Discussion: Nadler: Dems Won't 'Necessarily' Impeach Trump Over 'Impeachable Offense'

[dave48]

Basically, until you get 65 Senators to agree that Trump needs to go, impeachment is just a show. Prosecutors don’t indict people they don’t think they can convict either, even when they’re pretty sure that person is guilty.

What the House Democrats need to do is order investigation after investigation making all of Trump’s crimes as public as possible. Once the 2020 election season starts to get close (around March of 2020 maybe) they can start daring Republican Senators to ignore everything they’ve found. The House Democrats can have a lot of fun playing that game, but an impeachment that goes nowhere in the Senate is just being stupid. It would probably help Trump, if anything.

[bikerdad]

FU Tapper and your concern trolling. Get a GOPer on your show and “grill” them about why they haven’t been to the WH to tell Individual-1 he must resign. I’m sick of these slackers telling us we have to clean up their shit.

[yehuda]

Maybe what the Democrats need to do is hold a few quiet investigations, and meanwhile hold the possibility of impeachment hanging over the President’s head. That might be enough to encourage him to support legislation in one or more of the following: 1, criminal justice reform; 2, heath care; 3, immigration reform; 4, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure.

[sickneffintired]

African or European?

I don’t know that!?

[nemo]

The key point here is that you don’t shoot your wad. The Mueller investigation and satellite prosecutions are still well underway. House investigations lie ahead. Arrests of Trump family members, groupies await in the near future. Further matters relevant to the question of criminality will not only be revealed but (in the matter of obstruction of justice) will be generated, because Trump will hit the roof. Nadler is handling this right–reserving the right to impeach without jumping the gun.

[fosberry]

This is the unstated elephant in the room. If impeachment could not plausibly lead to conviction and removal, there’s a strong argument against it almost irrespective of the underlying crimes and the strength of evidence for them.

But I’d rather see Nadler make this overt and clear: the facts themselves justify and warrant impeachment, but at this stage it seems the GOP-controlled Senate (not to mention a significant subset of the population) would strongly oppose it. That would raise pressure on Trump’s defenders, possibly paving the way for removal.

Another more Machiavellian question would be whether Democrats would rather run against a scandal-plagued Trump and (likely, I would hope) defeat him electorally than impeach him and give the GOP a chance at a do-over. While a lot of focus has been on the Clinton impeachment as a template (Republicans overplaying their hand, and actually losing ground in a mid-term election), it’s also worth noting that Ford came quite close to winning reelection in 1976, despite the stain of Watergate on the GOP, his pardon of Nixon himself, and even a debate gaffe calling Poland a free country,

Ironically, the more damaging to Trump the Mueller investigation is, especially if/as things continue to drip out slowly in periodic court filings, the more Democrats might prefer simply to defeat Trump soundly at the ballot box, rather than risk a Pence-led (or, potentially, some other Republican) party making a competitive election in 2020.

[lizbensky]

Yeah, Nadler’s comments were a bit hard to swallow

[russellsadler]

This is exactly the right answer to,this question. Wait for Mueller to finish his work and add it all up. Then decide whether Trump should remain on office. I trust he will resign if impeachment appears inevitable😇

[socalista]

Made sense to me. An initial consideration is whether a provable offense could theoretically be grounds to impeach (e.g., sexual misdeeds). A further consideration is whether a provable offense that could theoretically be grounds to impeach is really worth getting into a lather about (e.g., perjury and obstruction of justice). Using Clinton as an example.

[demyankee]

What is the specific gravity of a blow job?

Seems that it was greater than 1 gm/cc. “Not a witch!”

[okdatapad]

yeah it would have been better if he’d found a way to say that that didn’t make him sound ridiculous lol

[stradivarius50t3]

Nadler is compromised on this issue. He said much the same thing during the Clinton impeachment. It’s disappointing that the public can’t see the difference between private conduct with private consequences (getting a blowjob from an intern) and private conduct intended to defraud the public to advance personal interests (working with the Russian government to become President, or committing campaign finance violations to cover up a scandal).

[greenman66]

Right, timing is everything and once the amount of illegal activity carried out by the Trump administration become clears, anyone with more than 2 connected neurons will understand that the country has been had by Trump and his GOP enablers. Keep it in the news, they have done enough that a new outrage could be fed to the MSM every week.

[okdatapad]

there goes his presidential bid lol

[tpr]

Discussion: Progressives Salivate Over Subpoena Power While Moderates Fret About Political Costs

At least when historians look back at the closing years of the American empire, they will note that the Democrats held the world's largest reserve of dry powder.

[nemo]

Barry Osborne (barry_osborne)

[tpr]

I share the frustration I see in this thread.

At the same time, the GOP House and Trump can still do a lot of damage before Jan 3. Even if Nadler is eager to go right for Trump’s jugular, I suppose there is wisdom in not shouting that at the top of your lungs when the traitor and his traitorous allies still hold all the levers of power.

We will see in 2019 whether Trump’s impeachable offenses “rise to the gravity.”

[robaruba]

Senate Repubs will never vote to impeach Trump. Full stop.

[coimmigrant]

ground speed velocity

Speed is simply a scalar quantity, in this case its measure relative to the ground. Velocity is speed with a directional component, in this case the notorious blue dress. But for a fortuitous direction Starr would not have found his smoking gun.

[cervantes]

My guess is that what he means but is trying not to say is that they don’t want to begin impeachment procedures unless they know that the most vocal portions of the public will not resent them for doing so.

I think that’s part of it, yes.

But again, Nadler’s actual words were careless. For reasons known only to himself, he even suggested it’s not clear whether someone should be impeached just because they took certain actions “in the service of fraudulently obtaining the [presidency].”

He could have answered Tapper’s (reasonable) question much more intelligently.

 

@socalista