315

UPDATE: Add this in the part about Clinton’s impeachment below.

If this marathon of a book I’ve written is about anything it’s about challenging the preconceptions of conventional wisdom-the MSM’s in particular as the conventional wisdom is largely their own product. It’s about challenging unchecked assumptions. One of the most curious yet very prevalent presumptions in the mainstream press today is that impeachment poises great risks for Democrats. Why this is needs to be examined as it’s not the most intuitive take when you think about it.

The more intuitive take would be that it hurts Trump and the Republicans-but the media has decided it’s the opposite. There’s this great supposed danger in the Dem’s ‘overreaching’ which is very curious when you think about it. Trump has gotten zero oversight in two years despite all his flagrant obstruction and abuse of power-on a daily basis he and his family violate the emoluments clause-that’s every single day. Yet the MSM is already worried about excessive oversight?

With Jerrold Nadler’s announcement of more than 80 letters being sent to Trump associates the dominant take from the MSM seems to be ‘Have the Democrats gone too far?’ Again, there’s been zero oversight in two years-it will be a long time before things ‘go too far’-with how target rich an environment Trump actually is I don’t think it’s possible to ‘go too far’ as the legitimate targets of investigation are as numerous as sands on the beach.

For an example take this Washington Post headline by Rachael Bade, Karoun Demirjian, Ellen Nakashima and Philip Rucker:

House Democrats’ wide probe of Trump casts spotlight on ambitious strategy

That headline is fine so far as it goes-it’s description is totally accurate. But then the subheadline on the front page is:

“The request for documents from President Trump’s sons and others — part of an investigation into allegations of obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power — could bolster critics’ claims that the Democrats are seeking only to undermine the president.”

Uhhhhh-

I mean why is that the most important angle-so important it’s on the front page? Even if you think that’s an angle to cover why is it the first and dominant angle-not the substance of the requests and the investigation but ‘are the Dems going too far’-why lead with that? And why is impeachment supposed to be such an inordinate threat for Democrats? It’s strange-while the MSM actually supported Clinton’s impeachment-the NYT”s editorial page and many other leading newspapers demanded he resign and supported impeachment-they now seem to be holding it up as a failure the Democrats have to be careful not to repeat.

I’ve pointed this out in previous chapters addressed to the Democratic leadership-the notion that impeachment hurt the GOP is basically a historical myth-alas as that was clearly an example of partisan overreach where the GOP clearly only wanted to ‘undermine the President’ with the MSM cheering them on. Meanwhile despite this major ramp up of the Russia investigation, Nadler is very careful to argue it’s not an impeachment inquiry though in reality it’s an impeachment inquiry in all but name. 

Again-an impeachment inquiry not an impeachment vote.

Let’s look at Rachel Bade and company:

House Democrats’ far-reaching document request seeking information from President Trump’s sons, his business associates and his political confidants opened a sprawling investigation Monday and cast a spotlight on the ambitious strategy of the committee with the authority to impeach a president.

The House Judiciary Committee sent more than 80 letters demanding all communications from a host of controversies surrounding Trump, as the panel probes whether the president and his administration have engaged in obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power.

But rather than a targeted approach, Monday’s request was broad, reaching current and former campaign staffers, top Trump Organization officials, even documents and communications of the National Rifle Association and the British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. The inquiry touched on a wide array of matters, from the president’s business dealings with Russia to the firing of former FBI director James B. Comey to hush payments made to women. Many of those issues are already being examined by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York — not to mention other committees in the House.

Exactly-by definition an impeachment inquiry is not ‘a targeted approach.’ All potential impeachable offenses-potential High Crimes and Misdemeanors-are considered. If by ‘targeted’ Bade and friends mean looking at just one or two things the trouble is ‘the President’ didn’t commit just one or two potentially impeachable offenses. This is the point that Yoni Applebaum made in his major think piece on the case for impeachment in the March edition of the Atlantic-though it actually came out over a month ago-wether by design or not pretty good timing for it to be officially the March edition.

Democrats picked up 40 seats in the House of Representatives in the 2018 elections. Despite this clear rebuke of Trump—and despite all that is publicly known about his offenses—party elders remain reluctant to impeach him. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, has argued that it’s too early to talk about impeachment. Many Democrats avoided discussing the idea on the campaign trail, preferring to focus on health care. When, on the first day of the 116th Congress, a freshman representative declared her intent to impeach Trump and punctuated her comments with an obscenity, she was chastised by members of the old guard—not just for how she raised the issue, but for raising it at all.

In no small part, this trepidation is due to the fact that the last effort to remove an American president from office ended in political fiasco. When the House impeached Bill Clinton, in 1998, his popularity soared; in the Senate, even some Republicans voted against convicting him of the charges.

Pelosi and her antediluvian leadership team served in Congress during those fights two decades ago, and they seem determined not to repeat their rivals’ mistakes. Polling has shown significant support for impeachment over the course of Trump’s tenure, but the most favorable polls still indicate that it lacks majority support. To move against Trump now, Democrats seem to believe, would only strengthen the president’s hand. Better to wait for public opinion to turn decisively against him and then use impeachment to ratify that view. This is the received wisdom on impeachment, the overlearned lesson of the Clinton years: House Republicans got out ahead of public opinion, and turned a president beset by scandal into a sympathetic figure.

Instead, Democrats intend to be a thorn in Trump’s side. House committees will conduct hearings into a wide range of issues, calling administration officials to testify under oath. They will issue subpoenas and demand documents, emails, and other information. The chair of the Ways and Means Committee has the power to request Trump’s elusive tax returns from the IRS and, with the House’s approval, make them public.Other institutions are already acting as brakes on the Trump presidency. To the president’s vocal frustration, federal judges have repeatedly enjoined his executive orders. Robert Mueller’s investigation has brought convictions of, or plea deals from, key figures in his campaign as well as his administration. Some Democrats are clearly hoping that if they stall for long enough, Mueller will deliver them from Trump, obviating the need to act themselves.But Congress can’t outsource its responsibilities to federal prosecutors. No one knows when Mueller’s report will arrive, what form it will take, or what it will say. Even if Mueller alleges criminal misconduct on the part of the president, under Justice Department guidelines, a sitting president cannot be indicted. Nor will the host of congressional hearings fulfill that branch’s obligations. The view they will offer of his conduct will be both limited and scattershot, focused on discrete acts. Only by authorizing a dedicated impeachment inquiry can the House begin to assemble disparate allegations into a coherent picture, forcing lawmakers to consider both whether specific charges are true and whether the president’s abuses of his power justify his removal.Note that a lot of this was directed at the Democrats-and it sort of makes you wonder if the Dems-or at least some folks in their orbit; staffers?-actually read Applebaum as more recently they’ve been making this same point regarding Mueller-we don’t know when his report is coming out or how much of it we’ll even see and, in any case, the Dems have their own oversight role-there was a Watergate Select Committee alongside Leon Jaworski. Beyond this, Mueller is investigating crimes but Congress’ focus is any potential impeachable offenses.But Applebaum’s answer to the carping of Bade-Rucker, et al is that by definition an impeachment inquiry-which this is structured as even if Nadler and the Dems aren’t ready to call it that yet–looks at all potential impeachable offenses not just a couple unrelated to things Mueller and the SDNY already looked at.https://twitter.com/TreasonHappens/status/1102864108859392000The suggestion that the Democrats should just ignore anything already being investigated by Mueller or SDNY couldn’t be more wrongheaded-again Congress, not Mueller or SDNY, have to make the final call on what happens regarding ‘President Trump.’Now regarding the idea that in looking at things already being investigated by Mueller or SDNY they could thwart criminal prosecutions-while this is a legitimate concern the answer is not simply to do a Devin Nunes and not investigate and do public hearings-the one major difference and advantage for Congress is the public aspect; everything Mueller has done has been secret; and as Ken Dilanian is so eager to tell us, may never see the light of day-but rather coordinate with Mueller and SDNY-as the Watergate Committee did with Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski.And indeed, this is  exactly what Nadler has done:

Again, the Dems like the MSM have been skittish on impeachment themselves-partly due no doubt that the Democrats-unlike the Republicans-shows too much (un)due deference to the mainstream press-as Greg Sargent discussed in his book. But, again, it does seem like someone in their orbit read Applebaum as they seem to be finally getting it. Again this is an impeachment inquiry-they’re just not calling it that yet.

This is underscored by the fact that Yoni Applebaum is endorsing the move by the House Judiciary Dems:

Indeed, as Sargent describes it, the Dems have come a long way over the last month-perhaps Yoni’s influence, certainly we-their constituents-have left them no ambiguity what we want-we want an impeachment inquiry. We certainly don’t want a standard where only Democratic Presidents can be impeached.

Welcome home Charles Blow.

My thought process is this: if Trump can’t be impeached then the standard we’ve decided on is only Democratic Presidents can be held accountable and impeached-even for relatively minor infractions like lying about sex with an intern. The straightjacket the Dems sometimes seem to be locking themselves in basically rewards the GOP for being so nakedly partisan that they will excuse anything if the ‘President’ is a Republican.

The Democrats would be saying that they themselves refuse to impeach a Republican ‘President.’

Which by the way, makes the insider Dem hot take-‘let’s just impeach Trump at the ballot box’ a canard: a major complaint I have of the Democrats is that they seem to be more afraid of Trump’s voters than their own. How do they know we will vote Trump out if they fail to impeach him-if through a careful consideration of the evidence demonstrates he’s guilty of High Crimes and Misdemeanors? After Cohen was convicted a few months ago, Nadler took a rather awkward position on one of the Sunday shows-he argued that while, yes, this makes Trump an un-indicted co-conspirator-and while, yes, the charges-the hush money payments to hide his affairs-were an impeachable offense, Congress still should not impeach him.

An impeachable offense that doesn’t rise to the level of impeachment. Again, as Yoni Applebaum says, the Dems have learned the lesson of Bill Clinton’s impeachment too well-and learned the wrong lesson. But thankfully the are getting up to speed. Regarding impeachment vs. indictment Charles Blow had to correct a very common misunderstanding I see often even among liberals and Democrats on Twitter:

An indictment is an indictment of Trump the individual-Individual One. I agree there’s no logically and morally coherent reason that the Presidency should serve as a shield for criminal behavior that would send anyone else to prison-and it’s certainly not in the Constitution. Adam Schiff argued recently that Trump could go straight to prison after office and if that’s where the facts lead then fine and good-I applaud Elizabeth Warren for vowing that if elected President, Trump and his co-conspirators will get no pardon or hard pass-and every Dem candidate should be on the record regarding the same.

But an indictment of Trump’s ‘Presidency’ is actually more important as that’s about the sanctity of our system of government.

In any case let’s look at Greg Sargent’s analysis. He too agrees that what the Democrats are doing now-if not yet quite impeachment-puts them on the road to impeachment. 

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the New York Democrat who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, is set to demand documents from more than 60 people related to President Trump and his businesses. As Nadler puts it, this is necessary because Trump has been “directly implicated” in “various crimes,” including some allegedly committed while president.

Yet Nadler is aggressively downplaying the notion that Democrats are moving toward impeachment. He told ABC News that “we don’t have the facts yet,” and so “impeachment is a long way down the road.”

But make no mistake: In taking this step, Nadler, is, in fact, taking a big step toward launching formal impeachment hearings.

Whether Democrats will ultimately go forward with an impeachment inquiry remains unknown. As detailed below, Democrats are imposing a misguided constraint on themselves in this regard. But you can view this step as functionally the first stage in the impeachment process. And it could take on a life of its own that makes it harder for Democrats to resist initiating that inquiry.

The misguided step Sargent is referring to is what you might call the Mitch McConnell Veto-Sargent refers to it as the Fox News Veto, in light of the bombshell that /Fox News killed the Stormy Daniels story before the election.

Sargent:

The Watergate precedent is instructive. There were many months of congressional hearings into Richard Nixon’s myriad abuses well before a formal impeachment inquiry was launched.

“Congress brought key players to the public to talk about not only the break-in but all the other abuses of power in the Nixon White House,” historian Julian Zelizer, the co-author of the book “Fault Lines,” told me. In so doing, Zelizer noted, Congress “set that up” as the foundation for the official vote to launch formal impeachment hearings in 1974.

“I think that’s what Nadler is doing right now,” Zelizer said. “I don’t know if he will ultimately trigger the impeachment investigation. But this is what comes first. Congress has to create the political conditions to move forward. Nadler is looking into multiple parts of the story and trying to bring them together.”

The idea that impeachment would ‘nullify an election’ sounds pretty ironic to those of us who don’t believe Trump was legitimately elected in the first place-between Russian interference and coordination a long with the Comey letter. Indeed, both the hush money payments and the latest news that Fox News killed the Stormy Daniels story prior to the election underscore to the extent that Trump and his friends were willing to cheat to win and did a lot of cheating.

Then Sargent moves on to what amounts to the self imposed Fox News Veto Nadler and friends are still putting on themselves.

Listen carefully to Nadler, and you’ll see he confirmed this — to a point. He said that before moving forward with impeachment, Americans must believe it’s merited — i.e., he’s building a public case. But he also said an unspecified percentage of “opposition party voters” must be persuaded that this isn’t merely an effort to nullify the election.”

Yet this self-imposed constraint, while reasonable, does not reckon with a unique advantage Trump has that Nixon did not — an enormous propaganda apparatus, including Fox News, that will bombard Trump voters with disinformation painting any and all inquiry into Trump as illegitimate. Democrats must decide whether this disinformation apparatus should be granted veto power in the event that they conclude that impeachment hearings are merited on the substance.

In an important essay for the Atlantic, Yoni Appelbaum detailed that the process of impeachment inquiry, as distinct from the final impeachment vote, is about preserving our democracy. It creates a “rule-bound procedure for investigating a president” that includes “considering evidence” and “formulating charges,” an institutional framework for the grave task of weighing what the sum total of a president’s abuses has inflicted on “the political health of the country.”

Whether the current push from Democrats will lead to such a formal inquiry remains to be seen. But in a sense, this process is already underway. And it may take on a momentum that will make such an outcome harder to resist.

Again, the 30,000 foot view is that there is this inordinate fear of impeachment to paraphrase Jimmy Carter among Krugman’s Very Serious People.  To be sure, as the above from Sargent, Charles Blow shows the leading Democratic thinkers are boarding the Impeachment Train-as to an extent are the Democratic leaders themselves, who have come a long way in the month since Applebaum’s piece was published-is reason for some optimism. But the conventional wisdom among the conventionally minded MSM-who, after all, created the conventional wisdom still holds onto this curious idea that an impeachment inquiry hurts the Democrats 2020 chances-rather than the more intuitive take that it hurts the Republicans.

The recovering Republican, Jennifer Rubin, has for the most part been way ahead of the conventional wisdom on Trump but she too, alas, has bought into this strange conventional canard on impeachment-it’s a threat to the Democrats not the GOP. 

Joshua Matz and Larry Tribe, authors of “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment,” recently wrote:

Over time, a focus on impeachment can flatten and distort our politics. Many of [President] Trump’s worst policies can’t properly be squeezed into an impeachment framework. The same might be said about many of Trump’s scariest foreign-policy judgments and public statements. The Muslim ban, family separation, erratic negotiations with North Korea, and inaction on climate change—these are abhorrent policies, but they are not impeachable offenses. When the only worthwhile end game is Trump’s removal from office, justifiable outrage over these issues too quickly recedes into the background, even as we are treated to an endless diet of speculative headlines about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s secret files.

And if impeachment were to unfold, with the Senate almost certainly unable to reach a two-thirds majority for removal, what would all of this have accomplished?

Wow. There are so many misconceptions here where to start? First of all, it’s not true that the only value in impeachment is removing Trump from Office. As Applebaum explains there’s plenty of value in the impeachment process beyond removal.

Trump’s actions during his first two years in office clearly meet, and exceed, the criteria to trigger this fail-safe. But the United States has grown wary of impeachment. The history of its application is widely misunderstood, leading Americans to mistake it for a dangerous threat to the constitutional order.

That is precisely backwards. It is absurd to suggest that the Constitution would delineate a mechanism too potent to ever actually be employed. Impeachment, in fact, is a vital protection against the dangers a president like Trump poses. And, crucially, many of its benefits—to the political health of the country, to the stability of the constitutional system—accrue irrespective of its ultimate result. Impeachment is a process, not an outcome, a rule-bound procedure for investigating a president, considering evidence, formulating charges, and deciding whether to continue on to trial.”

What all critics of even the idea of impeachment need to explain is why they think the Founders gave Congress the impeachment power? Was it a mistake? One thing that’s clear is that if Trump’s conduct and behavior doesn’t rise to the level of impeachment-nothing does or ever will.

The fight over whether Trump should be removed from office is already raging, and distorting everything it touches. Activists are radicalizing in opposition to a president they regard as dangerous. Within the government, unelected bureaucrats who believe the president is acting unlawfully are disregarding his orders, or working to subvert his agenda. By denying the debate its proper outlet, Congress has succeeded only in intensifying its pressures. And by declining to tackle the question head-on, it has deprived itself of its primary means of reining in the chief executive.”

Very true-while the conventionally minded who presume all the popular preconceptions and misconceptions may mock ‘conspiracy theories’ the public doesn’t have the facts and so it’s quite reasonable to come up with plausible counter theories. What seems less reasonable-assuming you’re a thoughtful person-is to bury your head in the sand ostrich like like so many in the mainstream press. But as discussed in other chapters, the MSM is happy to be wrong as long as the rest of their brethren-and ‘sisthren’-are also wrong. Safety in numbers is what they seek.

Regarding the canard that unless impeachment leads to removal-ie, unless indictment leads to conviction-it’s a ‘failure’ and better not to do at all:

“After the house impeaches a president, the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate to remove him from office. Opponents of impeachment point out that, despite the greater severity of the prospective charges against Trump, there is little reason to believe the Senate is more likely to remove him than it was to remove Clinton. Indeed, the Senate’s Republican majority has shown little will to break with the president—though that may change.”

That’s a crucial point-it may change as Elizabeth Holtzman has pointed out-Chapter A. True, the GOP Senate seems so beholden to Trump that might seem hard to imagine-though the GOP has broken with Trump recently-notably in rebuking him for his Syria withdrawal, and now Mitch McConnell has admitted the GOP Senate is going to vote for the Dem House bill to overturn Trump’s emergency order.

True, it’s not expected to get the votes necessary to override a veto and this is a far cry from voting for Trump’s removal. But-again-the impeachment inquiry itself is about changing public opinion. I’ve argued that of the 42% or so that approve of Trump roughly half is soft support-that he did begin to lose after his absurd government shutdown-though they have now come back to him at least for now.

Back to Applebaum:

 “The process of impeachment itself is likely to shift public opinion, both by highlighting what’s already known and by bringing new evidence to light. If Trump’s support among Republican voters erodes, his support in the Senate may do the same. One lesson of Richard Nixon’s impeachment is that when legislators conclude a presidency is doomed, they can switch allegiances in the blink of an eye.”

This is why Sargent talked about a possible Fox News Veto. Still, my sense is that the hard core Trump supporters impervious to any reason or logic is closer to 22% than 42%. Note that in Manafort’s Virginia trial a female Trump supporter discussed how  she came in believing Mueller is a ‘witch hunt’ and hadn’t necessarily changed her mind when it was over yet she did agree and vote that he was guilty.

The impeachment process is valuable in itself even if it doesn’t lead to removal-but the process itself may change the politics and increase the possibility of removal.

Beyond which as Charles Blow quoted above-who previously rejected impeachment-now says the political case for impeachment is also a moral one-says we can’t have a criminal prez go unchecked. 

As for Larry Tribe’s concerns about Trump’s worst policies not being addressed by impeachment-the one thing I will agree with is that impeachment is not to get rid of a President whose policies you disagree with. Removing Trump wouldn’t achieve that anyway as it would leave us with Pence.

FN: Arguably Pence has his own Russian exposure but in any case there literally isn’t time to impeach and remove both Trump and Pence in succession before 2020 even if there’s a legitimate moral case for it.

Indeed, some liberals have made the fallacious argument that for this reason we should leave Trump in and beat him in 2020-they argue that Pence may be even worse on things like LGBT.

I’m skeptical-this premise may stem from many underestimating how bad Trump’s been on LGBT rights. But in any case that’s not what impeachment is meant to do. And Pence is preferable to Trump to the extent that he respects the rule of law in a way Trump totally doesn’t.

Indeed, while policy disagreement is not a legitimate rationale for impeachment maladministration-that the President-or in this case ‘President’-is a clear and present threat to the country via abuse of power and incompetence. Though for me personally, the best reason to impeach Trump is that he won his office illegitimately. This is why talk of ‘nullification’ is so ironic.

Regarding Larry Summers because I don’t see Trump as legitimate in the first place, discussing his God awful policies itself seems rather dirty. Though some of the things he mentioned could be part of the inquiry-the question of North Korea could be part of it to the extent that Trump’s erratic NK policy is being dictated by Russia-McCabe revealed that Trump dismissed his own intel’s analysis of NK’s ballistic weapon capability-I believe Putin-this last week it was reported that Trump spoke to Lavrov prior to meeting with Kim Jong-Lavrov’s plane was seen flying over Vietnam, etc.

Trump gave Kim Jong another photo op and agreed to end joint US-SK military exercises. Who advised him to do that? Was it Lavrov? So this could be very relevant to the inquiry as it’s the question of wether or not Trump has been conducting foreign policy to the benefit of Russia rather than America-note that McCabe opened up a new track in the Russia investigation after Comey was fired of wether Trump was working in Russia’s interests.

There are other things that touch on Trump’s policies that could be part of an impeachment inquiry-his despicable lies about the number dead from Hurricane Maria. He claimed it was 16 when it was almost 3000. 

FN: To say he is ‘wrong’ as this Politifact is rather wildly understating the fact. ‘Wrong might be you say 16 and it’s 47 but 3000?!

Finally the politics. I just don’t get this conventional presumption it hurts the Democrats-rather than the GOP. This is no doubt partly the wrong lesson from Clinton.

Back to Jennifer Rubin:

Perhaps equally alarming would be the reaction of a good 30 percent of the voters if Trump were removed. They’d be convinced that the “deep state” executed a coup. The anger, alienation and political fissures that would ensue would do huge damage to our already shaky democracy.”

Well at least 30% of voters believe that Trump’s ‘election’ was a coup-by the FBI and Russia. As was for that matter-W’s; aka Bush v. Gore. Why is it that Democrats have to always be the ones to suck it up and take it? We’re done with taking it. We believe this election was rigged. We’re not going to let it go just because it displeases the Deplorables and the MSM treats the Democratic party like ‘a girl’ who has to always swallow all her legitimate anger and frustration or her bratty, sociopathic brother will pitch a fit.

I argued above that if this book is about anything it’s challenging the preconceptions(misconceptions) of the conventional wisdom-of the MSM.

Another thing it’s about is the Democrats need to stop being Mr. Nice Guy-or perhaps more to the point Ms. Nice Girl-all the time.

“We should also be realistic about the election calendar. Assuming Mueller would have to return a report, House hearings would need to be held, and then a vote on impeachment would follow in the committee and later the full House. Then we’d go over to the Senate for a full trial. It’s hard to imagine this wouldn’t spill into calendar year 2020. Would we really prefer that excruciating process, when the presidential campaign, which would be fully underway, would allow voters to deliver their own verdict in 2020?”

Absolutely-wether you impeach or not. Again, this is the strange analysis of the conventional wisdom that having impeachment hearings going on during 2020 hurts the Democrats-obviously it s the reverse. I mean, it wasn’t the Democrats who lost 62 seats after Nixon resigned in 2020.

Regarding this, I was very happy to hear Doug Thornell, a former DNC  Sr Adviser, state on Nicole Wallace’s  4 PM show that the hearings just begun by the House Judiciary will go on until election day 2020. The idea that you would stop before 2020 to save political pain for the Democrats is a rather astonishing idea. Again, the MSM needs to turn the telescope rightside up.

There’s the political argument and then there’s the moral argument. As Charles Blow says the moral case is it’s an outrage if Trump is unchecked-and with the level of abuse of power he’s used both to illegitimately gain the office and then obstruct justice in the office, to not to impeach him-depending where the facts lead is outrageous morally whatever the political soothsayers say.

So I was relieved to hear Thornell say this-wether or not you impeach you certainly don’t want to end the hearings before election day 2020. But it seems that formally it will be difficult for this to be avoided-at least the inquiry into impeaching. Again, if you really want to discuss the politics-and that s all the MSM ever seems to care about-as I’ve argued elsewhere the optimal outcome might be to both impeach him and defeat him in 2020.

Maybe the Dems should vote to impeach him exactly 11 days before the 2020 election a la the Comey letter. Then the last 11 days the media will focus on little but wether the GOP Senate intends to convict-watching Mitch McConnell answer those questions will in in itself truly a Dream Walking. 

Then Kamala Harris blows him out with 400 electoral votes.

The President Kamala Harris refuses to pardon anyone and perhaps Trump and his family go to prison. Maybe Trump goes there for the rest of his life like Manafort and like John Schindler says he himself will. 

FN: I mean it would be Poetic Justice for the the guy who’s still leading Lock Her Up chants to this day-and who did so the night we learned a pipebomb was sent to Hillary Clinton to be locked up perhaps for a long time.

But, again, I’m much more passionate about the need to impeach than indict-though I am passionate that if anyone else would go to prison for what he’s done then so should he-and Cohen is going to prison for committing his dirty deeds as Cohen himself puts it.

No pardons, no more Gerald Fords-or even Obama 2009s.

UPDATE:

Because that would mean he’s turning us into a Banana Republic. This is at least one answer to the question why the 30% who support Trump are felt to be a bigger threat than the 70% who supported Bill Clinton in 1998-a lot of people are literally afraid the Deplorables. And to be sure-#MAGABomber, the attack on Pittsburgh temple, and the Trump supporting coast guard guy who wanted to kill ‘most people in the world.’ Still to knuckled under out of pure fear of terrorism is risible. If that’s where we are check please.

To be sure, I can’t discount the fear that another #MAGA guy will do something terrible. Just recently a Trump supporter on Twitter intimidated that there will be some sort of terrible reprisal if Trump is impeached.

UPDATE: Jill Lawrence has a good name for the Judiciary Committee’s investigation-if not impeachment then call it pre-impeachment. 

She very nicely debunks the canard that this is excessive, ‘overreaching’ or ‘overkill.’

This isn’t overkill, it’s playing catch-up. What we’re seeing now is the oversight and scrutiny that should have started on Day One of this administration. It’s also laying the foundation for impeachment.”

UPDATE: In the ‘when you put it that way it’s kind of ironic’ department:

Phillip Bump has a very helpful directory of the Trump associates looped into the House Judiciary investigation

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/04/people-organizations-just-looped-into-trump-probe-why-they-were-included/?utm_term=.9c9abfd36cc7

UPDATE: Some very interesting-and mostly encouraging numbers in the new Quinnipiac poll:

So most people believe Cohen and 64% of Americans already believe Trump is a criminal. A very strong supermajority believe that the hush money payments are unethical. While the Dems had been rather skittish on getting the tax returns-at least Richard Neal had been; evidently Cohen’s testimony provided him an acceptable rationale-the country wants to see his tax returns. And now the Democrats are going to ask for his tax returns within the next two weeks. 

The public is on the Democrats’ side. They are on the Dem’s side regarding the investigations-58-35.

But at least according to this poll the public isn’t ready for impeachment just yet. Now I’ve seen polls that show a plurality supporting it and I wonder what the wording on this one was-did the poll kind of ‘lead’ respondents? You know how the MSM ‘led’ viewers on the idea that ‘everyone hates Hillary Clinton?’

But despite my rants my concern with the Democrats the last few months wasn’t that they should impeach Trump today-though impeachment is a process, an inquiry and I think Applebaum’s argument is very compelling. My concern was were they just trying to run out the clock and ‘impeach him in 2020?’

Because if a legitimate investigation finds him guilty of High Crimes & Misdemeanors-and the majority of the public already believes he’s a criminal-then he should be impeached. But as Jill Lawrence says above think of what the Dem investigations are doing now a pre-impeachment inquiry.

So to the extent the Q numbers are correct the majority of Americans believe Trump’s a criminal-yet they want him to stay in office. But again, per Applebaum, this is what an inquiry is meant to do-to increase support for impeachment if it’s legitimately predicated-predicated for the voters rather than in terms of a criminal investigation. I’m a fan of Donnie Deutsch and he may well be right that the SDNY is who takes Trump down but I have to disagree with what he said on Nicole Wallace yesterday-that the Dem’s investigations will increase sympathy for Trump as they’re ‘so obviously political.’

Yes they are political but ultimately that’s what will decide the fate of ‘President Trump’-it’s primarily a political rather than a legal question. I guess Deutsch is hoping they actually take Trump out of the Russia House in handcuffs? But isn’t the ideology-not correct but the conventional legal wisdom-that Trump can’t be indicted while ‘President?’

But again, impeachment is more important than indictment, because it’s about the People’s White House rather than Donald Trump the individual-and indictment is only about crimes, whereas impeachment is indictment of his illegitimate ‘Presidency.’ The tendency to focus on crimes all the time-because of the SC investigation actually helps Trump to the extent that if he’s not found guilty of breaking the law then there’s ‘nothing to see here’ when the alleged ‘President’ should be above more legality. To be sure Trump already is a criminal as most Americans already agree.

But the issue of illegitimate ‘President Trump is ultimately a political one. Does Deutsch not understand Congress has it’s own very important role? They ultimately are the Deciders-not Mueller or SDNY.

That’s why the Democrats are right that you need public buy in-though more support impeaching Trump-even the Q poll which is lower than others I’ve seen-at 35% than ever supported impeaching Clinton.

But again, based on what Doug Thornell-a former Senior DNC Adviser-says, this inquiry and these investigations will be going all the way through until the 2020 election. Now at some point pre impeachment may become impeachment but either way, if you’re talking about politics, that’s the optimal political situation-that Trump is still being investigated on the day of the 2020 election.

Even for me-and I’m the guy who ran as the Impeachment Train guy in the NY2 Democratic primary in 2018-I’ve never envisioned an actual impeachment vote as something that would happen before 2020-again I’d always pictured it happening 11 days before the election like the Comey letter.

FN: Speaking of Comey I appreciate his new editorial in favor of releasing the full Mueller report to the public but of course he uses this argument to once again attempt to legitimize and defend his illegitimate and indefensible decision to hold that press conference much less write that letter.

I don’t agree that this argument works for the presser though as Adam Schiff argues Comey’s action there means it’s simply unthinkable not to release Mueller’s full report -to do that would  give us the asymmetric situation where you have ‘extreme transparency’ for Democrats but not Republicans.

I do think that there’s a difference between-a rather questionably predicated-FBI investigation and a Special Counsel regarding the POTUS-that this ‘POTUS” is illegitimate gives full transparency.

You do have to admit that Comey’s argument here is clever as he links his dubious actions that have received wide condemnation to the Mueller report which polls show very large supermajorities of the public-including Republicans, including Trump supporters-want to be public.

 

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

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