Mitt Romney could vote to remove Donald Trump from office, probably because Obama.

you seem to be focused on the spearhead of the impeachment, as in what single issue could be necessitating this. neither the Democratic congresspeople nor their voters are using this logic. they're using a preponderance of abuses approach, likely under the lens of besmirching the office.

while both Trump and Obama seem to have leveraged foreign policy for political means, one is clearly less presidential than the other. and at this point no one could argue that the scandals of Trump are equivalent to Obamas. Obama had heavy hitters, fast and furious, the hot mic, etc. Trump has daily struggles and daily foot-in-mouth situations. He's also clearly irked foreign relations with close allies, something Obama didn't do at all (to my memory) and in any case no where near the same scale.

and in reality we have a quagmire. dems impeaching knowing removal wont happen. dems raising issues they know aren't a winning strategy in a real court. gop obstructing knowing that removal wont happen, trump included. this is a game of political chicken where both sides are declining to show their hand while both pretending they're holding 5 aces. all the dems have is a collection of offenses no where near worth impeaching over on their own, with a massive number of tiny and daily issues caused by Trump himself and on the record.

So basically a gish gallop? The problem with that is it gives Trump the messaging each time he knocks down one argument. He can go scream "no collusion!" and "no quid pro quo! (for foreign aid!)" and they lose control of the narrative. If all they accomplish is clouding the truth so much and making the accusation into such an incomprehensible mess that everyone defaults to their entrenched positions in this hyperpartisan lines, then the ball hasn't moved forward or backward an inch. If they could have seized on one winning argument and advanced behind it, they could at least inflict some political damage on Trump even if its nowhere near worth impeaching over. Instead, all we get is the political fallout of failed impeachment, and the conventional wisdom from political strategists is that it favors Trump heavily, with Pelosi only forced into it because a revolt from her progressives would be even worse.

It feels like here we are half a year since Mueller dropped his report and impeachment fever ran heavy, and we've sorted out all the facts of what Democrats are pursuing... and its left us right back with the same political calculation I could have told you about a half a year ago.

that is all true, but they've never been trying to get people from entrenched positions nor have they been trying to move the ball to removal. impeachment seems all but a sure thing now, removal seems all but impossible given the landscape of the senate. people have been deadlocked into their positions since 2016. the dems and gop both know this and are playing along.

but look at the democratic narrative, it includes constant signalling such as "look at the pile of abuses this president has had since taking office". this is clear signalling they're using the preponderance of abuses and the things like quid pro quo are just their best case to explain why now is the time they choose for impeachment. rather than the sole reason for impeachment. they want to bring up border walls, kids in cages, muslim bans, etc. all of it. they want it all on the table because they're gambling that it will hurt trump in 2020. not a bad play when your two options are impeachment and twitter sniping. they really dont have any recourse inbetween.

I dont think this whole process will benefit Trump. There's not enough meat to the story to justify impeachment, but there is enough shadiness and questionable behavior on his part that dragging it all out in public will hurt rather than help his standing. I dont think it will move the needle much, or pierce the partisan quagmire, but it might have a marginal effect on some swing voters. Furthermore, the Dems might get indirect wins out of this if Trump cracks under the pressure and commits blunders that he wouldnt have made in a calm environment.

Also, let's not forget that distracting from the freakshow of their own primaries is a win for Democrats in its own right.

i agree if the dems play it right. if they waste 100 hours in senate bringing up every tiny thing people may get tired of it. its a bit of a fine line, imo, whether this will hurt or help trump's reelection. i tend to think he'll win in either case but we'll see how the map reacts to impeachment from an electoral view.

There's an argument for Trump cracking under pressure, but the reports of his demise have been oft exaggerated. I don't think they need impeachment for that, they could just tweet cat memes at him on twitter and hope with about the same odds. The best chinks into Trump's armor so far have come from a videotape of him with Billy Bush from years ago and his half-baked personal lawyer.

The sane political strategists have been consistently saying since the start of this that Pelosi wants to get the messaging off Trump's impeachment and onto the issues because Democrats can win on a message of healthcare or lose on a message of FUCK DRUMF, which was the lesson from 2018 when their moderates made pickups by ignoring Trump and campaigning on healthcare. And the more they focus on impeachment, the more it hurts those moderates both in eating up messaging and forcing them into an untenable position on Trump. Now, there is an argument that if Pelosi drags out impeachment just long enough, it could cover for the primary freakshow and then wrap up in time to switch to healthcare messaging. But that's a delicate operation and I'm not sure how it works out if democrats are opening up enough loose threads that the media could harp on about them for the whole coming year. If they vote to impeach Trump over Ukraine, it goes to the senate and gets shot down, are they just going to stop talking about all the 'quid pro quo' and other narratives they opened up over Trump's dealings and say he gets away with it? Is the media going to choose not to keep investigating every shoe to drop and every loose end in that story?

If there's something the past year has shown, its that the media isn't fully cooperative with Nancy Pelosi and has no qualms about using their anti-Trump hate boner to charge full steam ahead even when its counterproductive to the DNC's political strategy. We wouldn't be in this impeachment mess if she could wrangle the progressives in her party and the media in the first place.

This post was edited by Goomshill on Oct 29 2019 11:33am

one might even posit that the media isn't controlled by the DNC and they have so often been in line with each other because saying fuck trump was profitable for the media and expected of the dems. the media will happily push the dems into impeachment even if they know with 100% accuracy Trump wont be removed and impeachment guarantees him a win in 2020. the last thing the media wants is Trump to lose in 2020.

If you want to look really deep into it, consider Facebook's decision to not (at least openly) censor the news feed and curate liberal content and exclude sources like Breitbart, a bold enough move I got to listen to Joshua Johnson on 1A screech about how free speech is evil earlier today. Facebook has always been the epitome of ruthless amoral capitalism in the tech world, Zuckerberg would sell his own mother into slavery for the right price. So the fact he's at least superficially acquiescing to the Republican's demands in the face of a Democratic hate machine is notable. If the democrats won in 2020 and took over the presidency/congress, they'd seek retribution and send federal regulators in to sodomize him to death on a world stage like they did with Gaddafi, I'd hope in just the figurative sense. You can reason that facebook has already made the bet that Trump will win and are seeking to inoculate themselves from political fallout.

imo most of facebook's actions can be seen as pure capitalism for sure. dont censor anyone, reap ad money all the while, maintain later that you didn't do anything unfairly because you didn't do anything. they'll skim the top 1% of stories from the top and leave the tank be.

but yes i agree they may have acted differently if it looked like Trump would lose.