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UPDATE-at bottom? Maybe Nancy Pelosi day should be changed to Rashida Tlaib Day?

In chapter A I celebrated January 3, 2019 the day the Dems finally took back Congress as I and many in the #Resistance had dreamed for the last 27 months. But as we celebrated this great and historic day-Nancy Pelosi Day-the young  Michigan freshman Congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib, had made some comments that evening that kicked the hornet’s nest in a big way:

“Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) made history Thursday afternoon for being the first Palestinian American woman sworn into Congress.”

“Hours later, she made headlines for swearing at a bar — in comments that continued to reverberate in Washington the following day.”

“At a reception Thursday night for the progressive group MoveOn.org, Tlaib vowed that the new Democrat-controlled House would be focusing on ousting President Trump from office.”

“Don’t you ever, ever, let anybody take away your roots, your culture, who you are. Ever,” Tlaib told the crowd in the packed space. “Because when you [hang onto those things], people love you and you win. And when your son looks at you and says, ‘Mama, look. You won. Bullies don’t win.’

“And I said, ‘Baby, they don’t,’ because we’re gonna go in there and we’re gonna impeach the motherf—–.”

Trump on Friday called Tlaib’s remarks “disgraceful” and claimed he didn’t know the lawmaker.

“I assume she’s new. I think she dishonored herself, and I think she dishonored her family,” Trump said at an afternoon news conference. “I thought it was highly disrespectful to the United States of America.”

Trump who has done more to dishonor his own high Office than anyone ever has or even dreamed was possible is actually claiming to be indignant as are all his GOP co-conspirators-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy-great to be able to call him Minority!-went as far as demanding Pelosi somehow punish her! 

Everyday McCarthy and his fellow co-conspirators-like #MoscowMitch-turn a blind eye to all the attacks on the rule of law and all the insults, all the abuse of power-the stock answer being I can’t comment on the President’s tweets every day-but now they’re claiming to be morally outraged.

Of course, so is much of the MSM and-alas-many of the Dem leaders who according to Politico ‘are livid’ not with Trump who is currently depriving 800,000 Americans of their paycheck for a political stunt but the new Congresswoman:

“House Democrats are furious that an incoming freshman’s expletive-riddled statement about impeaching Donald Trump has suddenly upended their carefully crafted rhetoric on their plans to take on the president.”

They may be furious but many of us find it-refreshing.

“Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats have long argued that impeachment is a last resort that would come at the end of exhaustive oversight and investigations. But on the second day of the new Congress, the news was jammed with talk of Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, who told a crowd of progressive activists Thursday night that “we’re gonna impeach the motherf—er.”

“Rank-and-file Democrats, immediately fearful of the damage the comment could cause, unloaded on their new colleague Friday morning. Republicans, they argued, would hold it up as proof that Democrats are playing politics rather than pursuing genuine oversight of the president — even if the GOP never showed interest in investigating Trump scandals while it was in power.”

As the GOP is a party of proven liars and obstructors-so what? Why are they so scared of what the GOP says? Just point out the fact that they are proven liars, obstructors-and Trump’s co-conspirators.

“Mueller hasn’t even produced his report yet!” said Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. “People should cool their jets a little bit, let the prosecutors do their job and finish the investigation.”

But how is she stopping Mueller from finishing his investigation?

“Inappropriate,” added Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.). “As elected officials I think we should be expected to set a high bar… It’s not helpful.”

Not helpful to what?

UPDATE: Over eight months later the answer seems clear-not helpful to Pelosi’s plan to run out the clock. The Democratic base is on to the Speaker as #ImpeachTrumpNowNANCY trended on Twitter yesterday.

The Speaker needs to understand that she has a lot of folks very disillusioned.

End of UPDATE

“Even Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), who introduced an impeachment resolution earlier this week, was shocked. His eyes bulged in disbelief when a reporter read him Tlaib’s comments and he was speechless for several seconds.”

After he regained his composure, Sherman said that kind of language is detrimental to the cause: “That’s not language I would use … I think the office of the presidency should be treated with respect.”

Someone ought to tell the fake ‘President’ that. And it’s not clear that the Dem leadership has much respect for the presidency with their tolerance for having an illegitimate ‘President’ in the Oval. And to say it for the 87,000 time it’s not about removal it’s about the Rule of Law-removing Trump from Office isn’t enough he must be exorcised.

FN: Kirschner is now following me on Twitter-now I understand what the phrase over the moon means! So I tried to see if he’d bite on that question-not yet!

My Daughter’s Army gets it:

“Trump’s conviction and removal from office by the Senate is NOT the point. Doing the right thing is the point. Trump’s obstruction of justice is flagrant and Mueller’s documentation is clear and convincing. Therefore, impeachment is a Constitutional imperative.”

One of the most frustrating aspects of debating impeachment phobes is that they always start by ‘educating’ us that impeachment doesn’t mean removal-when, of course, we who advocate impeachment have thought much more about the process and its implications than they have

Huh? Considering Sherman just introduced an article of impeachment how is Congresswoman Tlaib disrespecting the Office by simply declaring her desire to impeach? What am I missing?

Party elders also sought to calm talk of impeachment without criticizing Tlaib directly. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the new chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, called Talib’s comments “inappropriate” and said, “We need to be patient.”

“You can’t accomplish very much of anything unless you have civility and show respect for your colleagues,” Cummings said. “Those kind of comments do not take us in the right direction.”

I don’t get it. Where is there civility and respect? Trump and the GOP never practice it. The GOP respects their Democrat opposition so much they had the Hastert Rule over the last 15 years when they dominated the House-the Dems were in control just 11 of 15 years-rendering ‘bipartisanship’ impossible even in theory.

The matter did not come up in House Democrats’ caucus meeting, sources in the room said. But multiple House Democrats said they hoped Pelosi or one of her top deputies would have a “chat” with Tlaib.

Debbie Dingell, a fellow Michigander who is close with Tlaib, also tried to downplay the issue Friday.

“This anxiety about any impeachment process gives rise almost imperceptibly to another problem. It distorts understanding of what constitutes impeachable “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” If the impeachment of the president is seen to be a source of intolerable constitutional harm, the tendency is to raise, and keep raising, the bar for removal. A president can be an outright demagogue, lying all the time on matters big and small and committing crimes along the way: and still there is fear that the cost to the nation of impeachment outweighs whatever benefits to the polity it will bring.

Bauer points out that many Democrats wrongly equate Trump with Clinton:

“Defined either way, this norm puts into roughly equal balance the dangers of Trump and the dangers of the impeachment process. It is not surprising, then, that there is broad hesitation over even a formal inquiry into the commission of Trump’s potential impeachable offenses. It is widely assumed that impeachment proceedings should be undertaken only when there is already overwhelming evidence of extreme —usually taken to mean the most serious legal—wrongdoing. In all other cases, it is feared, the impeachment process risks becoming a show trial, one in which partisan prejudgment of guilt can yield only a sham process. So, as Congress did when looking to Ken Starr to make the legal case for impeachment against Bill Clinton, now many believe that it is all up to Robert Mueller.”

“The anxiety that builds up over the impeachment process is vividly illustrated by the response to Trump associate and former personal lawyer Michael Cohen’s recent plea agreement for criminal violations of the federal campaign finance laws, soon followed by the National Enquirer parent company’s acceptance of responsibility for its role in the crime. The president appears in the prosecution’s court filings as the key person directing the conspiracy, readily identifiable as “Individual 1.” As soon this deeply disturbing news broke, reasons were given why the development did not support even an inquiry into impeachment. The president may have been involved in breaking the law, but it is was not, some argued, a law anyone should care all that much about. “[Since] when,” Christopher Buskirk asked readers of The New York Times, “did campaign finance violations become the country’s idea of an impeachable offense?” In addition to shrugging off this portion of the United States Code, critics warned about the unsuitability for an impeachment process of the underlying subject matter of alleged extramarital affairs. By loose analogy to the Clinton impeachment, such matters were deemed too personal—without regard to whether criminal conduct to influence the outcome of an election was involved.”

FN: Though, of course, Clinton was impeached. 

But regarding maladministration, Bauer argues it’s a mistake to presume that it can never be grounds for impeachment:

“An example of how the current norms governing resort to the impeachment process seep into our understanding of the constitutional standards is the often-repeated view that “maladministration” is not a ground for either inquiry or removal. Much is made of very little constitutional history on this point. And some scholars, like the Cato Institute’s Gene Healy in his recently published study of impeachment, conclude on a close examination that this history has been badly misconstrued. While it is true the president should not be subject to impeachment over policy disagreements, or even administrative shortcomings, it is also true that extraordinary incompetence or gross irresponsibility can support impeachment. James Madison referred to impeachment as “indispensable… for defending the community against the incapacity [or] negligence” and not only the “perfidy” of a president.

As Bauer says, some talk as if we have to wait for absolute calamity to impeach-taking prevention off the table.

Does the impeachment process remain on hold until such time as a president who displays pathological mendacity tells a lie with calamitous consequences? To take this view is to relegate impeachment to the function of an after-the-fact remedy, a cleaning of the barn after the horse is long gone. This is conceivably the result of a fundamental confusion over the function of impeachment. If a president is removed from office, the Senate must vote to “convict.” Impeachment then assumes the look and feel of a punishment, just desserts for offenses committed, rather than, in Madison’s words, a defense of the community against negligence, incapacity or perfidy. In fact, impeachment is a measure to protect against harm, not to exact rough constitutional justice for damage already done.

Indeed, and arguably, Trump’s government shutdown is a clear case of maladministration.

Think about it: you hear Trump and his GOP co-conspirators bragging about how the shutdown is great as it rains on the Democrats parade as they take over Congress. In other words 800,000 Americans are being deprived of their paycheck in order to mess with the Democrats. Sounds like a small price to pay-they don’t get to pay their rent but McConnell and Trump get to piss of the libs. And now he’s saying he’s willing to go years. Right he’s willing for workers to go years without being paid. That sure is big of him.

Nevertheless, while I agree that maladministration is legitimate grounds-and Congress also needs to weigh that, the most compelling and reason for impeachment-what makes it essential if Trump is guilty of impeachable offenses-which are not strictly only legal offenses-is the legitimacy question.

Regarding that, Joy Reid made a crucial point last night in her interview with Pelosi:

She pointed out that Russia is foundational as it goes to how Trump won the office. If Trump won the office via illegitimate grounds then his entire Presidency lacks legitimacy. That puts the notion that you should respect the Office in a different light. Maybe it’s not Rashida Tlaib disrespecting the Office but those Democrats Greg Sargent thinks will give Trump as pass no matter what is found.

In that light talking about simply voting him out in 2020 disrespects the office and treats the fact that it was stolen as a small matter-‘we don’t want to be mainly about impeachment’ means ‘sure, he got it through ill gotten means but it’s too much trouble to do anything about it, let’s just better luck next time.’

Similarly talking about Trump’s many awful policies also implicitly legitimizes his illegitimate reign. The foundational question with Trump is how he obtained the office in the first place. That is why we should wait for Mueller and why there is nothing more important than Russia-and though I didn’t have space to discuss it in this chapter, Comeygate.

Emmanuel Cleaver was on MSNBC yesterday afternoon and insisted that ‘it’s not like we Democrats are talking about impeachment all the time, it rarely comes up.’

Sad thing is I tend to believe it. I mean I’d like to know they are at least studying and preparing for the possibility-learning what the process is. Some of them sound as if they believe that most Americans go to bed at night and pray ‘Please Oh Lord, don’t let the Democrats impeach President Trump. We love him so much!’

In fact there is already great support for impeachment. The Democrats need to stop with the Clinton analogies and realize the correct analogy is Nixon. Again, maybe I’m worrying too much-but Greg Sargent’s ambiguous sentence got me stir crazy again and then the whole world comes down on Rahsida Tlaib for saying something totally legitimate-again, don’t take the bait what was outrageous wasn’t motherfucker-remember when Kayne West used the same word in the Oval Office?-but impeachment. 

Molly Roberts asks what’s wrong with the word motherfucker?

The answer is nothing-it’s the word impeachment that has precipitated this moral panic-those claiming they’re outraged over MFer are blowing smoke.

Another thing you hear Democrats saying all the time that gets under my skin-there are a lot more important priorities than impeachment. Uh, no they are not-not even close. Again if we determine Trump colluded with Russia-also quite possibly with the rogue FBI agents-then there’s a-as Joy Reid put it so well-a foundational issue at the heart of Trump’s Administration that goes deeper than any mere debate over policies.

Listen-the Democrats have good policies, that’s why I’m a Democrat. Having said that they aren’t going to get to implement too many of them in the next two years-right now we can’t even get Mitch McConnell-it’s he and not Trump who is keeping it closed-to open the government for Cripes sake, do you really think Trump is going to do an infrastructure bill or something that will really lower prescription drug prices? Ok, I’d like to believe so, and if anyone could do it it’s Speaker Pelosi but I’m not holding my breath.

FN: This sure seems like a long time ago-when I had anything good to say about the Speaker.

There are still the Nancy loyalists who want to believe she’s playing Eleventy dimensional chess but she has lost a lot of us. Note three things about Nancy loyalists who think she’s playing Eleventy dimensional chess:

1. They agree with us that Trump should be impeached just that they are-rightly or wrongly-convinced Pelosi thinks so too and is just biding her time.

2. So this is one debate I want to lose-I’d be ecstatic if folks like Aimee prove right and myself wrong. I will happily make a tape mix of me saying ‘You were right and I was wrong’ 100 times for Aimee and Friends to listen to at their leisure if they are proven right.

3. But by the same token if alas our pessimism and panic are warranted then the Nancy loyalists will be even more outraged and disappointed than we will be-as we saw it coming

https://twitter.com/DavidJollyFL/status/1081207771276722176

Indeed, the truth as much as I support progressive policies-again, it’s why I’ve been a Democrat all my life-but impeachment matters more at the present moment. Many Americans who aren’t all that progressive still would like to see Trump impeached. Again, to even discuss Trump’s ‘policies’-he doesn’t really have any coherent ones-is to legitimize him.

End of FN

Again, I agree that you shouldn’t impeach yet but that doesn’t mean you say nothing:

https://twitter.com/DavidJollyFL/status/1081216492841115649

Excellent advice. You can discuss this without once mentioning the ‘I’ word. Sure, reporters will ask and then repeat what Nancy said-it should neither be done nor not done for political reasons.

The worry is some of them really do want to not do it for political reasons.

A new piece from Angry WH Staffer:

If you aren’t excited about today, you should be; we just turned a vitally-important corner in American politics. For the first time in two years — and perhaps for the first time in his entire life –Donald Trump will be held accountable.”

Nancy Pelosi absolutely nailed it in her speech this afternoon: “Two months ago, the American people spoke and demanded a new dawn. They called upon the beauty of our Constitution and system of checks and balances that protects our democracy, remembering that the legislative branch is coequal to the presidency and judiciary.”

In two sentences, Pelosi artfully articulated the reality that is about to come crashing down upon Trump and his administration. For two years, Trump has been largely unchallenged; the GOP majority has been happy to abdicate their responsibility and let him run roughshod over societal norms, common decency, and political decorum. That changes today. For two years, it has been abundantly clear he only wanted to “Drain the Swamp” because he was bringing his own swamp-monsters and they needed new homes. This administration has been plagued with scandals that would have sunk most other presidencies, only to have the GOP provide cover and refuse to investigate them. That changes today. For two years, Trump, his cabinet, and his spokespeople have been able to do whatever they want with no risk of being held accountable, or called to testify in front of the American public. That changes today.

“This is a great day for America, but it also marks the beginning of what I would expect to be a pretty tumultuous period in American politics. We have a malignant narcissist in the White House who is about to learn for the first time in his life that it’s not all about him. One of my followers put it beautifully this morning, so I’m going to borrow a quote from them: “These past two years have been Trump’s “Best Case” scenario. Crazy.” Unfortunately, they’re 100% correct. The batshit craziness we’ve seen so far probably pales in comparison to what’s coming. All the tantrums he’s thrown, mean tweets he’s sent, people he’s insulted? That’s been while his party was in absolute power. He could do whatever he wanted; he just sucked at it, so he didn’t really manage to do much of anything. Now he’s going to have Pelosi smacking his tiny hands with the gavel (that he so kindly laid in her lap) every time he does something out of line.”

If you missed Pelosi’s interview with TODAY, you should check it out. She said it was an “open discussion” whether or not a sitting POTUS could be indicted. That’s a pretty big hint from a long-time member of the Gang of Eight. She also said re: impeachment, “We have to wait and see what happens with the Mueller report. We shouldn’t be impeaching for a political reason, and we shouldn’t avoid impeachment for a political reason. So we’ll just have to see how it comes.” Well, we already know it’s not going to end well for POTUS; who spends months preparing to counter a report that they expect to exonerate them? Trump knows what he did, and he knows Mueller knows. If you thought the last two years were bonkers, you should probably buckle up: it looks like it’s going to get even sportier.

UPDATE: To be sure in retrospect I see her talk of indictment with as just more mud in the eye. Recently, Jerrold Nadler claimed appearances very much to the contrary that ‘Nobody wants ‘the President’ ‘held accountable more than the Speaker. If so she wants it only to the extent that someone else other than her House executes this accountability.

Impeachment? He’s just not worth it. Great-so was all the energy and time we devoted to electing her Speaker also not worth it? 

End of UPDATE

Correct-he’s never face accountability before in his life; clearly not from his very permissive father who Trump always had twisted around his finger. For this reason Angry conjectures that this is Trump’s last year in office.

“Going to keep this one short and just leave you with a little bit of hope: I firmly believe this is going to be Donald Trump’s last year in office. We’re about to witness a perfect storm of Justice passing directly over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He is not going to be able to handle the barrage of subpoenas, real-time fact-checking and oversight, and the release of Mueller’s report at the exact same time. He’s not mentally equipped to handle even slight amounts of pushback; this is going to push him over the edge and he will either resign, or be crazy enough that even the GOP can’t defend him anymore.”

UPDATE: Angry wrote that back in January 2019 it’s now September and at least a few of his predictions don’t look to be in great shape alas. Personally I’ve never believed he would resign-unless perhaps the GOP turned on him but at this point they haven’t as a party even begun to do so-it seems that the GOPers who really have a problem with him kind of ‘self deport’ rather than confront him. No one in the GOP-and few among the Dems-have any appetite for confronting him. Never mind the GOP turning on him-we’re still waiting on the Democrats to do so.

As for subpoenas and oversight Trump has simply refused to cooperate across the board-even with routine oversight and so far the Dems haven’t made him pay for it. Yes there’s a court case but when will it be decided? Will Pelosi after repeatingly declaring ‘not yet’-until they make this ‘strong case’ she apparently doesn’t realize is in the Mueller Report-pivot to ‘now it’s too late’ before the case is even decided?

But as I said back in January:

Believe it or not thinking politically I’m not sure I want him gone yet!  I wonder if the Democrats wouldn’t be better off having him there until 2020-I’ve argued elsewhere that the optimum political scenario for the Dems could be to not impeach him until mid to late 2020-perhaps 11 days before the 2020 election a la Jim Comey, then let McConnell and friends have to field questions about conviction the last 11 days-after which Kamala Harris-or Rashida Tlaib?!-beats him in a landslide.

I know here’s Mr. Impeachment Train guy and I want to slow walk it. And unpacking things I realize that I kind of have two desires that are if not totally contradictory in some tension-I want Trump impeached if that’s where the facts lead and I think that’s where they lead but we’ll see-but on the other hand I’d like to beat him at the ballot this time so America can correct its terrible mistake.

FN: So I’ve never necessarily been focused on getting him out before his first term is done-to be sure if that were possible, it’s still logically possible, I’d take it though certainly wouldn’t bet on it-but rather my concern was that he be impeached so that his fake ‘Presidency’ isn’t normalized. Yes we need him out of Office but removing him isn’t enough he must also be exorcised.

Just so I also want him impeached. So in a perfect world I kind of want to impeach him and beat him. Not impeaching him is a nonstarter because of the Bill Clinton precedent. Sorry, if you’re going to impeach Clinton for lying about sex-which Trump has also done along with so much more-then Trump should get at least what Clinton got. Indeed, the Clinton investigation really was a fishing expedition-Monica Lewinsky had nothing to do with Whitewater and now that the GOP is dismissing perjury as a mere ‘process crime’ and arguing that to matter a lie must be material, they are actually confessing that the Clinton impeachment was illegitimate.

But if after impeaching Clinton you don’t impeach Trump that’s saying that Republican Presidents are above the law that there’s literally nothing they can do that would lead to impeachment. And impeachment matters-wether or not there’s conviction-in the sense that it’s an indictment not of Trump the individual but Trump’s Administration.

So impeachment-provided we determine collusion happened, or for that matter other high crimes and misdemeanors-not necessarily legal crimes-must happen. On the other hand maybe removal should happen as well-why should Trump suffer only what Clinton suffered when what he did was far worse? But that’s not in our-the Democrats’-hands. Let the GOP shield him from accountability and run on that-it may well imperil the GOP Senators from purple states-perhaps it could even increase the possibility of a Dem Senate.

But what’s clear is that it’s a moral obscenity for Trump to be on the ballot in 2020 without at a minimum a big scarlet I on his forehead.

On the other hand, Trump is such a clear and present danger that maybe we do legitimately need to get him out of there-at this point he’s happily talking about withholding paychecks from American government workers for the next two years because of a political stunt.

If you’ve read a chapter in this book you know I love Marcy Wheeler but this is a pretty troubling reservation against impeachment:

 

 

“I’m fairly confident that Trump thoroughly compromised himself with his eagerness to deal with the Russians for a Tower, for election help, for whatever else they demanded in response. I’m fairly confident that Putin has receipts from that compromise which creates a real dilemma for Trump on whether Mueller or Putin poses the biggest threat.

Trump and the Russians were engaged in a call-and-response, a call-and-response that appears in the Papadopoulos plea and (as Lawfare notes) the GRU indictment, one that ultimately did deal dirt and got at least efforts to undermine US sanctions (to say nothing of the Syria effort that Trump was implementing less than 14 hours after polls closed, an effort that has been a key part of both Jared Kushner and Mike Flynn’s claims about the Russian interactions).

At each stage of this romance with Russia, Russia got a Trump flunkie (first, Papadopoulos) or Trump himself to publicly engage in the call-and-response. All of that led up to the point where, on July 16, 2018, after Rod Rosenstein loaded Trump up with a carefully crafted indictment showing Putin that Mueller knew certain things that Trump wouldn’t fully understand, Trump came out of a meeting with Putin looking like he had been thoroughly owned and stood before the entire world and spoke from Putin’s script in defiance of what the US intelligence community has said.

People are looking in the entirely wrong place for the kompromat that Putin has on Trump, and missing all the evidence of it right in front of their faces.

Vladimir Putin obtained receipts at each stage of this romance of Trump’s willing engagement in a conspiracy with Russians for help getting elected. Putin knows what each of those receipts mean. Mueller has provided hints, most obviously in that GRU indictment, that he knows what some of them are.

For example, on or about July 27, 2016, the Conspirators  attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a third-party provider and used by Clinton’s personal office. At or around the same time, they also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton Campaign.

But Mueller’s not telling whether he has obtained the actual receipts.

And that’s the kompromat. Trump knows that if Mueller can present those receipts, he’s sunk, unless he so discredits the Mueller investigation before that time as to convince voters not to give Democrats a majority in Congress, and convince Congress not to oust him as the sell-out to the country those receipts show him to be. He also knows that, on the off-chance Mueller hasn’t figured this all out yet, Putin can at any time make those receipts plain. Therein lies Trump’s uncertainty: It’s not that he has any doubt what Putin has on him. It’s that he’s not sure which path before him — placating Putin, even if it provides more evidence he’s paying off his campaign debt, or trying to end the Mueller inquiry before repaying that campaign debt, at the risk of Putin losing patience with him — holds more risk.

Trump knows he’s screwed. He’s just not sure whether Putin or Mueller presents the bigger threat.

But ultimately there is one other factor that makes Trump more self-destructively defensive about this investigation than he otherwise would be: his narcissism.

And while I’d welcome his utter humiliation before the world stage, I also believe that any single-minded pursuit of that humiliation will only increase the likelihood he’ll dig in, regardless of the damage that doing so will do to the country.

 

“Even if we do get to the point where indictment or impeachment became viable (and I’m not sure we will), it’s worth thinking about whether pursuing either one might just trigger a narcissistic response that will only lead Trump to do further damage to this country. If we provide Trump an off-ramp that allows him to preserve some of his destructive ego, it may do less damage to the country.”

But that’s to concede the point to terrorism at this point. To say that he’s guilty but we’ll let him off the hook because he’s so crazy he might just be wearing a vest full of explosives and is willing to blow us all up along with himself and his kids to Kingdom Come is while a realistic worry not exactly Justice.

FN: She wrote this in early January-I think she may have since reconsidered. But the idea that he should escape accountability out of fear of what he will do creates perverse incentives.-talk about rewarding bad behavior! As many-like Brian Beutler-have since pointed out, it’s the opposite to the extent that the Dems don’t impeach him it will only embolden him and allow him and the GOP co-conspirators to use the vacuum created by their failure to hold him accountable to go on show trials and sham investigations into the investigators themselves.

Yoni Applebaum argues that the process of impeachment itself would put Trump in a box-giving him less not more room to act out. 

The question of whether impeachment is justified should not be confused with the question of whether it is likely to succeed in removing a president from office. The country will benefit greatly regardless of how the Senate ultimately votes. Even if the impeachment of Donald Trump fails to produce a conviction in the Senate, it can safeguard the constitutional order from a president who seeks to undermine it. The protections of the process alone are formidable. They come in five distinct forms.

The first is that once an impeachment inquiry begins, the president loses control of the public conversation. Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton each discovered this, much to their chagrin. Johnson, the irascible Tennessee Democrat who succeeded to the presidency in 1865 upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, quickly found himself at odds with the Republican Congress. He shattered precedents by delivering a series of inflammatory addresses that dominated the headlines and forced his opponents into a reactive posture. The launching of impeachment inquiries changed that. Day after day, Congress held hearings. Day after day, newspapers splashed the proceedings across their front pages. Instead of focusing on Johnson’s fearmongering, the press turned its attention to the president’s missteps, to the infighting within his administration, and to all the things that congressional investigators believed he had done wrong.

It isn’t just the coverage that changes. When presidents face the prospect of impeachment, they tend to discover a previously unsuspected capacity for restraint and compromise, at least in public. They know that their words can be used against them, so they fume in private. Johnson’s calls for the hanging of his political opponents yielded quickly to promises to defer to their judgment on the key questions of the day. Nixon raged to his aides, but tried to show a different face to the country. “Dignity, command, faith, head high, no fear, build a new spirit,” he told himself. Clinton sent bare-knuckled proxies to the television-news shows, but he and his staff chose their own words carefully.

Trump is easily the most pugilistic president since Johnson; he’s never going to behave with decorous restraint. But if impeachment proceedings begin, his staff will surely redouble its efforts to curtail his tweeting, his lawyers will counsel silence, and his allies on Capitol Hill will beg for whatever civility he can muster. His ability to sidestep scandal by changing the subject—perhaps his greatest political skill—will diminish.

End of FN

As I’ve argued elsewhere in this book a big mistake in the past-Ford pardoning Nixon, Obama letting the Bush criminals and Wall Streeters off the hook in 2009; or, indeed, Clinton letting the Bush-Reagan criminals and perhaps traitors off in 1993-is that it was done under the premise of ‘letting the nation heal’ but the opposite happened. Americans didn’t ‘just move on’ but rather were bitterly resentful that no one was held accountable. Ironically, this ultimately helped the GOP as they were  wrongly able to repair their reputations and the public was more ripe to fall for the GOP’s pitch which is that: government is the problem, it can’t do anything right, just trust no one in government, they’re never held accountable.

America wanted Nixon in prison and the Bush-Cheney and Wall Street criminals investigated and indicted and so letting them off the hook didn’t repair the American psyche but instead led to even more cynicism.

I spoke with some fellow Democrats on Twitter last night-many of them big supporters of Nancy Pelosi and they feel the same. So I feel it’s vital to put this out as a marker-if Trump is guilty of High Crimes and Misdemeanors he must be impeached. Period-I don’t care what Mitch McConnell does or doesn’t do, I don’t care what polls say this would mean for 2020, I don’t care about the Deplorables pitching a fit-far as I’m concerned that’s a feature not a bug-they’re only 20% of the country.

At this point Rashida Tlaib is leading my own poll for 2020. She had me at impeachment.

UPDATE: In retrospect perhaps I should change the name of the holiday Nancy Pelosi Day to Rashida Tlaib day-Chapter A. 

When she will have solidified her place in history as America’s Neville Chamberlain to Trump’s Adolph Hitler?

Many of us in the #Resistance and Dem base are disillusioned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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October 28, 2016: a Day That Will Live in Infamy Copyright © by . All Rights Reserved.

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