But for some single-issue voters,
healthcare is not their priority.
There is also the problem of “I want government to make my healtcare better, but I don’t want it to provide it to THOSE people,” whoever that might be.
That’s great but health care by itself is not going to defeat a criminal POTUS who, if we don’t impeach him, can say that he fought the law and won. He will then run a revanchist and racist campaign to seek retribution against all who defy him. Backed by a good economy and a morally muddled Democratic opposition, Indies will split and he will win.
Looking at the CPS election results, while health care was clearly a significant issue in a number of races, I don’t think it was, by itself, the reason why the Dems beat the GOP by 8 points nationally in 2018. The Dems got a bunch of younger voters and POC voters out to the polls to build that margin. I can’t see how health care would be a #1 issue for young people. All young people feel indestructible. It’s not existential to them. It’s a nice to have. For POC, accountability and the existential threat posed by Jeff Sessions’ DOJ were equally strong motivators as health care. For a lot of women voters, the #trumprussia scandal and how it deprived HRC of the job she justly earned and Trump unjustly stole was a motivator. Basically, we rode an anti-Trump wave and held the GOP accountable for not checking Trump, and held Trump accountable for not checking the GOP.
I think Nancy Pelosi has given herself too much credit for that victory and the messaging behind it. She did a great job obviously, but for her to continue to posit that checking Trump interferes with her agenda as opposed to being an integral part of the reason we made her Speaker again demonstrates a lack of understanding.
The GOP has released their 2020 slogan to reverse this disturbing trend:
“We’ll Let You Keep The Private Health Insurance Plan You Don’t Already Have!”
What will he say if we do impeach him and the senate doesn’t vote to remove him? (I think that this whole debate chiefly comes down to a disagreement on the assumption of the PR value of impeachment with no real tangible outcome beyond itself. And let me fully admit that I don’t know the answer that I think is really right in this instance, although I am reasonably convinced that I know what is actually going to happen, or not happen no matter what I get myself all worked up about.)
It won’t matter what he says b/c we will have proven through public hearings and testimony that he is a crook. In addition, the process of going through impeachment creates many more opportunities for him to resign and for additional criminal referrals to be made. Raise the stakes for him. Raise the pressure on him. He’ll break.
Today, Mitch McConnell’s staff reported that they did a legal analysis and they’ve concluded that the Senate would be obliged to hold a trial if the House impeaches Trump. Do you really think that Mitch wants the 22 GOP Senators who are running for re-election to go on record to acquit Trump of clear crimes? Do you think he might have a moment of pause about exposing people like McSally, Gardner, Ernst, Collins and others who could lose and flip the Senate? Do you think that Trump really trusts Mitch? There’s a lot of scenarios out there where the Dems play with house money and the GOP owns their Trump problem. That puts wind at the backs of any Democratic nominee and they sail to victory.
We will if we actually have the goods. Do we actually have the goods?
We also have to accept two key facts:
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A large portion of the American public is simply unreachable, so they are a lost cause.
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No one connected to Trump in any way is likely to cooperate, and our ability to force them seems to be very limited (and takes time that we do not have). In many cases, they probably won’t even grant us the spectacle of showing up and pleading “executive privilege” or fifth amendment, or “no comment” or “I don’t recall” or whatever other lame excuse they might offer.
I fear that we are still limiting our thinking to situations where some reasonable norms of behavior remain. They don’t.
Poll: Americans Trust Democrats More Than GOP On Health Care As 2020 Approaches
…
(spits coffee)
Well I would certainly hope so.
Here’s the deal:
What would we trade for getting this criminal out of office?
Personally I’ll take the debris (meaning Pence) left in his wake as he’s hauled off in a paddy wagon in cuffs.
I think if we get anything, it will be a circus of confusion. I think the crimes will be clear to us, and muddled by gaps where we cannot obtain the necessarily details. I think much of it will be lost in the fervor of the election and in partisanship. Are we going to get the tax returns (his and the corporate entities? Are we going to get testimony from bad actors? Are we going to even get our representatives to see an unredacted version of the Mueller report?
I think timing is everything, as well as of the essence in this case, and I think (and hope) when the House gets back in session next week, you’re going to see more action to your liking on the impeachment issue.
The neat way is to vote trump out. Not that he will go willingly if he loses.
Personally I think we don.t have a lot of time to debate this. I don’t want to see blood in the streets but it could come to that.
edit
trump is a cancer on our Constitution and our way of life.
We have the goods in the Mueller Report. That’s really not debatable any longer. Cooperation happens if you enforce subpoenas, especially under the glare and power afforded an impeachment inquiry. Executive privilege does not apply. If no one cooperates, you impeach on the Mueller Report alone. All the House would have to do is to say that they affirm the findings of the Mueller Report, that they believe there is more than enough here for Trump to face charges when he leaves office, that the Committee recommends that he face such charges, and that an article of impeachment will be voted out recommending that Trump be impeached in order that he be removed from office to face charges. Pretty straightforward when you think about it. It’s just a question of political will.
You think we have the goods, and I may think that we have the goods. (I presume that you are aiming for obstruction as the charge, which seemed pretty obvious to me even without the details revealed in the Mueller report, although I admit to being rather biased in this matter.) I am not so confident that it will work out the way that we want. I do think that Mitch will do everything that he can to push back, or run out the clock, and the clock is not in our favor. (This is, after all, the Mitch McConnell who prevented a sitting president from getting so much as a hearing on a lawfully nominated Supreme Court justice. At the time, that seemed pretty unthinkable, and now it seems almost quaint.)
My hope is that we can use the information publicly in other ways than impeachment. We can have an argument in other forms. If we cannot maximize the impact of the cloud over Trump’s head in mobilizing public opinion, we have no business proceeding with impeachment that will be nothing but a show trial with no new revelations.
(I might be a little more confident in your recommended approach if Democrats had a history of making subpoenas stick, and I don’t think we do. Their current hesitation seems to verify that concern.)
Guess I ain’t feeling it.
I often agree with you, but with McConnell running things in the Senate, aren’t we looking at an uncertain outcome? I’m struggling to get a clear view of the endgame.
That headline should not surprise anyone.
McConnell running things in the Senate, and a batch of Republicans with absolutely no sense of personal dignity or a greater good than their own power and hating all of the right people. Trump is their meal ticket, and his base isn’t going to be forgiving if they throw him to the wolves.
I am also finding @khyber900’s passion rather than carefully made arguments out of the norm. (He might be right, but I really, really fear an outcome where the Senate does not follow through, and Trump gets a boost from having survived our strongest ammunition. To me, it just feels more like Bunker Hill than the Battle of Cowpens.)
And I will repeat my earlier comment:
McConnell is a canny operator. I get nervous about laying a narrative at his feet. The dude is not incapable of coming up with a compelling rewrite.