It is a big problem. Congressional approval levels have been so close to zero for so long, for both sides, that even the worst president of all time is a life raft those in the same party will do anything to climb aboard.
It is hard to get the disinterested / ignorant to realize “We know they all suck but this is once in twenty life time emergency.”
I think most members of congress suck. I just don’t know how you get past that. Especially with the President always been substantially more popular than congress as a whole. It is not a perception problem for congress though, they made their bed and deserve all the disdain and mistrust. The perception issue is with trump when people think he is bad but still much better than congress.
I don’t think Bill Burr and people like him being aware of impeachment is anywhere near the most important aspect of all this.
It’s keeping Trump on the run, and seems to be emboldening/bringing people out of the woodwork to rat on this corrupt administration. Both very good things.
Anyone paying attention though already knows he is a giant criminal POS. Most of the rest either have decided they don’t care or they are ok with it. Which is why the polling for impeachment isn’t great. And we all agree that he isn’t getting removed.
So what exactly is the hope with all this? Someone explain where we go with this strategy that is positive?
If the shoe was on the other foot, Kevin McCarthy would have given a prime time address to the nation to summarize it all in 5 minutes or less with a few video clips of testimony, and the GOP would be running an absurd amount of impeachment ads on TV and radio.
But, hey, Schiff slammed that gavel down like a boss and all the CSPAN viewers probably got chills. Close enough!
Dems should have had a prime time address delivered by a charismatic member of Congress, and demanded that the networks air it live. They should be running millions of dollars of ads this weekend during football games.
They should be pounding a simple narrative: The mob boss president illegally tried to bribe Ukraine with YOUR money to investigate Biden and interfere in an election, then tried to cover it up. Nobody is above the law. This is worse than Nixon. The end.
Mob boss Trump, illegally bribe, cover up, Nixon. Mob boss Trump Nixon illegal bribe cover up. Trump Nixon mob boss illegal bribe cover up. Cover up illegal bribe mob boss Trump Nixon.
Spew those words out over and over and over. That’s how messaging works.
The point being made, though, are Burr fits a category of people who probably need to be appealed to and impeachment is likely not reaching any of the groups that would be most beneficial.
I spent months and months railing on people too dumb to have chosen to vote for neither trump or Hillary so I will not go there again.
I think that many of us agree that there are 20%-25% of people / voters who are 100% lost cause and can get bent: I don’t think Burr is in that group. There is a middle group defined by apathy and ingnorance that can still potentially be reached.
The facts are trump has been horrific and any thinking person who absorbed that reality would find it impossible to vote for him. But it is easiest for most of those people to say “same ole same ole” and “both sides” and just move on.
FUCK APPEALING TO ANYONE WHO THOUGHT A NON-VOTE WAS AN ACCEPTABLE ANSWER TO A RACIST DEMAGOGUE
You will never reach someone like that and it’s an absolute fool’s errand to try.
There is a huge demographic shift happening in this country and a younger generation that is by necessity becoming more politically active than their cohorts in the past ever did. Give them something to vote for other than the status quo.
We need to focus on clawing back what’s been lost, not maintaining the center until the next monstrosity comes along and drags the country further right.
Democrats want Trump to win deep down inside. Nothing he has done has directly affected their net worth or those of their family and friends. If anything, they’ve benefitted from his generous tax breaks.
Impeachment is nothing more than a show and a boring one at that. It has an ending we can see from a mile away.
Let’s be real. Both sides do suck. If the Ds spent half the time in the lab trying to figure out how to productize and package this as they do trying to fuck healthcare for all then they would have your 30 second tv spot. There is about 20% of the party that is objectively ‘good.’ There is about another 25% that is ‘good’ but plays political calculus to get elected and constantly plays this lessor of two evils bullshit.
This isn’t true at all. If it were, his ratings would be 80%. I don’t know a single person whom has noticed a tax break and is thankful for them. My brother had one 6 figure job and bought a house while Obama was POTUS. His wife was a stay at home mom. Since Trump’s been POTUS, he’s been laid off 3x, taken multiple pay cuts, had his house foreclosed, and now his wife works full time to help with the bills.
This idea that Dems secretly want Trump to be POTUS is so idiotic to begin with.
Come on man the ACA is nothing compared to what Obama really sold voters on in 2008 regarding his vision for the country. It was also a disastrous half measure that used all his political capital. My personal take would be that going all in for ACA and then spending 6 years as a relatively impotent president is one of the greatest political blunders of our time.
Don’t get me wrong ACA is better than what we had before but if you think there are very many people who think Obama fulfilled even a hint of what made him popular with this I think you are wrong.
I also want to say that I think most of us on the board want a similar future for this country and the world. But these discussions are very important because the real question is how do we get there. It is clear to me no one, including us, has figured out how we actually achieve any of these things in the USA. But I think it is very obvious the status quo in the Dem party is not how you do it. Maybe that is pessimistic, maybe it is realistic, I don’t really know.
The hope? It’s to keep exposing more criminal conduct, and it’s working. Who cares what impeachment is polling at? Like you love to remind everyone, he’s not getting convicted, period, so why do you care about what impeachment is polling at? The President is committing crimes and abusing his power, constantly. That is sufficient justification to keep the process going, it’s one of Congress’s responsibilities. We can campaign on progressive platforms and keep investigating his crimes at the same time. How hard is it to juxtapose the two? “Instead of fixing your healthcare like he promised, Trump was too busy tweeting promoting his son’s shitty book and bribing Ukrainians for dirt on Joe Biden’s son.”
I get this. But if you impeach him on Ukraine and he isn’t convicted do you think they are going to start another impeachment inquiry? I don’t and I think it will wear thin with a segment of the public who currently supports it if they do. Nancy barely had the stones for this inquiry.
So that’s why polling matters. Because the hearings thus far have made impeachment less popular not more. And right now most of the polls have it slightly more popular than not. How do you think it will poll on round 2 when this one is a failure? If the goal is to score political points for 2020 you don’t do it by impeaching him 3-4 times and losing in the Senate each time. You maybe do it by investigating him on everything while you still have the political capital to do so. It isn’t clear to me the Dems have the political guts to use every tool at their disposal to put pressure on Trump.
They don’t have the political guts for the same reason you just illustrated, they are too damn worried about polling data than doing their fucking jobs and getting mad over this shit.
Generations from now the ACA will be seen like SS, Medicare, etc. Historically, it will be seen as one of the most important legislation passed by a US president.
Laws may occur overnight, but societal change takes decades.
Maybe you are right. My hope would be that it is completely forgotten because we have moved on from it to actual socialized medicine of one variety or another.
I guess I don’t get your point then. If you are saying that we are doing this to expose criminality and score political points isn’t kind of the only measure we have of that polling?
To be clear I would rank the options:
Investigate/Impeach on everything>>>>>>>>>>>>>Investigate/Impeach on Ukraine only>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>do nothing.
I really wish some of you would take your own advice and keep pounding the message home. We don’t have a Fox News to AstroTurf these points. We have to make them to move our politicians to action. It may not work, sure, but Pelosi and Schmidt or whoever else sure as hell aren’t going to keep doing the right thing if all their constituents are all shrug Trump’s not going to get removed* that’s just the way it is, blah blah. The President is a criminal, he constantly abuses his power to enrich himself and his autocrat buddies at the expense of the American people.
