Just look at what came out today. It seems very likely that Trump committed a felony in his hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, but the DOJ says they can't indict a sitting president, and the Dems won't investigate it.

That's a big problem.

Al Sharpton, who has never held any elected office, said some racially charged things 25 years ago about hypothetical people that were living thousands of years ago. Robert Byrd joined the clan 75 years ago, disavowed them before he was ever elected 60 years ago, called the KKK the greatest mistake of his career 20 years ago and stopped breathing 10 years ago.

The President of the United States publicly told sitting members of Congress to get out of the country earlier this week.

So words work better than deeds?

I think the hypocrisy of that is pretty evident. But Im sure the excuses will fly. Wait they a;ready are.

#reasons why trump wins in 2020

Name a serious liberal political figure with a resume close to this:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/u...ve-quotes.html

#reasonstrumpwonin2016

Be completely clear for me: You're saying Robert Byrd's 1940s Klan membership, of which you just learned, is as entirely relevant and weighty as the collective past, present and future questionable behavior of any and all modern Republican politicians, including the President of the United States? And you also think this is obvious?

Freaking Woody Guthry wrote a song about how racist Trump's dad was in the '50s:

https://medium.com/@editors_91459/tr...t-deea588fa11a

I am guessing and assume many independents truly are garden variety old school republicans these days.

This - this right here.


To paraphrase Kasich, if it requires setting the precedent that what Trump has done is acceptable to win, what have you really won that retains real value?

Trump wins in 2020 because people actually like the white supremacist stuff and this country has an autocratic fascination.

Enough with the mental gymnastics. We know why people are voting for him and it isn't because some guy who has never held elected office in his life said some stuff a few decades ago.

And if you know it's going to be a political exercise at best, what have you done that retains real value if you vote to impeach and the Republican Senate disposes of it quietly within 48 hours?

Yay, you showed a spine. You didn't actually DO anything, he remains in office, and effectively can act with impunity for the remainder of his time in office because any future attempts to impeach will be dismissed as sour grapes.

But you sure showed you had a spine!

Look, I think he should be impeached and removed. I think if Senate Republicans had even the tiniest bit of political sense, they'd have started beating that drum already. Any risk they faced on that front has already passed.

The midterms, where they might have lost the Senate, have come and gone. With the map shifting to Republican territory for 2020, it's a fairly safe bet that any backlash from Trump supporters isn't gonna, like, result in a wave of Democrats getting elected in the Deep South. The path to Democrats flipping the Senate runs through Alabama, Kansas (if Kobach gets the nomination, that might be flippable), Maine, and Colorado. They could afford to lose Alabama if they held serve in "blue" territory, flipped the other three, and won the White House. Which, uh, means Trump doesn't get re-elected, so the Senate isn't useful on THAT front, but would be on policy. At which point nobody really cares about Trump's administration beyond "we must repair the damage!"

But if they ditch Trump at this point, we're past the halfway part of his first term, which means Pence could still, in theory, serve two full additional terms as President.

That's been true since the end of January.

Seriously. Mueller Report comes out; Senate Republicans pull their best Inspector Renault impression ("I'm shocked, SHOCKED, to find that the President obstructed justice!"); House votes to impeach, Senate votes to remove, President Pence has two years to make his case for re-election with the ability to serve two full terms still (along with everything that means for the Supreme Court with two aging liberals and a couple aging conservatives likely to need replacing in that time) and they end up having gotten significant tax cuts for the rich and a transformation of the judiciary under Trump, while setting themselves a better platform for the next ten years by cutting ties.

They play it as statesmen doing what's best for the country and never mind all the other stuff, and eventually their complicity in the Trump years is forgotten.

Instead, they chose to hug him tighter and bet on the South having its nose so far up his ass that even if he loses re-election they'll be able to keep the Senate for at least two years.

That might not be a losing play, but it's not exactly a winning one, either.

Why not look at what he did the last few decades of his life? It wasn't just words.

I think he's been pretty darned consistent about paygo from what I can see in his record. There's lots of reasons not to like Rand Paul but I don't see much hypocrisy in what he's said here.


Doing the right thing is its own reward, number one. Number two, I would probably vote democratic myself in the next election instead of third party if they would show a spine as you put it and do their duty. I'm a tiny minority, but right now I'll support anyone who has the guts and inclination to actually defend our institutions. Which is ... *looks around* ... who, exactly? And of course third, there is precedent set that what Trump has done isn't acceptable and at least one house of congress thought it was worth impeaching him over. That by itself is worth a lot more than losing the house or winning it for a session or two.


Huh?? The 2018 Senate map was horrible for Democrats. Horrible. Meanwhile in 2020 there are 22 Republican seats and 12 Democrat, with three of the GOP seats having the current senator retiring. Because of where they are, yeah its not quite as good as those numbers show but they've got a heck of a lot better shot at winning the senate in '20 then they ever thought of in '18. Not that this should have the first darn thing to do with it, but ...


Unless he assassinates someone personally on live TV you're never going to have a better chance than you do now. The reasons for impeaching him aren't going to change. This is, and has been, the moment where you decide to do something or not. You can't do it after an election in '20 that comes with everyone knowing about the Mueller Report - the whole point of impeachment is to correct for behavior that is serious enough that it can't wait until that next election. Impeaching him with the Senate acquitting/ignoring is not doing nothing. There's a reason why that action hasn't happened with most presidents. It's doing something, and something quite substantive. It demonstrates to the electorate what Democrats intend to do with the power they've been given. If they don't do it, they are saying they don't intend to act on a major part of their constitutional obligations, and that's also part of their resume being submitted to the American people.

With regards to that statement, I can't puke loud enough to express my opinion, and will/would personally vote in accordance with such perspective.

I'll give you that Paul is anti-spending, but anyone who keeps voting for tax cuts can't be sen as anti-deficit.

lol

Trump giving Thom Freidman shit for playing too much golf.

He voted for the massive tax cuts for corporations and wealthy people which created the deficit he is grandstanding about.

I don't get why this is the D's cross to bear re. Impeachment? The pressure should be on Senate R's (from the public) and to suggest, the D's problem because they won't start it (I know they have to start it in the House), but nearly everything undergoes some negotiation before the process begins, so I don't see this being any different, especially for something this major.

The pressure should be on the Senate R's for coming out and saying that there's nothing that this president has done yet that they feel is enough to support his removal. That's like saying "I know they've all been arrested, but OF COURSE I'm still cheering for the Bengals, because they are MY TEAM!"

To answer Brian's question about what have you won? You've won power. That kind of power that changes political landscapes. Yes, you've also moved closer to a kind of political fascism like we saw in GOT, where of course she must destroy everything to rebuild it, but the right way. But short of fighting fire with fire, you end up essentially laying down for the train and getting run over. It would take a strong leader to take power, and right the ship and make it so the kind of lawless leadership that we've seen with dump can never be repeated without swift consequences.

I don't like it, but I don't see end result of not doing it, as a better solution. I'd love to see McConnell buried in this election. He won't be, it's Kentucky, but his brand of leadership makes me ill. Lie when it's beneficial, plausibly deny wherever possible, and always, always take advantage of every person, situation where possible, regardless of the ethical choices involved, but make sure, that your base knows that you are the right person, because you will make sure that your side wins. That's it.

Handing someone like that, that kind of political football is just asking for it. I just can't see how standing up only to lose another 4 years, and more SC seats, is worth it. Argue all day long, but dig deep and beat every single one of those issues into the heads of voters for months on end. I'm shocked that someone hasn't put all the dumb things trump has said on a loop and just used his own words against him. Those political ads have been so successful. Why don't we see them now? The DNC can just run them. Get those phrases out there, and let the public be sick of hearing them, and know who they got last time and rile your own base up in the process.

great post, PilotMan

All of the fear of investigation is based on the assumption that there's no way Trump can win in 2020. That was the same assumption in 2016 and the reason why Obama largely let the known Russian influence in our elections slide. It's the reason the Dems didn't fight like hell over the Supreme Court seat stolen by McConnell.

I just don't understand the certainty that thorough investigations will help Trump. He and his admin have done a lot of criminally and ethically questionable stuff. Exposing all of that publicly seems very unlikely to help him.

Again, I'll ask, who is the voter that would stay home or vote Dem except for the fact that there were a lot of investigations that exposed a lot of wrongdoing?

And don't forget, by largely ignoring all of the ways that the campaign itself was criminal, the Dems are guaranteeing that it happens again. The GOP has been quite honest that it will seek and accept help from foreign governments in 2020. Ignoring the corruption seems much more dangerous to me than does exposing it.

Because being too mean to Trump might make his supporters upset.

So, while I agree with this... I'd also say that it might represent an unreasonably high standard for this particular point of view. We know that spending is popular, and certain high profile spending especially so.

A "starve the beast" conservative should stand up to spending, as a matter of principle. Not debating the merits of the specifics of the 9/11 bill, as I am not knowledgeable, but all told, it's a valid POV to say no.

Voting for tax cuts makes you a hypocrite on deficits, but if your argument is for "a small government funded by low taxes" that's at least a coherent objective served by both of those votes. The likely reality that revenues drop but spending continues to rise is the counterpoint, but maybe a guy like Rand Paul will prove right when the real deficit-movers like entitlement programs one day get corralled, in part because our depleted revenues aren't enough to support them.

Intellectually, my problem with the drown in a bathtub group is that they're ignoring 40 years of evidence on what happens. People are perfectly content spending without taxing to match that.

Morally, I think it's reprehensible to design a plan to cut spending on the most vulnerable that necessitates some sort of government/economic crisis to make it happen.

Eventually this bill will pass and Paul will vote against it. A much more interesting scenario would be if Paul ended up as the deciding vote. I think you can always count on Paul to be courageous and principled when it doesn't matter, so I expect in that situation he'd vote for it.

Bullshit. If you gave the tiniest fucking shit about "defending our institutions," you would have voted for Clinton in 2016 to prevent McConnell from benefitting from his fuckery with Garland. That was an attack on our institutions for political gain long before the Twitter Shitter in Chief took office, but you apparently gave no shits about that.

Spare me your moral apoplexy about how you'd vote Democrat next time IF ONLY IF ONLY.


Democrats needed to run the table. No question. It wasn't a great map.

And even running the table on winnable races still probably leaves the chamber decided by Pence. But my point is, to the extent that Republicans faced risks, that was their downside. They weren't going to find themselves looking up at a 45-55 minority all of a sudden. The seats just weren't there for Democrats to accomplish that.

Once they got past January, there was more upside to impeaching (or using the 25th to just straight remove) Trump and moving on with Pence because there was a limited ability for that removal to hurt them.


I don't disagree. You're never going to have a better moment.

And what that means in reality with how close McConnell and the rest of the Senate GOP are hugging him is that you don't have that moment as it stands.

The GOP has done an amazing job in the last 10-15 years of out-messaging their Democratic counterparts on, oh, everything.

You can say "This. THIS matters. You need to send the message." And that's not the message that will be received. McConnell will dispose of it quietly and the GOP will turn this into "they just wanted revenge for Clinton!" and the message you thought you were sending? Won't. Matter.

There won't be consequences, and without consequences, it will get portrayed as a purely political exercise perpetrated by Democrats still harboring a grudge over the Clinton impeachment 20 years ago. The message sent will be "as long as your buddies in the Senate can run interference for you, you can get away with any fucking thing you want."

Impeachment SHOULD happen, but it isn't on the Democrats to initiate something that's doomed to failure. The pressure, as PilotMan pointed out, should be on Senate Republicans to pull their head out of their asses instead of pretending that Trump is the only man who could ever have given the GOP what it wants on tax cuts, ACA, the judiciary, and on down the line.

But they won't do it, because their calculus on survival politics is that if they Brutus Trump, the racists who loudly support him will...vote for a liberal snowflake instead or some damn thing.

The Democratic House is under no obligation to fire the one bullet in their gun to useless effect just because you really really want them to.

Trump is already walking back his disavowal of Send her back.

I think I've been clear that the Republicans are as spineless as the Dems. We just happened to be talking about the Dems at that moment.

With you here...

And that's where we part ways. Political power simply isn't that important to me. Period. And I hope it never will be.

How many generations back do people need to live in a particular place to be considered 'immigrants' or to be considered living 'back home'? Or simply put (if the sources I used are correct), by Donald Trump's own measures, he himself is actually an immigrant. Perhaps the Republicans should tell him to go 'back home', either to Germany or Scotland/the UK.

(Or has this been brought up time and time again and am I beating the proverbial dead horse here?)

Completely predictable. We've seen this cycle before...


1. Trump says/does/tweets something awful that reflects his true character.

2. Someone he listens to tells him he needs to walk it back.
3. He walks it back, begrudgingly.
4. When he realizes he isn't getting the praise and worship he feels he deserves for walking back the awful thing, he feels he might as well be true to himself, so he tries to justify the awful thing.

I had forgotten his initial response to Lock Her Up was saying he didn't like it.

via GIPHY

Yeah, its not about immigrants, its about people of color and racism. Its impossible to bring this up too often, keep doing it.

Nonsense. Here we have the last vestige of those without a good argument; presumption of motives and assassination of the same. I said the stonewalling of Garland was horribly wrong at the time, and I also said during the campaign that I wouldn't support Trump or Clinton for anything as important as dogcatcher. I stand by that assessment. We didn't have a campaign between a good candidate and a bad one; we had a campaign between two totally unacceptable ones. On that point I agree with the majority of America, the difference is in what I decided to do about it.



This isn't an either/or situation. Both bear responsibility for how they have acted, and how they act now. I don't in any way absolve the GOP senate for ignoring Trump's misdeeds. As a Constitutional matter though, the House most definitely has a duty - and not just the Democrats in it but the Republicans as well. As a matter of process, the pressure will never be on the Senate to the degree it needs to be until they are required to go on the record that what Trump has done isn't impeachable, and they can't do that unless the House impeaches.

They can be when paygo was included in the initial bill and then they tried to get it back in after it was later removed. Tying a tax cut to equivalent (at a minimum) cuts in spending is literally exactly what someone who is in favor of lower taxes and anti-deficit would be expected to do.


With Ben on this. If this is the price for getting power, the exchange is a net negative and it isn't close. It's not like this is new, it's just the next step. Polling showed during the Clinton process that more than twice as many Americans thought he had obstructed justice than wanted him impeached for it. This is a problem not fundamentally with those in power but with the electorate, and changing the figureheads won't change that. We'll simply have a new party in charge pursuing a different set of policy agendas by unacceptable means, as has increasingly been the case in modern America. The next president will not I'm sure be as bad as Trump, but as long as this behavior prevails and is unchallenged there is no reason to expect the overall trend line not to continue to go negative. Principle matters far more than power ever could.

Paul was fine with no pay-go on all of the tax cuts. He's anti-spending, but the deficit is at best a secondary concern.

Definitely. The "go back to Africa" insult has been used on black people for a long time. Even to people who have been in this country for generations.

That's what created the deficits? Not the trillions of dollars being spent?

Late to the party but this:




One of my favorite quotes:
'The right thing is right even if no one is doing it; and the wrong thing is wrong even if everyone is doing it'

Unfortunately right and wrong is subjective and I believe Congress and their quest for power has retarded their ability to understand what is right and what is wrong.

This, what we, as The People, feel is wrong is not what they, as congress, feel is wrong.

When you cut taxes with no plan to reduce spending, yes. It was crystal clear what would happen, and now we're going to have a trillion dollar deficit with a booming economy. The next recession is going to be that much more painful because we're already operating with low interest rates and massive deficit spending.

Apparently Rand Paul is negotiating with the Iranian government trying to get them to sign a deal that says they will never pursue nuclear weapons.

You know, like the one Trump pulled out of.

I believe it depends on the immigrant.

(edit: what Radii said)

I'm not sure I get the Brits.

They "hold" the Iranian tanker captured at Gibraltar (at the behest of the US I assume). Why get into it vs letting the US Sixth fleet handle it when you know the Iranians would retaliate and you really can't do much about it.

Iran seizes British tanker in Strait of Hormuz - BBC News

Well the Iranian vessel the British seized was suspected of violating UN sanctions by trading with Syria.

So why do it when I presume the US Sixth Fleet could have done it just as easily? Why get involved when there is a high likely hood for retaliation that you can't counter?

So the President once again re-tweets Katie Hopkins, a known racist who has called for a "final solution" for Muslims. Just another Saturday in the Fourth Reich.

Mark Sanford is willing to challenge Trump for president in 2020 - Vox

You know the GOP is afraid that it might not be in a position to do something about the deficit when it starts to talk about it.

Like I said before, I wish more people would start talking about the deficit.

The GOP has to go deficit crazy just in case a Dem wins in 2020.

A nice scorecard on what has happened under Trump. It doesn't say Trump did all these things or didn't, just more a factual recap of what has happened under his administration.

Trump's Numbers July 2019 Update - FactCheck.org

The one thing that caught my eye was increase in Manufacturing jobs. Never really paid attention to it vs the overall jobs picture.

Deficit obviously is a problem. Arguments can be made whether the GOP or Dems have more blame but think we can all agree here that there is shared blame from both sides.

Question to those following the Dem candidates right now. Which of the likely candidates will reduce the deficit or the growth of the deficit? I've read the candidates are not talking about it right now (because it's going to make them a target).

Interesting poll from CBS.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/most-am...cbs-news-poll/


Not captured in the text but in the charts, 42% of Independents agree with his tweet.

It doesn't surprise me there is a divide between GOP and Dems but pretty surprised at the Independents who I assumed would lean more to the left. 40-42% range agreeing with Trump is pretty significant and supports that Trump is striking a chord.

I see the word racist around quite a bit here. Below is a definition FWIW.

What is Racism? | ADL

That's called the minority opinion. Generally, in a democracy, that part would be deemed, the losing side. That fact that it's truly a minority, not a minor plurality should be all that matters.