Yeah, just to make clear the Bernie texting script doesn’t really allow you to go off like an internet forum post. They claim that supervisors read them all, and while I doubt that’s true, I’m sure they are doing some keyword searches since it wouldn’t be hard for rogue actors to infiltrate the team.
Someone could go off script but it wouldn’t last long. I’ve been called the n-word and had a few people go nuts, but you just don’t respond. I certainly am not telling people to break out the guillotine even though I’d like to do so.
The GOP is way more feckless and inept than the Dems. They got nothing done despite having a majority and the president with a relatively unified caucus in 2016. They used all that time to do notoriously stupid stuff like circling the wagons around Trump whenever he did anything wrong. They may have ultimately won on health care, but they won just as much on SALT and trying to give oversight back to the Dems.
Two:
All but 2 ‘Democrats’ (one is basically Trump, and one switched to the GOP after) voted for at least one Article of Impeachment in the House (a third voted to impeach on Article I only for cover). Every single Democrat voted to convict on both Articles of Impeachment in the Senate. That’s not feckless or inept, and I guarantee you that was one of, if not the most significant votes of their careers. That’s unified in the Senate toward protecting the Constitution. I always knew Doug Jones would vote to convict because he was a prosecutor. I thought Manchin might convict on one. I was legit worried Sinema would acquit, after I heard she gave standing-o after standing-o at the SOTU.
The House put on a slam dunk case in the Senate (without witnesses or documents that would have proved how great the abuse of power really was), to a bunch of Senators who stuck their fingers in their ears throughout. In my video I made, I counted I think 16 or 17 GOP senators who tacitly or explicitly admit Trump did what they accused him of (almost all the rest don’t talk about any facts at all). Based on comments of a few others, if they actually ‘felt’ it was an impeachable offense there was almost enough or enough to get to 67, and possibly to right around 70 based on them admitting he did it. They just completely minimized what he did, because basically if you can’t remove a president on what Trump did, you can’t remove a president for anything. Their vote was specifically designed to kill impeachment as a Constitutional remedy, even though Trump’s lawyers argued in court during the Impeachment Trial that impeachment is the only remedy Congress has. At the same time, they were arguing in the Senate that the House didn’t use the courts, and arguing in the courts that the House had no jurisdiction to go to court. I can’t overstate how ludicrous all this is.
That makes the president above the law and an ‘elected’ King. They just didn’t care that he did it. And they realllly wanted to cede oversight to King Donald, I mean they really really wanted to just to own the libs. Susan Collins literally said she thought he learned his lesson after the impeachment. That’s unreal.
Focus some of that awesome Johnny anger and marketing skill at the GOP, it has to be decidedly more fun, and they’re the real monsters we need to deal with if we ever want to move the country forward into whatever you’re hoping it will be.
I’d like to kind of get back on what I was hoping this topic would be. I’m much less interested in elections (we are effed here after this acquittal and can only hope for a turn out miracle) and the distant future than I am about the strategies related to the impeachment, and what impeachment acquittal means to the future of this country (this has been discussed a bit).
There were a lot of things that happened in the run up to the trial that can be discussed, and I have lots of thoughts about that if anyone wants to discuss things like whether Pelosi should have withheld the articles, what I thought about the charges, whether there should be endless impeachment investigations of Trump, how Americans responded, the quality of the trial, etc. A lot of this stuff that’s been discussed is relevant, but it’s again taking the eye off the ball of what happened when there are a lot of other places to discuss this on here.
Most people are results-oriented rather than process-oriented. Republicans picked their preferred outcome, then did whatever it took to bring that about. They’ll vote the other way in the future if impeachment is the path to their goals, without caring about appearing hypocritical.
You’re not going to move Americans by arguing about the Constitution. It doesn’t matter. Most people just assume that what they want is constitutional. It doesn’t even matter if the Supreme Court disagrees.
You sway people by telling them why their life sucks and why Republicans are responsible for it. For me, that means blaming banks and corporations and insurance companies and embracing the rhetoric of class warfare.
What is important is viewing them as the “real monsters”. Not human. Monsters. You can compromise with humans. You don’t compromise with monsters. The centrists and moderates who still talk about bipartisanship are very much a problem, because they keep letting the monsters in. So, how do we convince them that we need more polarization, not less? How do we sway these fools who still seem to think that we can have peace in our time? Give them a hard choice and dare them to choose wrong.
Those aren’t eDems, they’re something else. Don’t be fooled by that thinking. The people you’re theoretically talking about are the ones losing power in the Democratic Party. Remember, this site thinks Pelosi is a radical centrist, which is patently untrue. She’s a big liberal, but she’s nowhere near as left as most of the people in the race.
Her focus is on keeping power, so she is the eDem (literally the established Democrat in power). So when I’m talking about ‘good’ eDems, I mean the Pelosi wing of the party which is very very large right now. The Tandens are not relevant in this party anymore (those types are prepping their own split from the Democratic Party with the never Trumpers as allies after 2020 for sure), and I’m still pretty damn confident almost all of them get that you vote for whoever the eff is up in this election. They’re trying to stop Bernie in the usual way of primary season, but once he’s got his momentum that will be that and I firmly believe they’ll get behind him. If not, they want to burn the whole country down. That’s like the opposite of how these people feel, as they’re the ones who think they’re saving it.
Didn’t read the thread for obvious reasons but finally some content on this site again! How did we live without the lectures and incredible analysis the 40,000 words this thread already contains from one of America’s top political pundits!
Also 25 posts of 60 so far in this thread and zero likes on 23 of them. Never change man you are doing the lord’s work!
I tend to agree with this, but if the GOP takes the WH, and increases holdings in the House in 2020 we will both have to admit we’re wrong.
Caveat: I believe the voters in 2020 will come home to the Democrats only if Bernie wins the nom. If Bernie wins the nom and Trump wins + Congress goes further right WAAF fr.
He won ~20% of the country in 2016. I think a smaller percentage would support him now, and a substantial portion of that support mostly likes him because of the tax cuts and economy doing well (in a narrow sense and not to most of them, but in their perception) and nothing terrible happening to them (white people).
I think maybe 15% of the country is full-on deplorable. Certainly not anywhere near 40-50%.
Zero rank and file “resist” eDems will vote for Trump. A small subset of rich corporate types might but that’s still a tiny % of even eDems. Most of the rich eDems revile Trump and are smart enough to realize (even as they claim the opposite to get a more palatable moderate at the top of the ticket) that Bernie’s proposals won’t dramatically affect their lives.
