The Presidency of Donald J. Trump, Episode VI: No Witnesses, One Defector, No Checks or Balances

The GOP has controlled the house for 9 out of the last 12 cycles and the Senate 7 out of the last 12. We’re at 10 consecutive years of the GOP dominating state legislatures. I have no idea what you’re talking about.

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What about all the obstruction/attempted obstruction from the Mueller report? Even that seems more serious than the Ukraine call. I’m just trying to figure out Dem strategy. Anyone who knows anything about Trump can not be the least bit surprised that he’d use tax dollar military funding as a pawn for his own personal gain. Seems like he commits 10 more serious impeachment offenses every day

I get this and worry more that people will buy into the GOP narrative that they’re just trying to overturn election results. I really hope I’m wrong, but think people would be a lot more concerned if they knew the extent our national security has been breached and continues to be breached every single day from Trump’s reckless use of unsecured telephone calls, to all the people like Kushner who had to lie like 100 times on his security clearance paperwork having security clearance

It will take years to undo the damage this president has done just to national security alone

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It won’t happen because the Democrats are terrible at messaging, but they might be agreeing to the USMCA for two (political) reasons:

  1. Trump keeps going on and on about the “do-nothing Dems.” This is a way to show people that the Democrats can work on impeachment and legislate at the same time. That they aren’t shirking their duties just to fuck with Trump.

  2. Supposedly there are good things in the USMCA for labor (supposedly) that the Dems specifically pushed for. They may want to use that as a talking point in the election cycle.

Again, it won’t work because Dems don’t yell as loudly or smash a single button repeatedly like the Republicans, but that’s what I can think of.

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The Dem strategy seems simple. The 2020 presidential election matters the most. It seems like Dems win if nothing changes, therefore, the Democratic establishment doesn’t want anything to change between now and then. Nominating Sanders or Warren changes the political calculus. Impeachment changes the political calculus. Doing anything bold changes the political calculus.

The Dem strategy is to go into a prevent defense while eating the clock on offense, up by a touchdown at the start of the fourth quarter. They are going with a risk-averse, low-variance strategy that greatly offends the poker player in me.

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I realized one tiny bright side to the impeachment vote is I can always refer to impeached President Donald Trump.

If this is not how he is referred to in every discussion, every political ad and in every quarter by democrats, I will be extraordinarily disappointed.

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I agree the timing on this is bad but I am not sure there is ever good timing for a Democratic Party who does not have the stomach for real obstruction.

Media still has zero idea how to deal with Barr. Still treating him like a normal AG. Pathetic.

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Well,

A. The Senate is rigged and doesn’t reflect popular opinion.

B. The full-on BENGHAZIIII FAKE NEWS version of the Republican Party isn’t twelve cycles old.

C. The Trumpy Hannity bullshit is terrible for their brand, and it gets worse the more unhinged they become. They know this. Look at how they got clobbered in 2018. They only won in 2016 because Dems ran the most unelectable candidate in the history of US politics.

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Also, the Dems have fundamentally failed to come up with an effective strategy to cut through Executive Branch stonewalling. As much as we all “know” that Trump is grifting from the Saudis or scamming the Secret Service by spending so much time at his golf courses, or intervened to get security clearances for Jared & Ivanka, you can’t actually prove those things without the types of documents and witnesses that the White House is withholding. I personally wish that the Dems were more aggressive in going after these things, but, at the same time, when literally every attempt to get the type of documents that were routinely produced by every other modern president becomes a SCOTUS case, it’s somewhat understandable that the Ds have struggled to adjust to the new normal.

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Pretty clear the Democratic Party and many of its members don’t have what it takes for this ongoing fight.

They rebound back to civility and working together at the first opportunity. It will be way to late for any of us, or the country, to wait for all the old democrats to move on.

The democrats are playing an American Football game wearing futbol gear.

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They’re going to approve usmca for no reason

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I do think the problem with fifty percent of the stuff Trump does is that all of congress is also guilty of, and thus has no room for traction.

Good thing Trump drained the swamp and converted it into a sewage treatment plant.

Its the strategy that loses football games, doesn’t seem to be optimal in the political context either.

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https://amp.axios.com/ted-yoho-florida-gop-retiring-0325d14c-a943-4acc-a668-79a51367425f.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic&utm_content=1100&__twitter_impression=true

I mean they’ve controlled the house in every post Obama election until 2018. 4/5.

Dems took the house back with a small-ish margin against a president who literally might destroy the country and was impeached within a year.

I just think it’s crazy to say the Hannity fake news etc stuff has hurt them. Seems like the opposite, electorally, and the larger harm to Overton windows and the framework of media where it’s no longer about what’s true, it’s about presenting what each side claims is true, is even worse.

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https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/1204459435936157696

:thinking:

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https://mobile.twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1204458281474961409

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It was, and Dems should have started impeachment proceedings right after the Muller report, but they absolutely fucked that up. Basically Dems always find a way to fuck up is my thesis.

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It’s like you’re copy/pasting me from 2008. Obama won 365-173 (compared to Trump 304-227), midterm landslide, Supreme Court upholds the ACA, what a referendum on Bush and the GOP, here we go… Then Trump. Then GOP gets the House and the Senate. We are in one hell of an uphill climb.

Time has given me a lot more hope and just as much cynicism.