Impeach Trump?
“Impeach Trump” sounds great at the House level, but what happens in the Senate?
Democrats set the precedent of party line votes with Clinton, and he was dead-to-rights on perjury… but they let him skate for purely partisan political reasons
Now the Republicans are coming back around with same party line. The Democrats aren’t wrong to argue that the stakes are infinitely higher this time than they were with Clinton, as we’re talking about international treaties, upending the intelligence community, and shredding judicial independence in Trump’s vain pursuits of assauging his own ego, vs Clinton lying about blowjobs in the Oval Office.
Popular left-wing opinion is to “make the Republicans own it” by forcing them to vote to “acquit” Trump in a Senate trial, as though taking that stand will hurt them in 2020 elections. But let’s play this out.
Name the Republican Senators that will be hurt in 2020 by voting not guilty on Trump, regardless of the evidence.
Maybe Gardner (CO) or Tillis (NC). Maybe.
But is giving Trump a pass for his criminal behavior going to hurt any of the following?
McConnell, Inhofe, Ernst, Cassidy, Daines, Hyde-Smith, Risch, Sullivan, Sasse, Cotton, Graham, Cornyn, Capito, or Enzi?
Collins is probably going to lose no matter what, and flip that seat blue, that’s almost guaranteed to be offset by Jones losing (unless the‘Bama GOP is dumb enough to run Moore again, and let’s not put it past them).
So you’re now going after any of the following to try and pin Trump to the Senator:
Roberts (KS-retiring)
Alexander (TN-retiring)
Rounds
Perdue
McSally
plus Gardner & Tillis (above)
You’re not going to flip Roberts’ seat
You *might* flip Alexander’s
Meanwhile, which Dem seats might be lost by voting to convict Trump?
Jones — prob lost no matter what
Peters
Warner
Udall (retiring)
On the surface, an impeachment trial will be about Trump’s behavior, and it should be. It’s been reprehensible, and overtly criminal to a degree we’ve never seen in office.
In reality, that impeachment trial is about 2020 & drawing battle lines in what will be the dominant issue at the polls:
Whether/not the GOP is willing to back a career criminal as the President ahead of their loyalty to the United States. So far, it’s not looking good for US
Anyone who fails to factor that into their impeachment calculations is blindly naive to what’s going to happen once those impeachment votes start to go thru.
Trump is NOT going to resign like Nixon did.
Is it worth holding a Senate trial if it gives him ammo to continue to play the victim?
But more than that, is it worth giving his supporters the ammo to continue playing the victims-by-proxy wherein he’s the embodiment of the persecution that they feel?
You can’t win a war of ideas with someone that refuse to engage with you on an ‘idea’ level because they are too busy playing their martyr cards and that’s the only idea that they’ll accept.
You don’t stand a chance of trying to out-martyr them, because they are disingenuously changing the rules as the game goes along.
So do you feed that complex and given them the ammo they need to boost their turnout? Or do you focus on trying to do the right things for people (health care, minimum wage, etc) and then laying the blame at Trump’s feet when he blocks it all?
How the Dems answer those questions will decide 2020.
This was another thread I migrated over from Twitter and expanded. Probably going to be a bunch of these.
If you enjoyed this, please clap & let others know, so they get a chance to see it, too, since that doesn’t seem to happen nearly enough. And please feel free to share your feedback — Lord knows I need whatever I can get… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
