The entire US govt gets away and has gotten away with shit loads for a very long time. Trumpito is a loud twit, but the rot hardly stops there and I can't alone be past fed up with this make-the-bad-man-go-away narrative fluff. The drones that will mayber impooch him now will not be and are not being chastened into actually being decent.

Bernie absolutely upsets the DNC more than Trump ever has.

Kow wrote:

It'll just bolster his base and have no other effect. The only way to get rid of Trump is for the dems to get all their weight behind a good candidate that people actually like, and beat him in the election by an indisputable margin. Anything else is just waffle.

His base is around 35-40% of the population, it’s not enough to win him an election. If it helps turn independents off him, then that will help with beating him by an indisputable margin. Plus, if they don’t do this now and then lose by a disputable margin, what happens then? Can they credibly pursue this in 2021?

The benefit of impeachment isn’t in removing Trump from office. For sure, that’d be a nice bonus if it were to happen, but it’s not the main point. The point is to put his corruption on display in front of America, splashed across the news every night, with evidence. The target here isn’t his base, it’s independent voters, it’s suburban voters, it’s those people who might be enough to push him over the top in 2020. It’s entirely the right thing to do.

If nothing else, it makes it much harder for Trump to try and abuse his power in order to aid his re-election. Remember, this all kicked off almost immediately after Trump believed himself to be off the hook from the Mueller report. Do you really think he would have stopped at this?

Brooks wrote:

The entire US govt gets away and has gotten away with shit loads for a very long time. Trumpito is a loud twit, but the rot hardly stops there and I can't alone be past fed up with this make-the-bad-man-go-away narrative fluff. The drones that will mayber impooch him now will not be and are not being chastened into actually being decent.

Kow wrote:

It'll just bolster his base and have no other effect. The only way to get rid of Trump is for the dems to get all their weight behind a good candidate that people actually like, and beat him in the election by an indisputable margin. Anything else is just waffle.

Yeah, I think this is all likely true. Trying to take someone like this down on a legal technicality isn't going to change anything, unless you can prove he's a pedo or something. Same with Johnson in the UK - the legal ruling is an embarrassment but if he rides it out it could work in his favour.

The need was always and still is for credible, united opposition offering a believable alternative that would tangibly improve people's lives. People like Pelosi (or Swinson or Watson) are obstacles to that.

Brooks wrote:

The sorrier thing is that it took some scandal about fuckass Biden and his failson to get the opposition to force something like a hand here, like what range of Trumpian misbehaviour didn't make the grade so far.

Hey, leave Hunter out of this. All he ever wanted was to smoke crack in peace.

Yossarian wrote:

I don’t know why this is always presented as an either/or. Impeachment proceedings don’t prevent an effective opposition candidate running against Trump. Do both.

Because that's not what's happening. The politicians focusing on these Mueller reports, impeachment proceeedings etc. are trying to kick Trump out to resume business as usual, without actually having to present a proper alternative politics. If someone like Pelosi is doing this, it's not to help Sanders or even Warren advance their programmes for change. Just the opposite.

It looks desperate, yes. As JonB says, it might be more palatable if it was to support some real change, but it isn't. It's just sad political manoeuvring.

JonB wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

I don’t know why this is always presented as an either/or. Impeachment proceedings don’t prevent an effective opposition candidate running against Trump. Do both.

Because that's not what's happening. The politicians focusing on these Mueller reports, impeachment proceeedings etc. are trying to kick Trump out to resume business as usual, without actually having to present a proper alternative politics. If someone like Pelosi is doing this, it's not to help Sanders or even Warren advance their programmes for change. Just the opposite.

This may not be being done to help Sanders or Warren, but they are still presenting the type of progressive programme you are calling for, and impeachment proceedings aren’t stopping that, so it is happening, we are getting both.

If all they want to do is make room for a moderate reformist, they’d have been better off not shaking the apple cart and letting the moderate reformist frontrunner for the nomination, and the person who has been consistently beating Trump by the widest margin in head to head matchups, be coronated.

Biden will be awful in an election.

The fact that it's all about Biden's son making bank in the Ukrainian oil business isn't going to help. It might all be perfectly above board, but it's going to take some convincing. I actually wonder if it's some internal Democrat thing to get Biden to step aside.

I_R wrote:

The fact that it's all about Biden's son making bank in the Ukrainian oil business isn't going to help. It might all be perfectly above board, but it's going to take some convincing. I actually wonder if it's some internal Democrat thing to get Biden to step aside.

Trump drumming this up on the chance that Biden wins the nomination so he can run a campaign on beating "crooked Joe" in the same vein as the "crooked Hilary" strategy that worked so well last time. Fun watching the Democrat Party walk into exactly the same trap twice in a row.

Kazuo wrote:

I_R wrote:

The fact that it's all about Biden's son making bank in the Ukrainian oil business isn't going to help. It might all be perfectly above board, but it's going to take some convincing. I actually wonder if it's some internal Democrat thing to get Biden to step aside.

Trump drumming this up on the chance that Biden wins the nomination so he can run a campaign on beating "crooked Joe" in the same vein as the "crooked Hilary" strategy that worked so well last time. Fun watching the Democrat Party walk into exactly the same trap twice in a row.

It's not exactly a trap when you get your own foot caught in it, and then tell everyone about the trap.