Sure. And (hopefully Warren) the Democratic candidate absolutely shouldn’t. They need to focus on going out and delivering a positive message to the American people that is broadly appealing. Meanwhile the house of reps needs to drag Trump until all that’s left is a bloody lump of suffering. It would probably be for the best if the nominee mentioned Trump as little as possible.
Near certainty. There’s maybe a 5% chance that the stuff revealed in impeachment hearings is so significant, or that Trump is so deranged by then, that the Senate goes ahead and convicts.
If they don’t impeach him, he’ll say, “The liberal deep state witch hunt illegal Mueller investigation spent three years investigating him, and the fake news and radical leftist Squad led Democrats couldn’t even find anything to impeach him on! TOTAL EXONERATION!!!”
If they impeach him and the Senate acquits, he’ll say, “The liberal deep state witch hunt illegal Mueller investigation spent three years investigating him, and the fake news and radical leftist Squad led Democrats forced through a partisan hack job of impeachment, and the rightfully Republican Senate found him totally innocent! TOTAL EXONERATION!”
So the outcome of the impeachment proceedings should have no impact. The only difference is that in the scenario where they impeach, there are weeks (months?) of hearings that force at least some evidence to be absorbed by the American people. There will be clips from testimony on the evening news, and it’ll lead prime time news broadcasts for almost the entire time.
And of course, Democrats get to do their proper civic duty and show the American people and future politicians that there are at least some lines you can’t cross without (eventually) getting impeached.
Scenario 1: They don’t impeach. They possibly lose some left-wing turnout because people are pissed off. More likely they just lose some activism, donations, etc. The base feels like, “Geez, I donated a couple hundred bucks in 2018 to try to flip some of those districts, and we won them with milquetoast centrists… and what’d it get me? No impeachment, no tax returns, we funded the concentration camps on the border, etc…”
Scenario 2: They impeach and the Senate does not convict. The base is fired up, which is good, but some “centrists” are pissed off. Huge LOL airquotes around centrists, because at this point if you’re against impeachment you’re really not a centrist… You might be at the center point between the establishment Dems and the GOP, but that just puts you somewhere right of George W. Bush’s GOP. But okay, these people are pissed off at what they perceive as partisan politics… So what? Were they ever voting against Trump anyway?
I think if you compare the expected value here, scenario one is likely more detrimental than scenario two, but it’s very hard to quantify and measure in terms of actual electoral EV.
It’s not clear to me either, but I believe:
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We’re in an era where motivating voters to turn out is way more valuable than chasing an eroding “center.” Most of the center is way right of any normal center anyway, which means we’re fighting a losing battle to get them - the more we try to court them, the more we turn off our base. Winning elections is about turning out the base and registering new voters. Impeachment is the way to go in that regard.
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Impeachment is morally and civically the right thing to do.
So I think any reasonable analysis of this leads to impeachment being the best play. The people arguing against it are establishment Dems who still believe that elections are won and lost by courting the centrists/moderates. They don’t realize that today’s undecideds are undecided between staying home, Jill Stein and Dem2020, or between Trump, McMullin and staying home.
In large part they don’t realize this because decades of strategists and TV pundits have taught them that it’s all about the middle and the centrist. They’re late to realize this new playing field, and it’s to the detriment of the party.
Holy shit, AOC has fired shots off the bow of Pelosi before. Lol at thinking she cares about PR over what she feels like is right. That’s what makes her special and liked by people who don’t always agree with everything she says (myself). I can’t recall off the top of my head what the subject was, but AOC cheesed up Pelosi once already (Pelosi had to say there wasn’t bad blood).
With all your doom and gloom attitude you should create the American version of Aum Shinrikyo.
Seriously, go read r/politics and other avenues where there’s a much bigger crowd. There’s a very wide pro-impeachment movement to the point that lower ranking Democrats in congress can’t piddle around like Pelosi forever or their asses will get primaried.
PS I’m not making the argument it’s (impeachment) gonna happen. I’m saying there’s reasons to be more optimistic about it than before.
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This is another reason sooner is better than later. It looks less like a last ditch effort to oust him before the election.
This is a laughable take from you. It’s blatantly obvious he’s a career money launderer. Others have pointed out some of the evidence, so I won’t pile on with that.
I actually think one of the values of impeachment is also that it’s more likely to make him spiral out of control and appear more deranged. Instead of giving his base the red meat they desire about the Brown Menace and the Squad trying to ban cheeseburgers, he’ll be on stage ranting about impeachment. He’ll be angrier and more deranged. He won’t be campaigning on their “bread and butter issues.”
How many of those people were ever voting for Dems anyway? Like anybody who can look at all of this and blame the Dems for the divisiveness is, IMO, never voting Dem regardless.
It’s obvious to those paying attention, but I think this forces more people to pay attention… People who maybe already dislike him and think he’s a buffoon, but don’t realize just how scandal-ridden his presidency is due to his strategy of distracting with racism being pretty effective. Think about the amount of news coverage given to “very fine people” and “shithole countries” and “go back to your country,” instead of his crimes.
I think this has way more to do with who we nominate than what is going on… Like Joe Biden is going to run a Hillary-style campaign. “I’m not him, I’ll bring us together.” Elizabeth Warren is going to focus on the issues no matter what. Same for Bernie, Pete, etc.
She’s speaking up for what she thinks is right, but she’s not starting an all out war with Pelosi that she can’t win.
She hasn’t started an all out war with Pelosi so far… If she wanted to strategically force Pelosi to bring impeachment up for a vote, she’d basically have to try to oust her as Speaker.
Yeah a huge part of the value of of impeachment is that it’ll have the same effect that blitzing a lot vs a bad offensive line has in football on a quarterback. Trump is going to spend nearly all his time thinking about the impeachment process. That alone pretty much makes it +EV. The pressure is high and he’s melting like a wax statue in an oven. We should turn the pressure up as high as it can go while he’s trying to compete in the general election.
That’s a great analogy.
It’s really not that hard to induce Trump making huge mistakes. I couldn’t decide if I should use that or aggression in poker. Both analogies work well. Impeachment will result in humiliating things that he’s tried to keep concealed coming out. Narcissists can’t take that lying down and Trump is no exception. He’s going to tilt hilariously hard and spew all over the place.
He’s going to lose his shit on twitter on a daily basis and signal boost the shit out of any dirt they dig up on him. Whether we actually get the sack/stack is almost irrelevant. He’s going to fuck up responding to it really badly and turn the ball over on a daily basis.
EDIT: I hate the GOP and everything they stand for, but I’ve been a fan of their smash mouth style of politics for some time. They’ve done an outstanding job of getting elected despite standing for a broadly unpopular set of policies for decades. One of their signature moves has been to have some outside group run some outrageous falsehood in the background (Willie Horton, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, many others) that appeals to their voters and forces their opponent to deal with it. While their opponent is busy dealing with that they come at you every single day. Obviously they’ve done this in the name of their corporate sponsors and done enormous harm to the country, but there’s no question it works super well. The Democrats have the opportunity to run that line on steroids through the house of representatives via an impeachment. This pressure works really well, and is a big part of why the GOP is still a relevant political party. They’ve literally proven that it has no real negative impacts on the other sides turnout (liberals didn’t show up more because they were mad about any of that), but it does have the real effect of motivating their own voters and dominating the mind share of their opponents campaign. Democrats spend a simply ridiculous % of their time running vs Republicans thinking about the next ridiculous attack and how to parry it. It’s like artillery or land mines. It’s not so much about the casualties as it is about forcing the other side to take it into account on every single thing they try to do. I’ve never seen a Democrat do this in any meaningful way, and I’ve honestly been mad that they haven’t for probably 20 years.
The Democrats need to look at politics the way the New England Patriots look at football. There is no strategy that is off limits if it will generate even a tiny sliver of extra EV. They need to push every edge and stop telling themselves that they are too good for literally anything. We’re on the side of getting the right thing done and the time to start fighting fire with fire was a long time ago. My FAVORITE moment in the history of Democratic politics was when the Texan Lyndon B Johnson ran the Daisy ad vs Barry Goldwater. That shit ruined his opponent and was probably entirely baseless. That’s fucking politics.
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She hasn’t started an all out war with Pelosi so far… If she wanted to strategically force Pelosi to bring impeachment up for a vote, she’d basically have to try to oust her as Speaker.
I don’t think AOC’s aim or other people like Nadler’s aim is to start anything with Pelosi. I think they’re beating the impeachment drum louder (even if Nadler is beating only slightly) than before because it’s apparent to anyone other than Pelosi and some others that is a wildly popular opinion amongst Democratic voters and probably quite a few independent voters. And perhaps eventually it would force Pelosi’s hand. I really think it’s gained momentum. Although I think Trump’s ouster is more likely to come from him being unfit for office than outright impeachment these days if it were to happen.
It isn’t obvious to me that it would be a net positive. Maybe a failed or pending impeachment would on net motivate Democratic voters, it’s plausible. But it’s also plausible that it could motivate and turn out Trump voters (Democrat swamp politicians are making an end run around democracy, ONLY YOU can stop it).
Neither will Democrats! If the Russia/Mueller investigation shows anything, it’s how something like that can suck all the political bandwidth out of the room. The Democrats can either make Trump’s character and impeachment the centerpiece of their campaign or they can make it about issues. They should make it about issues.
The Mueller probe was run to minimize the amount it could be politicized and make publicity as minimal as possible. The impeachment will be the exact opposite. I’m sorry but you’re claiming that negative campaigning doesn’t work, and I’m here to tell you that the GOP has conclusively proven that it does. It fires up the base, it demotivates your opponents, and it mind fucks the other candidate super super hard.
It also can be carried out entirely by people who aren’t the Dem nominee who gets to make campaign stop after campaign stop pitching their vision of a good future for all Americans while Trump flails around trying to defend himself. If you take the pressure off him he’s going to do a lot of damage by attacking where he wants to attack. He needs to be suppressed by relentless attacks on him, his business, and his family.
It should be both. Part of the impeachment process is returning the rule of law. Which is an actual issue with the Trump admin.
Right, and the Mueller probe STILL dominated the news. Imagine how much more a much more public impeachment process would dominate the news. The democratic nominee can talk about whatever but that’s not what will get covered. It will be all about the LATEST IMPEACHMENT BOMBSHELL and Trump’s response.
And I didn’t say that negative campaigning doesn’t work. I’m not convinced that this particular negative campaigning will work. And I’m definitely convinced it is not a good public conversation to have. The election should be about issues. There’s plenty of negative campaigning to be done on actual issues and policies that Trump has carried out as President. Focus on that, not more Maddowian conspiracy theories that voters probably don’t even care about.
Regardless of if it is good political strategy(which we could debate endlessly and no one really knows) it is a good moral position and will leave the Dems on the right side of history for trying to oust a literal monster. People who compare this to Clinton’s impeachment are comparing apples to oranges. Trump has probably committed hundreds of impeachable offenses.
Pelosi won’t do it because she is power hungry. She is not some political mastermind or otherwise how do you explain the complete failures of the Democratic party over the last 20 years+
This fails to account for the facts that:
- Trump voters will believe anything Trump says.
and
- Trump will use that line of motivation regardless of what Dems do. He’s not bound by the truth. Maybe it’ll be, “Dems will take your guns, bibles, cheeseburgers, straws and cars, ONLY YOU CAN STOP THEM!” or maybe it’ll be the impeachment thing. Either way, he’ll get his base foaming at the mouth to turn out and vote for him.
I agree, which is why they should have impeached him six months ago, or now, or tomorrow, or before the end of 2019.
This is why the impeachment needs to be done sooner, and wrapped up before ~the convention. That will allow the Democratic nominee to reframe the election and spend the real campaign season (the one everyone pays attention to) hitting bread and butter issues.
This.
She IS some political mastermind or otherwise how do you explain that she’s been the leader of the House Dem caucus for 16 years?
She’s just masterminding her own personal success, not the party’s.
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A fair point. I suppose I meant she is no political mastermind when it comes to getting things done like winning elections consistently and advancing liberal policy in the house. She is most definitely a mastermind when it comes to retaining power as you said.
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Russians rigged the general for Trump is fine tho
I mean after a huuuuge historic 50 seat gain the house Dems have done nothing of substance. And it’s clear a lot of them want to. I’ve said this over and over but until you clean out the bought and paid for Dem establishment/leadership you can win all the elections in the world and have all the hearings Nadler can muster and all the chicken eating stunts Cohen can pull off but none of it matters.
In some ways Pelosi and other Dem leadership might be more of a problem than Moscow Mitch. They literally are subverting the will of their own party day by day.
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The Senate could schedule the trial for whenever it wants, no? So if the house votes to impeach in late December what’s to stop the Senate from scheduling the trial after the conventions?