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After Paul Manafort was convicted on eight criminal counts and Michael Cohen pled guilty on eight criminal counts this has become a contested issue-should the Democrats run on impeachment? Most Dem leaders are arguing against that:

“In an interview on Fox News this morning, President Trump dismissed the idea that he could be impeached. “I don’t know how you can impeach somebody who’s done a great job,” he said. As they grow increasingly fearful about the losses they might suffer in November, many Republicans are hoping that raising the specter of Trump being impeached will motivate their base to stampede to the polls. With the president’s former personal lawyer saying in court that he committed crimes at the president’s behest — and more misdeeds will be revealed, I suspect — it’s hard to avoid the topic. But as The Post’s Michael Scherer reports, Democratic leaders in Congress are telling their candidates to tread carefully.”

“In some circles, that advice will get Democrats branded as cowards, because there’s no question that many Democratic voters believe there are more than enough grounds for Trump to be impeached already. You can’t separate this question from that context, of a Democratic electorate that has been frustrated for decades by politicians who seemed too timid to stand up to Republicans and fight fire with fire. These days, many people on the left view Michelle Obama’s insistence that “When they go low, we go high” as admirable but naive.”

Well it’s just a little ironic that Trump and the GOP are the ones who want to discuss impeachment; they literally want to make 2018 about impeachment to get the base out-‘you have to vote to save so-called ‘President Trump’ from impeachment!’

While the Dems act shamefacedly about the idea. In 1998 the GOP ran literally ran on impeachment. 

So the GOP tried to maximize impeachment talk in 1998 vs. the Dems today who want to minimize it. Now today with the shoe on the other foot, the GOP is again the party that wants to talk about impeachment even though they’re own President is the one in trouble.

To be clear, I’m not saying every candidate needs to run on impeachment and clearly the GOP overplayed its hand in 1998.

Back to Waldman:

“But you can believe that Trump deserves impeachment, and also believe that promising you’ll push for it if you win control of the House just doesn’t accomplish very much, either substantively or politically.”

I don’t necessarily think promising to impeach is the best message for 2018 either-just noting the discrepancy. It seems to me that the Dems message in 2018 ought to be not impeachment but accountability and oversight. Elect the Democrats who will be the accountability Congress who will finally provide some actual oversight to the illegitimate ‘President.’

Realistically, the Dems won’t impeach Trump the first day, or second day, or first week, or first month, or even the first six months. If I were going to predict I tend to think impeachment-while it may well happen at some point-probably won’t occur the first year.

And I’ve argued that from a political lens maybe you’d rather wait on impeachment until closer to the 2020 election. When I imagine impeachment-yes it’s the stuff my dreams are made of-it always happens about 11 days before the 2020 election-just like the Comey letter in 2016-so that all the media discusses the last 11 days is will the Senate vote to convict President Trump? but before the Senate can deliberate the election comes and Kamala Harris or Cory Booker defeat him in a landslide with over 400 electoral votes.

Back to Waldman:

“First you have to confront a practical reality: It takes 67 votes to convict in the Senate, and there is almost nothing that will make 15 or 20 Republican senators (depending on how many are in the chamber next year) vote to remove Trump from office. So saying you support impeaching Trump actually means saying you support impeaching him in the House, then holding a trial in the Senate at which he will be acquitted.”

Not if you time impeachment 11 days before the election… The reason I think this scenario could be optimal is that who do the Democrats really want to run against in 2020? Who is the optimal opponent? Clearly the Manchurian ‘President.’

FN: The idea that you can’t impeach without certainty the Senate will convict is a really terrible zombie idea that never seems to die. It’s awful morally as it essentially rewards the GOP for their rank lack of patriotism-they elevate party over country and then Pelosi and Friends reward them by saying there will be no consequences without their approval.

 

You could argue that removing Trump from office lets the GOP off the hook-by that time they may prefer to have him off the ticket. In my opinion impeaching Trump and then beating him in 2020 may be the optimal scenario politically and the most appropriate end to this appalling chapter in American history.

FN: This argument I was making in August of 2017 has been made by a number of Democrats who support impeachment-let’s force McConnell to acquit and thereby defend the indefensible.

As for conviction in the Senate you never know. Depending on what Mueller finds-and what the Dems who will have reopened the closed Russia investigation in the House-or better yet, begun a full Select Committee for Russia. Lindsay Graham is now claiming that the Mueller investigation sidelined Congress. Yes-but it shouldn’t have. It was Lindsay and his GOP friends who used Mueller as a pretext to scale back on the false premise that for Congress to exercise a strong role in investigating Russia would somehow step on Mueller’s toes. This, to be sure, is a total canard as Congress had a Select Committee along with Leon Jaworski’s Independent Counsel.

FN: As noted in Chapter A, Pelosi turned out to be no more interested in a SC than Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell-so history will show that Benghazi got a SC but not the biggest domestic political scandal in history-as Bill Maher once suggested the Dems don’t know how to make treason an issue.

It’s possible-I don’t know how likely-that with the inevitable new bombshells we learn about Trump between now and then-the Mueller report along with the Dem’s public Congressional hearings of their Select Committee’s investigation into Russia, politically a number of GOP Senators turn on Trump because of competitive races at home where supporting Trump is now a liability.

Waldman is correct, however, that there are a number of things the Dems can do short of impeachment to hold Trump accountable.

“More importantly, in the meantime Democrats can and should talk about the kind of accountability that they want to bring to the president and the administration without using impeachment. And there is so much that Democrats will be able to do if they control just one house of Congress. Here’s just some of what they can and should do to hold the administration, and Trump personally, accountable if they seize the House:

  • Use their control of the Ways and Means Committee to obtain and release Trump’s tax returns so that we finally learn what he has been hiding.
  • Hold hearings on the ways Trump is personally profiting off the presidency and potentially violating the Constitution’s emoluments clause.
  • Mount a serious, comprehensive investigation into the Russian attack on the 2016 election and the Trump campaign’s cooperation with that attack.
  • Investigate accusations of wrongdoing that have been leveled at Cabinet officials such as Wilbur Ross and Ryan Zinke.
  • Demand answers from the administration on the decision-making process and effects of controversial administration policies, such as adding a citizenship question to the census, relaxing rules for power plant emissions, making it easier for private “universities” to scam students, and tearing children from their parents’ arms at the border.

“All that has been missing because Republicans in Congress refuse to exercise even the mildest degree of oversight over the administration. If and when Democrats are able to do so, they will be serving an important function for the public, and yes, gaining political benefit from it at the same time.”

UPDATE: Regarding Trump’s tax returns Richard Neal has been exceedingly slow-it took him three months to even ask for them and he has not yet gone to court. So the idea of doing this as a substittue for impeachment didn’t pan out-due to Neal’s extreme timidity; as it stands the case for impeachment has advanced behind Neal who’s still waiting for a time to actually take the case to court-he’s also refused to take NY state’s very thoughtful gift of Trump’s state returns. Neal claims he fears getting Trump’s state returns would somehow hurt the case to get his federal. You know what is hurting the case even more? Not asking for the federal returns and now that you have not going to court. Maybe Neal is waiting until the election where it will do much more good.

End of UPDATE

Correct and this list was by no means exhaustive-for starters there is the Administration’s failed Puerto Rico response-incompetent to the point of being criminal. They also should conduct a major hearing on the Comey letter, the Comey presser, indeed, the entire email probe. Comey should be called to testify as should the rogue agents who apparently forced his hand-like the rogue anti Clinton agent who claimed threatened to release information to Assange if Comey didn’t make the public aware of the Huma Abedin’s ‘new’ emails before the election.

These rogue anti Clinton pro Trump agents at the FBI made the Bureau effectively Trumpland during the election. These agents thought Clinton was the ‘anti Christ.’ For some reason we haven’t gotten to see what they were texting.

https://lastmenandovermen.com/2018/07/15/you-want-unprecedented-animus-many-in-the-fbi-2016-viewed-clinton-as-the-anti-christ-personified/

FN: As Peter Strozk points out in his own lawsuit.

Beyond that we also need Roger Stone to testify as he certainly seems to know an awful lot about the etymology of the Comey letter; for starters he seems to have a good idea who these rogue Trump agents are. 

Yes, the DOJ’s IG did a report. The Congressional investigation can use that as a starting point-not end point. Indeed, as of now, we’re still waiting on the other half of this report-the report on the rogue agents who leaked to harm Clinton in October of 2016. Comey did reveal in his June, 2016 Senate testimony that there was an investigation into wether rogue agents leaked to Giuliani and other Trumpsters.

Again-talk to Roger Stone. And read his 2016 book-in the relevant pages. I covered this in detail in the link above.

UPDATE: We still have heard nothing about this from the Democrats-or the IG for that matter. The Dems ought to ask the IG…

As for the GOP there’s a very good piece in the Washington Post about the myth of Watergate Bipartisanship. In truth the GOP stuck with Nixon until the end. 

One of the writers-Michael Conway-was counsel to the Judiciary Committee during Watergate.

“Reporters and political commentators often express frustrated surprise at the steadfast support of President Trump from most Republicans in the House and Senate. But they shouldn’t — it has happened before.”

“In fact, when these critics refer back to the Watergate era as a time of bipartisan commitment to the rule of law over politics, they get it exactly wrong. Defending the president at all costs, blaming investigators and demonizing journalists was all part of the Republican playbook during the political crisis leading up to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.”

“Despite the fact that 32 people and three companies have been indicted so far by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, only four of 11 Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee joined Senate Democrats earlier this year in an effort to protect Mr. Mueller’s investigation. The House majority leader, Kevin McCarthy of California, said in June that he thinks “the Mueller investigation has got to stop.” Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and the House Intelligence Committee chairman, Devin Nunes of California, have joined Mr. Trump in calling the investigation a “witch hunt.”

By the way, the first person to call the investigation a ‘witch hunt’ actually appears to be Carter Page who called it precisely that in a letter to Comey in October, 2016. So Trump has been copying Page, someone who was recruited by the Russians.

Not that Page invented this tactic. The Nixon GOPers were also playing the ‘witch hunt’ card. The sad thing is if it were a real witch hunt they’d be all for it.

FN: As we saw in Chapter A, Bush Sr. dismissed Iran-Contra and the larger Reagan-Iran collusion investigation as a ‘witch hunt.’

“Dispiriting, perhaps, but not shocking or unprecedented. In late 1972, when a Democratic congressman, Wright Patman of Texas, began to investigate connections between Mr. Nixon’s aides and the Watergate burglary, the House Republican leader, Gerald Ford of Michigan (who later succeeded Mr. Nixon as president), called it a “political witch hunt,” according to the historian Stanley I. Kutler in his book “The Wars of Watergate.”

Gerald Ford, pardoned Tricky Dick-for the ‘good of the country’ of course. But really none of the shtick of Trump and his GOP apologists is new.

“Mr. Ford wasn’t alone, and the countercharges didn’t end even as the evidence piled up. After reporters revealed close ties between the Watergate burglars and Mr. Nixon’s administration and re-election campaign, Senator Robert Dole of Kansas jumped to the president’s defense. He labeled the media accounts “a barrage of unfounded and unsubstantiated allegations by George McGovern” — whom Mr. Nixon defeated in the 1972 election — “and his partner in mud-slinging, The Washington Post.”

Interesting to note that while the Bushes don’t support Trump and most of the old guard Republicans don’t, Bob Dole does.

The takeaway should be clear. We can debate Dem messaging in 2018 but the argument is not that they will impeach on the first day but that they will hold Trump accountable from day one. The GOP is incapable of putting country ahead of party and for this reason many recovering Republicans now realize only a Democratic Congress-which will be an accountability Congress-can save us.

FN: So we’re over eight months into Democratic leadership and we’re still waiting to be impressed. It’s funny that before the Dems even took the gave in January, 2019 the MSM was fretting that the Democrats might ‘over investigate. Wow that was a particularly awful prediction even for the MSM.

The best phrase to sum up the Democrats’ first eight months running the House is ‘Over Obfuscate’ oh holding this illegitimate ‘President’ accountable.

Presently they’re punting on everything from gun control to the Muslim ban.

 

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/11/muslim-ban-2020-democrats-trump-1456151

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