Seems like it kind of depends on the stakes and how you feel about taking a big sum from him (in the obviously unlikely event that Trump is convicted).
I think you’re probably right about it being closer to 50:1, but given how much weird shit keeps happening like every single day, offering him $20 to win $600 if something wild and wonderful happens seems all right to me.
Your risk is mostly something new that is extremely bad for trump coming out between now and the trial. Although if that happens he probably resigns rather than gets convicted.
On the other hand there are already a lot of extremely bad things that have been revealed and that doesn’t seem to matter.
Even people who watched a significant portion of it live but were only half paying attention are a problem. My father, who I bring up a lot in these types of examples, is a Never Trump center-right voter who used to consistently (but not universally) vote Republican. He didn’t vote for either in 2016, and plans to vote or whoever the nominee is for the Dems in 2020. There’s a 0% chance he’ll vote for Trump, he hates him.
But when we were golfing yesterday he kept mentioning how Sondland at one point said there was quid pro quo and at one point said there wasn’t, so who can be sure?
All the facepalms. I tried to explain it to him a few times, but he was really locked onto it.
I also told him he seemed really calm about all of it, including the prospect of Trump being above the law. The exchange then went:
CuseDad: I’m not worried because there’s no chance at all that he wins the election.
Me: You said the same thing in 2016.
CuseDad: But now everyone can see that he’s obviously an idiot.
Me: That was obvious in 2016.
CuseDad: He won super close races in a few states, it’s just not going to happen again.
A little later I brought up the recent Wisconsin polls and that seemed to click in for a bit that there’s a chance this guy wins again, but I think the 70 years of his life experience being that nothing bad CAN happen to America is too strong to overcome. A huge percentage of the population is programmed to think that the USA is totally invincible and has the greatest and strongest democracy that can never be toppled.
Also, it’s a little off topic for this thread, but I’m always bringing my center-right Dad who has probably voted 70-80% of the time for Republicans in his life up in the context of the Dem primary. His least favorite candidate, at least among the top 10 or so who have any real shot, is Joe Biden. His favorite seems to be Bernie. But he’ll vote for Biden if he wins the nomination.
I’m trying to get him to register and vote in the Dem primary (he’s currently registered independent) but I’m not sure if he’ll do it. It’s like I have him at the point where he’s off the Fox News (has been mostly off it since maybe 2015), he sees the GOP for the shit party it is, he’s going to vote mostly Dems although we may not get the straight ticket vote, but that extra step of identifying as a Democrat seems to be like a bridge too far lol…
This is super interesting from a political strategy perspective. I’m kind of surprised by both the things we’ve heard reported about the GOP’s thinking… First it was six days a week for six weeks, now there’s talk of only going two weeks.
They have the opportunity to interfere with the Democratic primary, so the instinct is to assume they’ll do it because they’re the evil masterminds who love to just mess with Dems in bad faith at every opportunity. However, there are like three major things at play here:
They may not want to hurt the candidacy of Warren and Sanders and help Buttigieg.
It’ll dominate the headlines, and it’s debatable whether six weeks of impeachment headlines are better for them than six weeks of headlines about Democratic infighting over the finer points of healthcare.
The longer they go the more opportunity the Dems have to inject new storylines. Like, the Dems can be running concurrent hearings into other malfeasance if they want to. They probably aren’t smart enough, but I think the optimal move is to schedule private testimony on a bunch of stuff and start leaking like a sieve.
Okay, so looping back, here’s why the reported strategies make no sense. Either you want to fuck with the Dem primary to the max or you don’t. If you do, six hours a day six days a week for six weeks is not the optimal way to do it. Scheduling stuff Monday, Wednesday, Friday for four hours a day with a long recess is the way to do it. 10a-12p and 5p-7p or something like that. You could then run it for 12 weeks and have the Dem presidential candidates racking up frequent flier miles like crazy.
Or if you want it over sooner because you don’t want the impeachment headlines, you go like two weeks.
All that said, I’m not sure the GOP has a ton of control over the absolute length because it’s not like they can tell the prosecution team how much time they get. My guess is they want that part to be as short as possible, then they want to draw out the spin for a few weeks and really get into the Biden stuff as the Trump team’s defense. This creates bad headlines for Democrats and the more time that passes from the prosecution resting to the vote is more time to crank up the spin machine.
Now, of course, that all assumes they want to damage Biden’s candidacy, which I think they do. It’s possible, though, that they would rather let him win the nomination then go after him in the general on the Hunter/Burisma stuff. It’s possible they realize they’d rather run against him than one of the others.
So there are layers on top of layers here.
This is a tilting problem we face. So much apathy is being made worse by the obviousness trump shouldn’t be president. But it is NOT obvious to enough people so just waiting it out is not good enough.
For starters, if the roles were reversed, the GOP would be blanketing the airwaves with pro impeachment ads. Like where the fuck is Tom Steyer now? #NeedToImpeach
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what comes next. I thought about making a new thread, even. But like he’s going to be impeached, then he’s almost certainly going to be acquitted in the Senate in like February. This gives him the total green light to do anything he wants in the 2020 election with zero ramifications until 2021, and if he wins zero ramifications until 2025. We all know what that means.
So we’re about to enter this new phase of just all out political war. The Dem nominee WILL be investigated by the DOJ. The president WILL use the office to pressure foreign countries to investigate the Dem nominee. The president WILL try to get foreign countries to hack for him, to cut deals to help him, etc, etc. Money WILL be funneled from Russia, Saudi Arabia and Israel to the Trump campaign. Facts will be totally disregarded. The amount of mud that is flying from the right will be orders of magnitude more than we’ve ever seen.
So what should the Dems do and what will the Dems do? There’s no way they do what they should do, imo, which is to match the fervor and intensity but do so legally. They should already be preparing now, and they’re not. They should be going for the transcripts of every call with MBS, Netanyahu, Putin, etc. They should be going through the courts now to enforce subpoenas so that maybe it plays out in time to have major public testimony about various misdeeds in June through November of 2020. They should be lining this stuff up now. Make sure the headlines are not like, “DOJ Investigates Biden/Sanders/Warren/Pete for _____________.” Make sure the headlines are about explosive testimony that’s damning for Trump. You have to win that battle, or the Comey letter is going to look like child’s play.
What else should they be doing? They should be making sure Trump is charged by NY and other states shortly after he’s acquitted in the Senate. Is he indictable? Well we should sure as shit find out, let’s make SCOTUS rule on that in 2020. Why wait? Is there any doubt the GOP would have charged Obama in like Alabama for some state crime if they had the chance???
You need the shit you’re slinging back at him to be a level more serious than the shit he’s slinging at you. If it’s an indictment in a court of law, hey, that’s not partisan politics that’s a GRAND JURY OF HIS PEERS. It’s a nice bonus that it’s ACTUALLY in the pursuit of justice as well. That it’s all legal and above board.
Meanwhile, as you keep turning the screws on him, you increase the number of unforced errors he’s going to make. All of this should be going on while the nominee totally ignores it and hammers HEALTHCARE AND JOBS AND HEALTHCARE AND JOBS AND MONEY AND JOBS AND HEALTHCARE AND MONEY AND HOPE AND YES WE CAN AND LIFE IS GOING TO BE SO GOOD FOR YOU WHEN I WIN.
Let House Oversight, Intel and Judiciary go in on him. And, while we’re at it, clear those committees of anyone who isn’t up to the task and load them up with total bulldogs who do not have future presidential ambitions. I want Maxine Waters chairing some of these hearings, so move her over or find a way to put them in Financial Services. In fact, change the house rules to bring in lawyers to do the questioning and bring in the best, most cunning, most assholic lawyer possible. Or let Robert de Niro do it, that’d be fun. This is fucking political war, democracy hangs in the balance.
On 11/4/20, there should be no dry powder anywhere within a mile of these Democratic investigations. Fire it all.
And obviously there should be targeted ad campaigns to suppress Republican turnout. There should be Super PACS that are not at all connected to the candidate that are being run by people like Tom Steyer that are running ads painting Trump as an out of touch scummy elitist who’s scamming the good Christian folks of God’s country. Has he paid for abortions for his mistresses? Who can be sure? Many people are saying it! Let’s dredge up some of the disparaging shit he’s said about Pence that ties into religion. You think Obama’s line about clinging to guns and Bibles was bad? What about this other shit Trump said?
But I have a feeling the Dems are about to walk into a fight like this…
Expecting to play thumb war. One, two, three, four I declare a… Sorry, my dude, you just got hit in the face with a trident. Why’d you bring nothing more dangerous than opposable thumbs to a street fight with tridents and swords?
Well. I can see why he wouldn’t want to identify as a Democrat, but I see your point.
Thanks for sharing these stories about you and cusedad. They’re great anecdotes and insights. This latest one helped me clarify the difference in serenity and apathy. cuseDad can believe that in time, this will work out for the better in the same way every other terrible thing has in his 70 years, but apathy and serenity are the difference in doing nothing and doing what you can to contribute to that better outcome you believe will happen.
sigh way too persuasive a vision of next year but it is what it is.
My mom also hates Trump - largely I assume because she doesn’t want to lose me. I still would bet money she pulls the lever for him in 2020. Chopping up babies just minutes from being born is too much of an emergency.
Have you informed her Trump has certainly paid for many of these procedures himself?
Not so fast. Had them done yes? Billed for them? Certainly. Paid them? Seems impossible.
The only thing that matters is he’ll appoint SCOTUS judges who will overturn Roe v. Wade.
Rs have created a bunch of single issue voters and know they can do anything they want w/o losing them.
You should copy and paste this to every Democrat in congress and let them know we’ll fight like hell to primary them if they do anything short
I am was thinking about this earlier and to be a single issue voter, whose primary issue is banning abortion is some kind of specific brain schism, especially in the world we live in today.
I think it’s just an excuse not to totally buck the tide of my religious aunts that she hangs out with all the time. Tribalism trumps all,
If you genuinely believe that abortion = murder I kind of get it… It’s 600k+ murders per year. Basically as bad as the holocaust. Then I realize that if you believe that the only moral thing to do is immediately carry out a terrorist attack on an abortion clinic… or at least pour money into subsidizing new mothers to the nth degree (something that you could even argue for from a public policy perspective… but no instead they load young women up with student loan debt lolol).
In reality most of these people don’t believe what they claim to believe… it’s just the most convenient explanation for why they continue to vote for their tribe as that tribe descends further and further into madness.
Meanwhile their leaders know that if they ever actually did succeed in getting rid of legal abortion at the federal level it would be a political disaster… for them.
The thing is my Mom is (I think) ok with 1st trimester. She’s more or less said she’d be willing to compromise on that. But then I pointed out to her that it would be just like guns and Rs would still run on “Dems are going to start murdering 9-month old babies again!” basically forever. To which she kind of nodded that yeah that sounds right.
She just buys all the propaganda that babies feel pain and look like little humans at 3 months or w/e. And she believes all the propaganda that Democrats torture little babies to death just minutes from being born.
Yea, this is the giveaway that the abortion argument only works on zeroeth level thinkers. If you truly believed that abortion was murder, you would be fighting for every possible incentive to keep those mothers from making that decision: things like a higher minimum wage, universal healthcare, and student debt forgiveness.
Instead it’s all punitive, because they view the women making these decisions as subhuman. There’s surely a “welfare queen” aspect to this, as well–these comfortable white suburbanites view abortion-havers as young, poor, and probably disproportionately black–adding to the justification in their eyes to treat these people punitively rather than help them.
I know this has nothing to do with impeachment but I wanted to highlight your point because it’s a good one that I feel like gets lost. Abortion voters don’t actually care about women or their babies, they just pretend to–so FUCK pandering to them and anyone like them.
Exhibit 350136942 why Reps are so much better at messaging. They decide on a talking point and repeat it ad nauseam until it is accepted as gospel by their voters and the uninformed.