Impeachment: It's On

[stevenkesslar]

So what do people think about the idea that we are now definitely headed into an "impeachment inquiry"?

Will it help the Democrats?  Hurt the Democrats?  Neither?  Or is it too early to tell?

A PLAN TO WIN THE IMPEACHMENT FIGHT

That's the best article I have read about the political logic of impeachment.  In fact, it might be more accurate to word it this way:  of the dozens (if not hundreds) or articles I've read on impeachment, this is about the only article I've read that really makes sense to me.

The article was written this May, and is now being republished in light of what just happened.  So it does not include Ukraine.  But that doesn't really matter, because the basic strategy it outlines doesn't change at all.   Other than Ukraine provides one more possible nail in the coffin.

I've been with Pelosi on this issue all along.  Which is to say that for the last year or so, I've been tilted against it - at least as something to rush into.  Now that she is in, I'm sort of right in the middle.  It a high risk move that could have a high payoff, or could come at a high price for Democrats.  I don't have a strong feeling about that one way or the other.

I do think the Ukraine thing is an appropriate tipping point, for one reason.  Everything about Mueller was essentially pointing a rear view mirror at the 2016 election.  Even I mostly felt, "It's history now.  Let it go."  Particularly given that Trump's easy response to "obstruction of justice" is "No.  It's called me doing my job." 

Whatever you think about the politics of Trump asking a foreign leader to work with his Attorney General and personal lawyer to investigate his most likely opponent in the 2020 election, it definitely does one thing.  It makes the debate about Trump's alleged bid for foreign interference in the 2020 election.  That alone is an important difference.  It's way to early to tell.  But the initial silence of many Senate Republicans suggests they get that most Americans don't feel the job of the leader of Ukraine is to interfere in the 2020 US election.

What I like best about that article is that I think the real political issue is not whether the Democrats try to impeach, but how well they do it.   I strongly agree with the author that the Democrats will do best if they can use impeachmeent to pound in simple, clear, and relentless messages. (Ironic, I know, that I would say that.)  Just to prove I am capable of it,  if I had to boil it all down to one word, it would be: CORRUPTION.  If I could add a phrase, it would be:  TRUMP AND HIS CRONIES ARE IN IT FOR THEMSELVES.

My guess is that maybe 10 % or so of the electorate is up for grabs.  The other 90 % won't change their mind, even if you could prove that Trump is Jesus Christ, or the Devil Incarnate.

I might up that to 15 to 20 % if the economy really changes.  Meaning recession. A chart in a recent issue of The Economist shows that in the last six months, net non-farm payrolls actually fell in 10 US states.  Including Michigan, Pennsylvania,  Ohio, and Virginia.  You may have noticed the headlines saying Trump's average national approval rating right now is at a two year high. That said, it is at or under 45 % in almost all the swing states, including most of the key ones he won in 2016.  There's no doubt a variety of reasons.  But economic softness is probably one of them, whether we are technically in (or headed into) a recession or not. 

So even if there is not a recession, his economic leadership could be a vulnerability.  Which is why the combo of impeachment and Warren hammering away on how Trump and his cronies are corrupt fat cats who are only in it for themselves could be a winning political formula, I think.

At the end of the day, I'll stick with the idea that maybe 10 % of the electorate is really up for grabs.  And maybe we will in fact find out things we don't know as a result of an impeachment inquiry.  More likely, though, I think what it really will come down to is how well Democrats and Trump can control the message about what we do pretty much know already.

In that regard, I'm tempted to say Trump has the upper hand, simply because he alone has the bully pulpit of the Presidency.  (And in this case, I mean bully literally.) 

That said, this also makes a subtle change about the relative merits of who we nominate.  It makes it a little harder for Biden, since his family is now smack dab in the center of corruption allegations.  It also slightly changes the context of Warren's favorite word: CORRUPTION.

I'll close with the question I started with.

Do others thinks this helps the Democrats, hurts them, makes no difference, or it's just too early to tell. And why?

Edited September 26, 2019 by stevenkesslar
typo

[stevenkesslar]

Thought I'd add these polls:

1.  Even when Watergate  started to get serious, support for impeaching Nixon was mostly in the 30's

2.  Support for impeaching Trump last month was actually slightly higher than support for impeaching Nixon at the beginning of the Watergate scandal

3.  And this poll, fresh off the press, really blows my mind

NEW POLL SHOWS MAJORITY OF AMERICANS SUPPORT TRUMP IMPEACHMENT IF PRESIDENT SUSPENDED UKRAINE AID OVER BIDEN INQUIRY

Quote

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Tuesday the opening of a formal impeachment inquiry against Trump in response to the Ukraine controversy. If it's found that Trump did use his presidential power to force a foreign leader to help take down a political rival, 55 percent of U.S. adults said they would support removing him from office, according to a recent YouGov survey.

Forty-four percent of those polled said they'd "strongly support" removing Trump if the allegations are true, while another 11 percent said they'd "somewhat support" it.

On the other side, 20 percent of adults surveyed said they'd "strongly oppose" impeaching Trump for such an action, and 6 percent said they'd "somewhat oppose" it.

The number not in that brand new poll is where Independents come down.  But my guess is you can kind of back out of the numbers and probably Independents are around 50/50, or maybe even slightly in favor of the idea of impeachment.

The key number to me in this poll is that 55 % of voters are open to the idea .... IF.  The "IF" here is obviously huge.  But now that the transcript is out, I think we know enough to say that something relating to Biden, Barr, and Ghouliani was going on in that phone call Trump made. Which is to say, my guess is 55 % or more will say it is at least a legitimate and in fact important thing to look into.  We all know Trump won't be convicted, anyway.  So the real question comes down to the political benefits and costs of looking into it.

55 % is in the ballpark of the percentage of voters that disapprove of Trump in any of the poll averages in any particular month.  It's hard for me to imagine that any Democrat running for President will get more than 55 % of the vote next year.  In fact, 55 % is obviously a big stretch - unless we are deep into a recession.  So it's not clear from these numbers that Democrats have a lot to lose, at least at the Presidential level, by moving forward. 

The people who are adamantly against this appear to be the one quarter to one third of Americans that are the hardcore Trumpians, anyway.  

Edited September 26, 2019 by stevenkesslar

[RA1]

I have said it before and that is if Trump is impeached he not only will not be convicted but likely will be re-elected.  That was true with Bubba Clinton and likely will be true with Trump.  

I am sorry to say it but MS. Pelosi and others who espouse the liberal concept of socialism will not win the upcoming election.  

Trump makes a lot of mistakes.  I am sorry for them.  But his policies make only too much sense for me to ignore.

Best regards,

RA1 

[stevenkesslar]

1 hour ago, RA1 said:

I have said it before and that is if Trump is impeached he not only will not be convicted but likely will be re-elected.  That was true with Bubba Clinton and likely will be true with Trump.  

I am sorry to say it but MS. Pelosi and others who espouse the liberal concept of socialism will not win the upcoming election.  

Trump makes a lot of mistakes.  I am sorry for them.  But his policies make only too much sense for me to ignore.

Best regards,

RA1 

My my my.  We're a little bit fact challenged today, aren't we?

I guess you are going for a daily double.

Fact challenge one:  Clinton was not "re-elected" in 2000.  He was, of course, re-elected in 1996.  But that was way before any impeachment drama.  So if your argument is that impeachment will help Trump get re-elected, just like it helped Clinton get re-elected, news flash:  it didn't.

Fact challenge two:  Nancy Pelosi is not a socialist.

Nancy Pelosi’s Life in the 0.1 Percent

You can attack Nancy Pelosi for being one of the richest members of Congress, and for being a capitalist fat cat - which is sort of what that 2015 article from the conservative National Review above does.  That's fair game.  Liberal hypocrisy, blah blah blah.

But that then pretty much disqualifies you from calling her a socialist.

It will be really interesting to see how the Republicans try to put a lipstick on this pig of socialism if Warren is the nominee, and Pelosi is the Speaker of the House.  (Warren's net worth is estimated to be about $8 million or so, I think - including her husband's wealth).

Now I'll go off into Fantasyland for just a minute.

Professor: Dems need to impeach Trump to win 2020

Professor Allan Lichtman, who correctly predicted the last nine presidential election wins, says Democrats will only have a chance at winning in 2020 if they impeach President Donald Trump.

Lichtman is interesting.  On the fact of it, his system of "keys" sounds like crystal ball and Abracadabra.  Except that it is an empirically verifiable fact that he used his "keys" to correctly predict who would win the Presidency in the last nine of nine elections.  In Fall 2016 I was paying close attention, because he was saying - loudly - that unless something changes, Trump is probably gonna win a narrow race.  He of course turned out to be right.

His system makes common sense.  At core, it kind of like, "It's the economy, stupid."  So of course it will matter if we tip into a recession, or even into a near recession, in the next year.

Lichtman's point recently has been that the Clinton impeachment did "work" for the Republicans. 

Had Clinton been impeached, who would have been the President?  I believe the name is Al Gore.

Instead, Gore ran for President in 2000, and lost.  Even Gore has said the taint of Clinton scandal and Clinton fatigue were contributing factors to his loss.  Lichtman would agree.

I think Lichtman's argument is common sense.  The economy is okay, like it was under Obama.  But it's not booming.  For 6 months now we've had a reduction in net non-farm payrolls in 10 states, including key ones like Michigan and Pennsylvania.  So that could go either way.

There's a good argument to be made that adding a big scandal to this is not likely to help Trump in 2020, just like the Clinton impeachment didn't end up helping Gore.

 

Edited September 26, 2019 by stevenkesslar

[stevenkesslar]

This is bad bad bad for Trump.

Here's the redacted whistleblower letter.  As one Democratic Senator said off the record a few days ago, it is in fact worse than the non-transcript "lipstick on a pig" version the White House put out:

https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/20190812_-_whistleblower_complaint_unclass.pdf

It is going to be fascinating to see how this plays out.  The memo has as much to do with the endemic corruption in Ukraine as it has to do with the endemic corruption of Team Trump.  Which is to say, it is very confusing.  

Arguably, that works to Trump's advantage, because he can try to say it's whatever he wants it to be.  More likely, I'd guess, the American people will sniff out the corruption in this, and say that if it stinks like shit, it probably is shit.

It's also time to resurrect the Watergate bumper sticker:  "the cover up is worse than the crime."

It's probably not a headline thing, but we now know thanks to the whistle blower's letter that there was an inside effort to "'lock down' all records of the phone call, especially the official word for word transcript of the call .... White House officials told me they were 'directed' by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system..."

What sounds like headline material is that a career US diplomat, Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanavitch, was recently fired because she would not "play ball" with Ghouliani and Team Trump on getting the Ukraine to target Biden for investigation - which is to say, for refusing to "play ball" in getting the country she was ambassador to to interfere in the 2020 US election.

Trump Blasts Own Ambassador in Call With Ukrainian President

The U.S. president said he wanted to keep Kyiv honest. So why did he fire his ambassador after she called out corruption?

Quote

The Trump administration recalled U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, a career foreign service officer, from Kyiv in May after she came under attack from the conservative media in the United States and from a Ukrainian official who met with Giuliani on multiple occasions as Giuliani sought to find partisan dirt against the Democrats in Ukraine.

Yet a number of U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, say Yovanovitch was only following consistent U.S. policy, which was to pressure Ukraine to deal with its endemic corruption—exactly what Trump says now that he was trying to do by raising the issue with President Volodymyr Zelensky. One former senior administration official described it as “sickening that a U.S. President would bad-mouth and threaten retaliation against a lifelong civil servant for her commitment to doing the job she was asked to do for her country.”

According to an account of the phone call released Wednesday by the White House, Trump and Zelensky discussed Yovanovitch in their July call. “The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just wanted to let you know that,” Trump told Zelensky. Trump added, referring to Yovanovitch: “Well, she’s going to go through some things. I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General [William] Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it.”

Zelensky, who toes a political high wire as he tries not to disrupt bipartisan support for Ukraine, appeared to agree with Trump, according to the note released by the White House, which is not a transcript but a memorandum of the conversation based off the notes and recollections of officials who were in attendance. 

In May, Trump recalled Yovanovitch two months ahead of her scheduled departure as ambassador to Ukraine. A seasoned career diplomat who had served under both Republican and Democratic administrations, Yovanovitch was outspoken about Ukraine’s need to tackle corruption. The need for Ukraine to tackle political graft has been a mainstay of U.S. policy dating back almost to the country’s independence from the Soviet Union.

Yovanovitch’s scrutiny of the issue put noses out of joint in Kyiv as Ukraine headed toward presidential elections in which corruption was a key issue. Zelensky, a former comedian, was swept to power this spring on a promise to clean up the country Transparency International has found to be one of the most corrupt in Europe.

Yovanovitch came to the attention of right-wing conspiracy theorists shortly after she gave a scathing speech in March, in which she called on the government to replace a senior anti-corruption official who had been accused of coaching suspects on how to avoid charges. Weeks later, Yovanovitch was assailed on two fronts by both Ukraine’s then-prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, as well as conservative commentators in the U.S. media and the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. 

In an interview with the Washington-based news site the Hill, Lutsenko—who met with Giuliani multiple times as the president’s personal lawyer sought potentially compromising information on Democratic rivals in Ukraine—said that the ambassador had handed him a list of people not to prosecute. The State Department described the claim as an “outright fabrication,” and Lutsenko himself later walked the statement back. 

Lutsenko’s statement coincided with assertions in the conservative media in the United States that Yovanovitch harbored anti-Trump sentiments. Current and former officials told Foreign Policy that claims made against Yovanovitch were unfounded. 

“I’ve known her for more than 25 years, and she was an exemplary representative of the American people,” said Pifer, the former ambassador to Ukraine.

That's former Ambassador "The Woman Was Bad News" Yovanovitch. 

I can't imagine it will help Trump with moderate suburban women, among others, when it comes out gradually that he bullied and fired yet another professional woman trying to do what is right for her country.

Edited September 26, 2019 by stevenkesslar

[stevenkesslar]

Hunter Biden 'did not violate anything,' former Ukrainian prosecutor says

Meanwhile, former Ukranian Prosecutor General Lutsenko, who the new President let go last month, says there is no there there regarding Biden or his son.

Quote

A former Ukrainian prosecutor who investigated a gas company tied to Hunter Biden said Thursday that there was no evidence the former vice president's son engaged in illegal activity.

"From the perspective of Ukrainian legislation, he did not violate anything,” Yuriy Lutsenko told The Washington Post.

Lutsenko, who served as Ukraine's prosecutor general from May 2016 until last month, closed the investigation into the gas company Burisma and its oligarch owner in 2017, The New York Times has reported. Earlier this year, Lutsenko met with President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and discussed Burisma, Lutsenko's spokeswoman told Bloomberg. Then in March, according to the Times, Lutsenko reopened an investigation into the company, though his spokeswoman has disputed that.

The meetings with Giuliani were referred to in a bombshell whistleblower complaint unsealed Thursday that alleged that Trump had pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate the Bidens.

In May, Lutsenko told Bloomberg News that his office had found no evidence of wrongdoing against Hunter Biden or his father, former Vice President Joe Biden, who'd helped to oust Lutsenko's predecessor.

I'd bet money that this is going to hurt both Trump and Biden:  Trump more, and Biden less.  It all smells of corruption.

Even if you believe that it is not Joe Biden's fault that his son got rich in his perfectly legal dealings with Ukraine and China, it just seems likely to play into a "pox on all your houses" anti-corruption mood.

Edited September 26, 2019 by stevenkesslar

[stevenkesslar]

https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/5-4-18 Menendez joint letter to General Prosecutor of Ukraine on Mueller investigation.pdf

One final letter that is extremely interesting.

I got to that link from an article on Breitbart.  The article makes a classic false equivalence argument.  It argues:  what's wrong with Trump and Ghouliani (and maybe Barr) asking Ukraine to do something regarding investigations around the 2020 election, when you had Democratic Senators pressuring Ukraine to do something regarding the 2016 elections?  The letter is from Senators Menendez, Durbin, and Leahy to former Prosecutor General Lutsenko.

This is clearly one of the lines that the Republicans will use:  hey, everybody does it! 

In fairness, since Sen. Menendez is one of the three Senators, it's a valid enough point.  By the standards of the Trump Swamp, Menendez is of course innocent.  Unlike Kavanaugh, they thoroughly investigated.  Like Manafort and Flynn and others, he had his day in court.  Unlike Trump's cronies that went to jail, Sen. Menendez was found innocent.  That said, a lot of people (including Democrats) in New Jersey still think he's corrupt, according to polls.  Again, I think this is just all going to feed an anti-corruption mood.

Trumpians will try to create a false equivalence here.  But I think most people get that the Mueller investigation was a bipartisan effort conducted professionally and openly, and Mueller himself was a former Republican FBI Director.  (Notwithstanding some right wingers who thought he was a Clintonista, or a Gestapo agent who just liked to kick down doors).  So it's appropriate for US Senators to openly ask Ukraine to cooperate with a bipartisan public investigation into corruption and prior election interference run by a Republican former FBI Director.

Comparing that to what Trump and Ghouliani (and maybe Barr) did in a private phone call - asking a foreign leader to interfere in a future election for Trump's personal political benefit, and then trying to obfuscate about it and cover it up - ain't gonna fly with most people, I don't think.

The reason I think that the letter is interesting is these two lines:

Quote

"On May 2, The New York Times reported that your office effectively froze investigations into four open cases in Ukraine in April, thereby eliminating scope for cooperation with the Mueller probe into related issues.  The article notes that your office considered these cases as too politically sensitive and potentially jeopardizing U.S. financial and military aid to Ukraine.

 

I could see this playing out in an impeachment for several reasons.

First, it's a back door way to tie Trump's Ukraine 2020 election interference corruption scandal back to the Mueller 2016 election interference investigation.  The letter names Trump and states the apparent motive in not cooperating with Mueller was "to avoid the ire of President Trump".  So it ties it back to Mueller's finding that Trump attempted to obstruct justice, time and time again.

Trumpians will of course all scream "witch hunt".  Most Americans just don't see it that way.

Pelosi is being quoted as wanting to focus impeachment on Ukraine, not Mueller plus everything else in the garbage heap.   Once again, I think it shows she has pitch perfect political judgment.  That said, she's also saying we can add back other articles of impeachment later.  So this piece creates a direct tie between Ukraine and Mueller's findings of obstruction of justice.

It also speaks to the "quid pro quo" argument.  Of course anybody who has watched The Sopranos gets the fact that you don't have to spell out a threat in order to make one.  So there will be a lot of talk about Trump and Ghouliani acting like TV mafia clowns.  And the letter from Democratic Senators is based on a New York Times article, not something Lutsenko himself said.  So cue up the "fake news" chorus. 

All that said, if this rises to the level of broad public debate, I think most people will grasp the idea that the "quid pro quo" was simply understood.  Not only in the context of one specific phone call Trump made, but also in the context of the overall dynamic of the relationship.  I think there's a very good chance the majority of Americans will see this like a mafia TV thing - "Celebrity Mobster!: Apprentice Edition" - and conclude that Trump and Ghouliani were in fact telling the leaders of Ukraine that if you don't do what we want to help our own personal political interests, you are going to suffer.

Edited September 26, 2019 by stevenkesslar
typo

[stevenkesslar]

Support for impeachment jumps in new poll

Quote

Voters are now evenly split on whether Congress should begin impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, a marked increase in support for impeachment, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.

The poll, which began after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her support for impeachment proceedings on Tuesday, shows 43 percent of voters think Congress should begin the process of impeachment, while an equal number of poll respondents say Congress shouldn’t begin impeachment proceedings. Another 13 percent of voters are undecided.

Wow.

This is a pretty remarkable shift.

It's the second poll out in 24 hours that shows a plurality or even a majority of Americans are open to the idea of impeaching POTUS.  This poll is even worse news for Trump, I think, in that it doesn't include the "IF" clause in the poll I posted above.  Meaning "IF" it's "proven" that Trump suspended aid to Ukraine to push Ukraine's leaders to investigate Biden and his son.

Here's how the question in this poll was worded:

Table POL1: As you may know, the first step toward removing a president from office is impeachment. Do you believe Congress should or should not begin impeachment proceedings to remove President Trump from office?

https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000016d-6ecb-dbb7-a16d-7feb39630002

Those are the cross tabs for the poll, which offer more detail that I think is just bad news for Trump.

The 43 % who say they oppose impeachment corresponds with 41 % who "strongly" or "somewhat" approve of Trump.  Just like with Nixon in the 70's, my guess is that even if we proved that Trump is the Antichrist, he'd go down with 40 % + of Americans saying that what Democrats did to him was a sin.  That also leaves close to 60 % who are at least open to consider impeaching Trump.

The other bad news for Trump is that a very small plurality of Independents now favor impeachment:  39 % for,  36 % opposed, the rest no opinion or undecided.  

My guess is that it is likely to only get worse for Trump, at least in the short term.

The reason I included the cross tabs is that the results change ever so slightly when you add detail to the impeachment question, and ask it like this:

Table POL4: As you may know, according to news reports, President Trump told senior administration officials to withhold military aid from Ukraine. This occurred days before President Trump pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate allegedly corrupt behavior by former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who worked with a Ukrainian natural gas company. Sometimes in surveys like this, people change their minds. Based on what you know now, do you believe Congress should or should not begin impeachment proceedings to remove President Trump from office?

When asked this way, the margin of support for impeachment among all voters increased a few points, to 44 % for/41 % against.  Support among Independents shifted one point, to 39 % for/35 % against.  That's meaningless statistically.  But as the article says, many of the people polled hadn't even heard about the last day or two of disclosures.  As more information comes out, there is reason to think it will not make people feel sympathetic to Trump. 

For example, it's an allegation rather than a fact that a career diplomat who was the US Ambassador to Ukraine was fired because she would not "play ball" with Ghouliani's "hard ball" tactics.  But in politics perception is reality.  If people start to see it that way, watch out below, Rudy and Donald.  Same thing if they start to feel the President and all his men tried to cover up the verbatim electronic record of the call, as the whistle blower alleges.

There's one final slice of bad news for Trump, I think, embedded in the cross tabs of this poll.  41 % of Independents "strongly" disapprove of Trump's job performance, and 19 % "somewhat" disapprove of his job performance.  On the face of it, it is bad news for Trump that 60 % of Independents disapprove of how he is doing his job. 

It's likely that most of the 39 % of Independents who favor impeachment are the ones who "strongly" disapprove.  And if there is any group of voters that is likely to be moved by cold hard facts as opposed to partisanship, it is probably lukewarm Independents.  My guess is that as the facts we are just learning get beaten to death by the media and Democrats, there's a good chance that a majority of Independents - arguably even something as high as 60 % - could end up favoring impeachment.  We'll see.

This is all a huge shift from where voters were at earlier this year, right after the Mueller report came out:

Trump’s Popularity Hits Record Low as Support for Impeachment Wanes

Quote

 

Just over a third of voters (34 percent) said they support impeaching Trump, compared with 48 percent who oppose it, similar to the share of voters who said the same in a poll conducted immediately after the midterm elections. The 5-point drop in support for impeachment since January was driven largely by Democrats, who soured on impeachment by 12 points, from 71 percent to 59 percent.

To make sure it's completely clear, that's from a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll from April of this year.  Back then, Independents were opposed to impeachment:  44 % against, 31 % for, the rest undecided.  So Republicans of course have their heels dug in.  But both Democrats and Independents are shifting, rapidly.

I've read a bunch of articles today about what Pelosi and the "swing" moderate Democrats who shifted in the last few days are thinking. It seems like it boils down to two words:  "smoking gun".  And maybe a third:  2020.  It's one thing to talk about something that happened in 2016, that Mueller never produced an absolutely compelling smoking gun for.  The feeling or gamble now seems to be that we have a smoking gun.  And in this case it was aimed at Democrats running in 2020.

Nancy was definitely speaking up loud and clear and on message today:

The final thing I'll say is that the silence on the part of most Senate Republicans is deafening. 

Of course, as always, The Divine Miss Graham is on message as Trump's Secretary Of Cocksucking.  He's arguing that it's not Trump's fault that the Dept. of Defense just wanted to do a "policy process" before they released the money to Ukraine.  We all of course know that one thing Donald Trump always insists on is an absolutely thorough and fair "policy process", right?     Come to think of it, that's probably why they got a 25 year career diplomat Ambassador with a great reputation out of the way, and Trump's beloved sidekick, Rudy Ghouliani, ran with the ball.  That had to be all about having the very best "policy process", right?

Reading between the lines, the fact that Miss Graham isn't engaging in the kind of histrionics that won her an Oscar for her performance at the Kavanaugh hearings is itself a subtle tell on what's going on right now.  Most Senate Republicans - you know, the White guys who would have to vote to convict - are not saying a word right now.  To me that says a whole hell of a lot.  I suspect they are just scared.

Edited September 27, 2019 by stevenkesslar

[RA1]

19 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:

My my my.  We're a little bit fact challenged today, aren't we?

I guess you are going for a daily double.

Fact challenge one:  Clinton was not "re-elected" in 2000.  He was, of course, re-elected in 1996.  But that was way before any impeachment drama.  So if your argument is that impeachment will help Trump get re-elected, just like it helped Clinton get re-elected, news flash:  it didn't.

Fact challenge two:  Nancy Pelosi is not a socialist.

Nancy Pelosi’s Life in the 0.1 Percent

You can attack Nancy Pelosi for being one of the richest members of Congress, and for being a capitalist fat cat - which is sort of what that 2015 article from the conservative National Review above does.  That's fair game.  Liberal hypocrisy, blah blah blah.

But that then pretty much disqualifies you from calling her a socialist.

It will be really interesting to see how the Republicans try to put a lipstick on this pig of socialism if Warren is the nominee, and Pelosi is the Speaker of the House.  (Warren's net worth is estimated to be about $8 million or so, I think - including her husband's wealth).

Now I'll go off into Fantasyland for just a minute.

Professor: Dems need to impeach Trump to win 2020

Professor Allan Lichtman, who correctly predicted the last nine presidential election wins, says Democrats will only have a chance at winning in 2020 if they impeach President Donald Trump.

Lichtman is interesting.  On the fact of it, his system of "keys" sounds like crystal ball and Abracadabra.  Except that it is an empirically verifiable fact that he used his "keys" to correctly predict who would win the Presidency in the last nine of nine elections.  In Fall 2016 I was paying close attention, because he was saying - loudly - that unless something changes, Trump is probably gonna win a narrow race.  He of course turned out to be right.

His system makes common sense.  At core, it kind of like, "It's the economy, stupid."  So of course it will matter if we tip into a recession, or even into a near recession, in the next year.

Lichtman's point recently has been that the Clinton impeachment did "work" for the Republicans. 

Had Clinton been impeached, who would have been the President?  I believe the name is Al Gore.

Instead, Gore ran for President in 2000, and lost.  Even Gore has said the taint of Clinton scandal and Clinton fatigue were contributing factors to his loss.  Lichtman would agree.

I think Lichtman's argument is common sense.  The economy is okay, like it was under Obama.  But it's not booming.  For 6 months now we've had a reduction in net non-farm payrolls in 10 states, including key ones like Michigan and Pennsylvania.  So that could go either way.

There's a good argument to be made that adding a big scandal to this is not likely to help Trump in 2020, just like the Clinton impeachment didn't end up helping Gore.

 

I over simplified my comment by saying Clinton was re-elected after impeachment.  As you state, it was the Democrats that were helped.  

I am willing to suppose that if Pelosi hangs around with socialists some of it must rub off.

Gore is an interesting case.  As sort of a native son of Tennessee his record has little to do with TN.  He wants to make billions from carbon taxes while living in a 10,000 square foot house.  In other words he actually is a product of DC.

Best regards,

RA1

[stevenkesslar]

1 hour ago, RA1 said:

I over simplified my comment by saying Clinton was re-elected after impeachment.  As you state, it was the Democrats that were helped.  

For the record, my point was exactly the opposite.  It was the Republicans that were helped.  Al Gore lost and George W. Bush won in 2000.  At the time, Lichtman said that it was going to be a close race, and that the scandal of impeachment would work in W.'s favor.  He called it right.

That of course does not mean it will work out the same way this time, of course.

That said, take a look at this.  It echoes what I said above, based on the initial polling. 

Finally, somebody agrees with me!

Impeaching Trump is only going to get more popular

Quote

Data emerged Thursday which suggests that impeachment, far from being the public opinion albatross that some leading Democrats had long feared, might actually work in the party's favor. And as the devastating Ukraine scandal continues to unfold, it is only a matter of time before a decisive majority of Americans start telling pollsters that they favor the impeachment of President Trump and his removal from office.

The survey organization YouGov asked respondents "If President Donald Trump suspended military aid to Ukraine in order to incentivize the country's officials to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden, and his son, would you support or oppose impeachment?" Fifty-five percent said they would strongly or somewhat support. That poll was done on Tuesday. Then a SurveyMonkey/Business Insider poll collected Wednesday and Thursday showed 53 percent support for opening an impeachment inquiry in the House. And Morning Consult found a net 13 point swing in favor of impeachment just since the weekend. That is a huge change from similar polls taken before the damning summary of President Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukrainian Pres. Volodmyr Zelensky was released.

This swift change in public opinion — which is likely to accelerate rapidly — might look abrupt, but it shouldn't have been unexpected.

Throughout his time in office, President Trump has demonstrated a unique gift: Whatever policy or idea he gets behind is subsequently opposed by the public, often decisively. His only legislative achievement to date, for instance, the December 2017 tax reform, was still under water the last time Gallup checked. By roughly 60 percent to 40 percent, Americans oppose construction of a wall along the southern border, a plan the president seems to care about more than anything else in the world. Sixty percent of Americans also want immigration levels to stay the same or increase, as opposed to 35 percent who want them decreased.

Where will the impeachment number ultimately land? A pretty good guess is that support for impeaching the president and removing him from office will ultimately converge on his disapproval rating. That doesn't mean that President Trump will be removed from office by the Senate, but it also suggests that it will be Republicans, rather than Democrats, who pay a political price for that sordid denouement.

 

Edited September 27, 2019 by stevenkesslar

[stevenkesslar]

1 hour ago, RA1 said:

Gore is an interesting case.  As sort of a native son of Tennessee his record has little to do with TN.  He wants to make billions from carbon taxes while living in a 10,000 square foot house.  In other words he actually is a product of DC.

Life is full of irony, isn't it?

I understand what you are trying to say about the impact of the Clinton impeachment on the 1998 midterms - not the 2000 Presidential election.

Here's a line I stole from somewhere about the 1998 midterms and the subsequent revolt against Gingrich that captures the irony of that situation.  Feel free to steal it from me:

Bill Clinton got a blow job.  And Newt Gingrich lost his job over it.

Here's another irony, in light of Monicagate and its presumed impact on Gore's loss in 2000:  Bill and Hillary Clinton are still married.  Al and Tipper Gore are not.

Quote

“I was very shocked,” says longtime Gore watcher Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “One of the first things I tweeted was, ‘Can you believe the Clintons’ marriage has lasted longer than the Gores’?’”

Then again, history usually gets things right.

Al Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change.  Trump may or may not be convicted after impeachment.  But he won't win a Nobel for his efforts.

History will likely remember Gore as ahead of the curve on climate change.  History will likely remember Trump as one of the latest corrupt climate change deniers.

[stevenkesslar]

Trump Reelection Depends on New Voters

 

By A.B. Stoddard

Quote

Today, President Trump doesn’t have enough voters to win a second term. His average job approval number remains the lowest of any modern president. Polling shows he’s supported by a loyal minority of the electorate, ranging between 39%-45%, sometimes lower, depending on the survey. But -- assuming he’s not removed from office -- he can win if he finds new people to vote for him.

Trump’s loyal army of supporters contains a large group of people so disaffected by politics they had either not voted at all before 2016, or had not voted in many years. But they are not enough this time around. Some of his supporters have died, or lost their fervor, and he needs more. And Team Trump, flush with plenty of cash, intends to find them.

Turnout in the 2018 elections was the highest in a midterm since 1914 and polls continue to register record enthusiasm and interest in voting next year. Forecasters are estimating turnout at 65%-70% in November 2020, which would likely become the highest voter participation rate in a century. After Democrats won back a majority in the House of Representatives, Trump was undaunted, saying he wasn’t on the ballot, a sign, he believes, that he can defy polls -- and the political winds -- next year to turn out a majority and win a second term.

That dynamic, of course, didn’t factor into Trump’s first presidential victory, which was wide in the Electoral College tally but actually hinged on frighteningly narrow margins in three states. Essentially, Trump caught lightning in a bottle in 2016, winning by fewer than 78,000 votes in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, with Green Party spoiler candidate Jill Stein delivering two of them to him.

The task for Trump’s campaign is to locate pockets of unregistered or low-propensity voters in places Trump is positioned to win. His strength in the Florida panhandle, for example,  could be bolstered by turning out some of the 75,000 eligible voters who didn't cast ballots in 2016 in Escambia County, which Trump won by a wide margin. Florida will be a key battleground, one Trump desperately needs to keep in his column after the GOP narrowly won statewide elections for senator and governor there in 2018, and he took the Sunshine State’s 29 electoral votes in 2016 by only 112,911 votes. While Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 200,000 there, GOP voters turn out more regularly. In one rally this year in Orlando, a Trump super PAC connected 3,000 people with the state voter registration website.

I'm putting that article here because I think A.B. is exactly right, and this is where the rubber hits the road on whether Ukrainegate helps or hurts Trump in 2020.

All the evidence - the 2018 midterms being Exhibit A, Trump's low favorability ratings being Exhibit B, and the horse race polls in swing states being Exhibit C - suggest that she is right and Trump does not have the votes to win in 2020.  At least based on the actual patterns of voting in 2018, and the turnout models embedded in almost all those 2020 polls.

So Trump has to throw the puzzle pieces up in the air and hope they somehow land differently.  Presumably, that's what Trump holding a rally in New Mexico (New Mexico? Really?) was intended to do.

If you want to go full whack job devil theory, you could argue that Ukrainegate was actually designed in Frankenstein's lab (or at least Ghouliani's) to accomplish this.  The theory would go like this.  Trump did get a lot of White men to throw a Testicle Tantrum in Fall 2018.  It went sort of like this:  "Men, grab your testicles and hold them dear.  Because these lying conniving women that get paid by George Soros are out for them.  They will destroy the careers and testicles of any perfectly fine young man - why it could even be your son! - by alleging that he keeps waving his cock and balls in the face of helpless or drunk women or girls.  That is what these lying, conniving Soros-loving women will do."  Of course, some of these White Men With Big Testicles may have daughters as well as sons, but let's not go there.  

There is some evidence that the Testicle Tantrum worked in some places in 2018.  Not in California, where pretty much every Republican House incumbent got castrated (politically, I mean).  But in places like North Dakota and Missouri, where White Men and their Big Testicles still stand tall and proud.  They sure taught Heidi Heitkamp and Claire McCaskill a lesson.  

Which is a funny thing, in a way, regarding your point about socialism, @RA1.  I've known a Republican for about 20 years who would call me and whine about how it's a well known fact that Claire McCaskill is one of the most liberal members of the Senate.  I kept correcting him and saying, no, Claire McCaskill is one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate.  She's the kind of person you want around if you like the idea of compromise, and solutions.  Amazingly, facts won out, and I eventually persuaded the Republican that McCaskill was in fact one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate.  So the net effect of 2018 is we have more women in Congress.  And they are more like AOC, and less like Claire McCaskill.    So I'm not sure how well Trump's 2018 Testicle Tantrum really worked out for him.  I doubt that's the outcome he had in mind.

A.B. is right that Trump caught lightning in a bottle in 2016.  He played off all kinds of economic and social grievances that had been festering for decades, and that he could rightly claim happened on the watch of both political parties.  But here's the thing.  The opioid epidemic is just as bad, or worse.  We've regained some manufacturing jobs, but at about the same pace as we did under Obama.  Meaning we haven't come close to replacing the roughly 6 million manufacturing jobs we lost under W., thanks to China and the Great Recession. 

And maybe Trump's trade war will seal the deal.  But his favorability rating in Iowa is as low as the silos of rotting soybeans are high.  At least Iowa's Joni Ernst probably knows how to defend herself when the conniving Soros women come after her.  But Trump in Iowa?  I'm not so sure

So you could go full whack job devil theory and argue that Ukrainegate was cooked up by Trump and Ghouliani as a way to get all these people who don't usually vote to vote in 2020.  Including all the people who didn't vote until Trump came along in 2016, and then a whole bunch more who didn't even vote in 2016.

How likely is that?  Not very, I think.

What Trump had going for him in 2016 was "Make America Great Again".  So how well will it work if 2020 is about "Make Ukraine Great Again"?  Because Trump's sole remaining defense, which he is using, is to say that he really wasn't just trying to keep himself in office by cheating.  It's that he just wanted to help Ukraine be a little less corrupt. Really.   And this is the strategy to get voters in Florida who did not vote for Trump in 2016 to vote for him in 2020? 

Nah.  Even Trump and Ghouliani ain't that stupid.

All of this stuff has the telltale signs of desperate people doing desperate things.  I think it's more likely that what will resonate in 2020 is a huge reaction against corruption.  And it's more like that Trump will end up looking to many new and younger voters like "corruption in the flesh".

Geez.  Didn't somebody running for President just say something like that?

 

Edited September 27, 2019 by stevenkesslar

[RA1]

1 hour ago, stevenkesslar said:

For the record, my point was exactly the opposite.  It was the Republicans that were helped.  Al Gore lost and George W. Bush won in 2000.  At the time, Lichtman said that it was going to be a close race, and that the scandal of impeachment would work in W.'s favor.  He called it right.

That of course does not mean it will work out the same way this time, of course.

That said, take a look at this.  It echoes what I said above, based on the initial polling. 

Finally, somebody agrees with me!

Impeaching Trump is only going to get more popular

 

Again, I misspoke (got to quit having beer for breakfast).  I meant helping Republicans re Clinton.

Best regards,

RA1

Edited September 27, 2019 by RA1

[RA1]

1 hour ago, stevenkesslar said:

Life is full of irony, isn't it?

I understand what you are trying to say about the impact of the Clinton impeachment on the 1998 midterms - not the 2000 Presidential election.

Here's a line I stole from somewhere about the 1998 midterms and the subsequent revolt against Gingrich that captures the irony of that situation.  Feel free to steal it from me:

Bill Clinton got a blow job.  And Newt Gingrich lost his job over it.

Here's another irony, in light of Monicagate and its presumed impact on Gore's loss in 2000:  Bill and Hillary Clinton are still married.  Al and Tipper Gore are not.

Then again, history usually gets things right.

Al Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change.  Trump may or may not be convicted after impeachment.  But he won't win a Nobel for his efforts.

History will likely remember Gore as ahead of the curve on climate change.  History will likely remember Trump as one of the latest corrupt climate change deniers.

Even Obama wondered what he did to "deserve" the Nobel which, among other things, lowered my opinion of the prize.  

I don't think Gore's ideas are holding up.

Best regards,

RA1

[RA1]

39 minutes ago, stevenkesslar said:

Trump Reelection Depends on New Voters

 

By A.B. Stoddard

I'm putting that article here because I think A.B. is exactly right, and this is where the rubber hits the road on whether Ukrainegate helps or hurts Trump in 2020.

All the evidence - the 2018 midterms being Exhibit A, Trump's low favorability ratings being Exhibit B, and the horse race polls in swing states being Exhibit C - suggest that she is right and Trump does not have the votes to win in 2020.  At least based on the actual patterns of voting in 2018, and the turnout models embedded in almost all those 2020 polls.

So Trump has to throw the puzzle pieces up in the air and hope they somehow land differently.  Presumably, that's what Trump holding a rally in New Mexico (New Mexico? Really?) was intended to do.

If you want to go full whack job devil theory, you could argue that Ukrainegate was actually designed in Frankenstein's lab (or at least Ghouliani's) to accomplish this.  The theory would go like this.  Trump did get a lot of White men to throw a Testicle Tantrum in Fall 2018.  It went sort of like this:  "Men, grab your testicles and hold them dear.  Because these lying conniving women that get paid by George Soros are out for them.  They will destroy the careers and testicles of any perfectly fine young man - why it could even be your son! - by alleging that he keeps waving his cock and balls in the face of helpless or drunk women or girls.  That is what these lying, conniving Soros-loving women will do."  Of course, some of these White Men With Big Testicles may have daughters as well as sons, but let's not go there.  

There is some evidence that the Testicle Tantrum worked in some places in 2018.  Not in California, where pretty much every Republican House incumbent got castrated (politically, I mean).  But in places like North Dakota and Missouri, where White Men and their Big Testicles still stand tall and proud.  They sure taught Heidi Heitkamp and Claire McCaskill a lesson.  

Which is a funny thing, in a way, regarding your point about socialism, @RA1.  I've known a Republican for about 20 years who would call me and whine about how it's a well known fact that Claire McCaskill is one of the most liberal members of the Senate.  I kept correcting him and saying, no, Claire McCaskill is one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate.  She's the kind of person you want around if you like the idea of compromise, and solutions.  Amazingly, facts won out, and I eventually persuaded the Republican that McCaskill was in fact one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate.  So the net effect of 2018 is we have more women in Congress.  And they are more like AOC, and less like Claire McCaskill.    So I'm not sure how well Trump's 2018 Testicle Tantrum really worked out for him.  I doubt that's the outcome he had in mind.

A.B. is right that Trump caught lightning in a bottle in 2016.  He played off all kinds of economic and social grievances that had been festering for decades, and that he could rightly claim happened on the watch of both political parties.  But here's the thing.  The opioid epidemic is just as bad, or worse.  We've regained some manufacturing jobs, but at about the same pace as we did under Obama.  Meaning we haven't come close to replacing the roughly 6 million manufacturing jobs we lost under W., thanks to China and the Great Recession. 

And maybe Trump's trade war will seal the deal.  But his favorability rating in Iowa is as low as the silos of rotting soybeans are high.  At least Iowa's Joni Ernst probably knows how to defend herself when the conniving Soros women come after her.  But Trump in Iowa?  I'm not so sure

So you could go full whack job devil theory and argue that Ukrainegate was cooked up by Trump and Ghouliani as a way to get all these people who don't usually vote to vote in 2020.  Including all the people who didn't vote until Trump came along in 2016, and then a whole bunch more who didn't even vote in 2016.

How likely is that?  Not very, I think.

What Trump had going for him in 2016 was "Make America Great Again".  So how well will it work if 2020 is about "Make Ukraine Great Again"?  Because Trump's sole remaining defense, which he is using, is to say that he really wasn't just trying to keep himself in office by cheating.  It's that he just wanted to help Ukraine be a little less corrupt. Really.   And this is the strategy to get voters in Florida who did not vote for Trump in 2016 to vote for him in 2020? 

Nah.  Even Trump and Ghouliani ain't that stupid.

All of this stuff has the telltale signs of desperate people doing desperate things.  I think it's more likely that what will resonate in 2020 is a huge reaction against corruption.  And it's more like that Trump will end up looking to many new and younger voters like "corruption in the flesh".

Geez.  Didn't somebody running for President just say something like that?

 

Polls are interesting but not infallible.

Best regards,

RA1

[stevenkesslar]

Nancy on Morning Joe this morning

Pitch perfect, I think.

https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/pelosi-trump-used-taxpayer-money-to-shake-down-leader-for-his-own-gain-70068293762

[stevenkesslar]

Another piece from Morning Joe this morning:

https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/how-impeachment-inquiry-impacts-us-globally-70079557753

Two points I'll make about this.

First, at the very end, Tom Friedman says "It's the independent nature of the witnesses this time that is going to change the character of this story."  I think he is right.  

I watched wall to wall TV last night and channel flipped.  MSNBC alleged that Fox is freaking out, and Paul Ryan (now a Fox board member) is privately saying it's time to prepare for the post-Trump era.  While Laura let Ghouliani go on and on about how he's gonna be the hero in the end (poor Rudy!) Sean Hannity is reported to be saying in private this is very bad news for Trump.  And the "cover up is worse than the crime" riff got more coverage than I might have thought it would.

What I found interesting is that nobody brought up the fact that the US Ambassador to Ukraine was sacked, perhaps because she and Ghouliani were operating at cross purposes.  She was apparently fighting corruption, and he apparently was trying to get Ukraine's leaders to do corrupt things.

So Friedman went off on Ambassador  "The Woman Was Bad News" Yovanovitch in this piece.  I think his basic point is correct.  You could not have had Watergate without John Dean.  My hunch is that as the facts emerge, she is going to be the Jane Dean of Ukrainegate.  We'll see.

Second, and to take back a little bit of what I said about Pelosi in the post directly above, both Friedman and Robinson talked about how the Democrats are their own worst enemy.  I would not say that about Nancy.  But I agree that some of the hearings are straight out of Keystone Kops.  I haven't really tuned in, but my impression is that Schiff is one of the better spokepeople.  That said, he kind of blew it yesterday. 

The main point Friedman and Robinson made, to state it more bluntly they they did, is that the danger is the Democrats have hundreds of showboats who will all want to speak for themselves, poorly.  When what's really needed now is to let the facts speak for themselves.

I think these two points tie together.  If the Democrats botch some of this, which they will, the facts will still come out.  Friedman is probably right that what we know now is just the tip of a huge iceberg.  So part of this issue for Team Nancy will be how do you edit, and keep people focused on the same clear message. (I know.  I know.  Ironic that I would use the word "edit".)

In the end, though, it doesn't matter.  If this really is the tip of the iceberg, we know that the damage is already done.  Now the rest of the story is simply seeing how we get to the inevitable tragic ending.

Edited September 27, 2019 by stevenkesslar

[stevenkesslar]

One final segment from Morning Joe:

https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/new-polling-shows-where-the-country-stands-on-impeachment-70064709736

I think the colloquy between Scarborough and Meacham nailed the internal dynamics of this for Republican Senators, who will ultimately have to decide to convict.

Playing off Joe, I have a very hard time seeing Trump's approval rating AMONG REPUBLICANS in states like Kentucky, or North Carolina, or Iowa, or Arizona dropping to 60 percent or less.  That's the level Joe said they'd have to go for Republicans to be able to vote to convict Trump without committing political suicide.  Arguably, Trump's favorable rating might actually go up AMONG REPUBLICANS as they circle the wagons.  As Meacham keeps saying, these are very partisan times.

The polling trend is already very clear that Democrats and Independents are running the other way.  Fast.

So think that one through.  It will be almost impossible for 20 + Republican Senators to break with the President.  And as Joe say, even if you magically get that, we don't know how tied into this mess Pence is, when the facts come out.

All of this is to say Republican Senators are being quiet for a reason.  They are damned if they do, damned if they don't.

Part of what happened in 2008 is that Obama whipped Democrats into a fever pitch.  The idea that Joe Biden would do that in 2020 was always sort of delusional to me.  Uncovering this shit bomb is not really gonna help Biden and his son.  Can Warren or Sanders or Mayor Pete rally the troops?  Too early to tell.

What is more predictable to me is that Republicans in 2020 may look a lot like Republicans in 2008.  Demoralized.  The other part of the problem in 2008 for Republicans is that a lot of Republicans just stayed home.

As this plays out, it's very easy to me to see that the national election in 2020 could look a little bit like the Alabama special election did.  Republicans are not going to vote for a Democrat, even if it's a moderate like Doug Jones (or Joe Biden).  They may do what allowed Doug Jones to win:  just stay home.

Edited September 27, 2019 by stevenkesslar

[stevenkesslar]

 

A Difficult Time to Be a Republican

 

Quote

The next day, the “Impeachment Defense Team” concept was born:

• “Breaking news! Nancy wants to impeach: Pres. Trump needs you on his Impeachment Defense Team. We’re sending him each donor in 1 hour. Reply YES to donate $100.”

STOP!! Here is why I am troubled: The messages bombarding my inbox assume that as a Republican, I will overlook and excuse Trump’s “Ukraine-gate” behavior no matter how egregious and potentially impeachable.

Sorry, but I resent that assumption. I am proud to be an American who values the Constitution, separation of powers, and well-being of our nation before my party. Most important, facts matter, and I look forward to reading all of them without Republican rose-colored glasses.

For the record, I am no longer fascinated by Trump running for reelection while fighting impeachment. Instead, I am terrified because no one can predict the answers to these questions:

• Will Republican elected leaders and voters stand with President Trump no matter what, even if the evidence proves he violated his oath of office?
• Is our nation careening towards a monumental constitutional crisis that will plunge our   nation into an “uncivil war”?
• Does President Trump present a national security risk?

Those questions hammer home why this is a difficult time for me to be a Republican who cares about how Trump’s behavior sets a precedent for future presidents. Are there other Republicans who feel the same but are afraid to speak out?

Finally, a new answer to my old question (“Will Trump’s reelection campaign collide with impeachment?”):  No, because I have great faith that my party will do what is right for our nation.

To that end, Sen. Lindsey Graham, here is a question for you: WWJMD? 

(Translation: What would John McCain do?)

And I am confident that McCain’s answer would include citing the name of Sen. Howard Baker.

[stevenkesslar]

On 9/26/2019 at 10:33 AM, stevenkesslar said:

Professor: Dems need to impeach Trump to win 2020

Professor Allan Lichtman, who correctly predicted the last nine presidential election wins, says Democrats will only have a chance at winning in 2020 if they impeach President Donald Trump.

Lichtman is interesting.  On the face of it, his system of "keys" sounds like crystal ball and Abracadabra.  Except that it is an empirically verifiable fact that he used his "keys" to correctly predict who would win the Presidency in the last nine of nine elections.  In Fall 2016 I was paying close attention, because he was saying - loudly - that unless something changes, Trump is probably gonna win a narrow race.  He of course turned out to be right.

His system makes common sense.  At core, it's kind of like, "It's the economy, stupid."  So of course it will matter if we tip into a recession, or even into a near recession, in the next year.

Lichtman's point recently has been that the Clinton impeachment did "work" for the Republicans. 

Had Clinton been impeached, who would have been the President?  I believe the name is Al Gore.

Instead, Gore ran for President in 2000, and lost.  Even Gore has said the taint of Clinton scandal and Clinton fatigue were contributing factors to his loss.  Lichtman would agree.

I think Lichtman's argument is common sense.  The economy is okay, like it was under Obama.  But it's not booming.  For 6 months now we've had a reduction in net non-farm payrolls in 10 states, including key ones like Michigan and Pennsylvania.  So that could go either way.

There's a good argument to be made that adding a big scandal to this is not likely to help Trump in 2020, just like the Clinton impeachment didn't end up helping Gore.

Presto change-o!

Lichtman is getting what he has been publicly asking for all year:  impeachment.

And now he is weighing on on why this makes sense for Democrats, politically

Why impeachment favors Democrats in the election

BY ALLAN LICHTMAN, 

Quote

...  the impeachment of President Bill Clinton benefited Republicans. It may have cost Republicans a few House seats, but they retained control of the House. Moreover, impeachment gave them the presidency in the 2000 election that Democrats should otherwise have won at a time of peace, prosperity, and tranquility. George Bush campaigned on the themes of restoring honesty and integrity to the White House, while the Democrats kept Clinton, their best campaigner, on the shelf and a quarter of voters said the scandal was very important for their decisions.

Impeachment is the key to Democrats regaining the presidency in 2020. My forecasting system, which has predicted every presidential election since 1984, anticipates a Republican win in 2020 unless six of 13 key factors turn the White House party. Trump is currently down only three keys, which are the Republican losses in the 2018 midterm elections, the lack of a foreign policy success, and his limited appeal to voters.

An impeachment by the House, even lacking a conviction in the Senate, would cost the president a fourth key, which would be a scandal. It would also expose Trump to dropping other keys by encouraging a serious challenge to his renomination or a third party movement. Other potential negative keys include the emergence of a charismatic Democratic challenger, a foreign policy disaster, or an election year recession.

If warranted, the House should perform its constitutional duty to impeach a president regardless of the election calculus. Still, the impeachment of this rogue president is right not only morally and constitutionally but also politically for the Democrats with a clear majority of House members.

 

Edited September 29, 2019 by stevenkesslar