslim woman, has been singled out for reprimand, is an unacceptable double standard. As attorney and author @rabiasquared commented, the House resolution 'is not about what was said. It's about who said it.'"https://t.co/6UwaUd88W0
— Leela Daou (@leeladaou) March 8, 2019
This is another zombie objection to impeachment-you can't do it too close to the 2020 election. They should do it 11 days before 2020 just like the Comey Letter. The closer to the election the better https://t.co/ALv2Aac1Ah
— Expand the Court (@ProChoiceMike) March 9, 2019
There's nothing in the Constitution that says the impeachment power disintegrates because an election is coming. As for the GOP they impeached Clinton during the lame duck
— Expand the Court (@ProChoiceMike) March 9, 2019
There was that former DNC Senior Adviser on Nicole Wallace the other day who said the Dem investigatoins would extend to election day 2020. That’s excellent. You can argue that’ could get the same effect I’m discussing regarding impeaching him 11 days before the election.
But I’m sorry on the issue of impeachment I always go back to Bill Clinton: if the GOP is willing to impeach him simply for lying about sex on a purely party line vote when he was actually very popular during the lame duck while the Democrats are unwilling to impeachTrump who stands credibly accused for conspiring with a hostile foreign power to win his Office and is not so popular-and maybe will be much less popular once the Dem hearings begin to seep through then it’s check please time.
Sorry the asymmetry of that situation offends me.
3. Last point-for the moment! LOL I'm NOT saying impeach him now-I think
Applebaum makes a fair point about an inquiry but at least the Dems plan major PUBLIC investigations. My argument is the Dems must not rule out impeachment in the not too distant future— Expand the Court (@ProChoiceMike) March 9, 2019