So can the Senate get the articles of impeachment and call for an immediate vote? I think the Republican strategy is simple to discredit the whole process rather than make any kind of legal argument.
They can. They need 51 votes (Pence cannot vote.) There’s some noise that there may be enough GOP Senators balking at that.
Menzo
5173
I believe that’s what will happen. This talk of GOP senators who have found their moral compass is like the talk every election about Texas turning blue: wishful thinking.
Right after the articles of impeachment are read, or whatever the first step is in the trial, a motion to dismiss will be made and it will get 51 votes. Total time of the trial will be less than 30 minutes and Trump will claim he’s been acquitted.
This would probably be the second-best realistic outcome for Dems (with the best outcome being a trial where they actually get to call major witnesses and present documents they didn’t have access to). An out-of-hand dismissal would be very easy to point to as just pure Republican corruption, especially after McConnell’s statement about being in lockstep with the White House.
What Trump and the GOP want is to have an actual trial where they prevent the real witnesses from having much time and then ensure that the Biden hoax is detailed and repeated again and again. Then, after they’ve done all that, they vote to acquit, claim that the witnesses weren’t convincing and that there was a real national security concern over Biden’s actions.
I’m a pessimist when it comes to politics. It’s probably just me being a negative Nancy, but I feel like we’ve passed some line where impeachment no longer means shit to the average voter if removal isn’t the follow-up.
Censure without punishment? Who cares then? In fact, since the impeached person is still there doing whatever job the people voted him in to do means the impeachment was just a political sour grapes ploy? See how the Democrats twist things?
antlers
5176
The longer we can keep Trump impeached but not acquitted the better. Nancy should talk about how they need to work with the Supreme Court to determine the schedule, since Chief Justice Roberts will be presiding. If she can somehow manage to have McConnell’s shenanigans irk Roberts, all the better.
KevinC
5177
I do feel like we have a major problem here, because we’ve learned that if a political party doesn’t have 67 seats in the Senate then a president can act with impunity.
This is a pretty clear-cut case of abuse of power, and it was an abuse of power with the intent to corrupt our elections. If anything struck at the core of what America is supposed to be, you’d think it was that. But the GOP isn’t budging, not a single member broke ranks. Not one. They have truly embraced authoritarianism and I fear our days of a Republic are numbered.
In the short-term, the GOP is getting hammered. But they control the Presidency and the Senate and they’re going to publicly get away with corrupting our elections. I don’t feel like pushing that envelope a little further is going to change anyone’s mind. I think getting away with the Russian collusion emboldened Trump on Ukraine. When he gets away with this, what is his next step?
I’m not saying it will happen with Trump, but unless we course-correct we’re on a similar path as Turkey’s democracy (or pick your former democracy here, there’s multiple to choose from).
Right, but doesn’t that argue in favor of just hanging onto the articles until the GOP works out some way to have a fair trial?
Filing deadline in CO and Maine is mid-march…
Copy/paste post from a different forum (and poster, this isn’t mine. And personally I never realized acting ethically is contingent on a reward.)
I’m a bit surprised at the “it was never going to get us everything we wanted so it’s doomed to failure and we should never bother trying anything” attitudes here. Yeah, the GOP is corrupt as fuck and the American populace is beaten down by a combination of propaganda and disenfranchisement, so facts and reasoned arguments were never going to single-handedly carry the day and result in Trump getting escorted out of the White House in handcuffs. But if you’re lamenting this state of affairs, ask yourself what the alternative was given the hand that we were dealt. Lie down and just complain passively about Trump for the remainder of his term and the entirety of his very possible second one?
Personally I believe strongly that Democrats actually doing what their oaths required of them has real value. Not in the realpolitik sense where we immediately get every advantageous result that we could hope for, but FFS, can you imagine how bad the liberal malaise would get if they hadn’t pursued impeachment? The hearings in the House and the testimonies of witnesses like Fiona Hill, Ambassador Yovanovitch, Ambassador Taylor, and Col. Vindeman were crucial, that information had to see the light of day even if it didn’t change the eventual result in the Senate trial. We were never going to shift GOP Senators like McConnell or Graham or move the needle with die-hard conservative voters, but so what? Democratic members of Congress had a responsibility to the country and the Constitution, and they delivered on that to the best of their ability given the structural and institutional dysfunction in our government and the utter corruption of one of our two major parties. Yes, it would have been great if this story had a completely happy ending and we all got to see justice done before the credits rolled, but in the absence of a storybook wrap-up, I’ll take people will do their duty and fight at every step regardless of the lack of immediate benefit.
This is exactly what they are angling for. You don’t need to look any further than the House hearings and the vote yesterday to see the GOP strategy is to baffle everyone with bullshit, create as many sound bites and hot takes as possible to confuse the situation, and hammer home the “Biden’s are corrupt!” talking point until it becomes the “But Her Emails” of the 2020 election. It’s their only real path to election victory in 2020.
JoshL
5181
Unfortunately the only witnesses the Senate will call to testify will be Joe and Hunter Biden. Oh, and the whistleblower.
Isn’t Congress the prosecution, though? So - they’ll get to call their own witnesses as well, and it’s up to Roberts to decide which witnesses are heard, I assume (unless they can somehow overrule him).
Is this thread broken now for anyone else? It’s no longer showing up as having new posts to view.
On top of this with impeachment concluded, do the legal arguments about impeachment proceedings being in progress to get documents no longer work?
Banzai
5185
Im wondering if the best thing is to hold onto the articles of impeachment until after the election and let the american people decide whether trump is guilty or not. Just like the GOP did with merrick garland.
Might be the spite clouding my judgment though.
rowe33
5186
It seems to be working for me at least. I always view messages by going to ‘Latest’ if that makes a difference.
Menzo
5187
The House is the prosecutor, Trump’s lawyers are the defense, and the Senate is the jury. But the Senate decides the rules for the trial so I guess they could decide who will be called as a witness and/or limit who the House could call.
This is something they can’t actually accomplish. And what McConnell wants is very different than what Trump wants. He won’t get 51 votes to turn the impeachment trial into a Biden show trial and he knows it. The only way they get to call Biden / Burisma witnesses is if the House managers also get to call witnesses and make their own case with equal time. And that means the House managers will call Mulvaney and Pompeo and Bolton and Giuliani and force Roberts to rule on enforcing the subpoenas.
It will either be a no witnesses trial — House presentation of materials and arguments followed by defense presentation etc followed by a vote to acquit — or it will be a trial in which the Dems get to subpoena people. McConnell will want the former.
KevinC
5189
And we have the jury coordinating with the defense before the trial starts to figure out the best way to get an acquittal. Pretty awesome system we have here.
