Quote (Goomshill @ Mar 30 2023 06:01pm)
It could work for the Democrats, it could work for Republicans, it could work for Trump or against him.
One thing is for certain, it works against American democracy. Its a total reversal of the Nixon-Gore saga, with the establishment rallying to invent a crime to fracture the nation, instead of magnanimously pardoning a real crime to heal a nation.
Few stories in recent American history have actually had the potential to destroy our republic. I don't think even 9/11 did, heck it brought the country together for better or worse (some of both, clearly). But this is the kind of brinksmanship and plunging over the cliff that could end all legitimacy to our democracy, and I don't think that's some hysterical overreaction. There's always room to back off, for cooler heads to prevail, for restoring sanity. But if we keep pushing towards the inevitable outcome of weaponizing the levers of government to disenfranchise half the country, I don't think the United States of America will still exist in 50 years from now. We'll balkanize like the USSR did, as China becomes the undisputed world power. Its everything the liberals pretended to care about and shrieked over during January 6th, but actually coming to fruition by their own hands.
Its a simple enough question of what comes next. Looking a few steps ahead in the chess match. Do the small d prosecutors try to drag it out through the elections, or just try to get a trial and 'lock him up on Trumped up charges', throw 34 charges at the wall and try to argue he should spend a century in prison. I mean, prosecutorial overreach could be a new olympic sport. Either way, if Trump remains the frontrunner for the elections and particularly if he still pursues the presidency in the stead of ron desantis, we're looking at an election nobody in the world will consider legitimate. Our democracy will be as defunct as Ukraine's at that point.
or do the democrats just try to back down and what, drop the charges? get it dismissed by a sane judge? offer him a misdemeanor plea deal and try to see if he'd bite for no penalty just so they could claim he's a convicted criminal? besides the question of whether he'd still fight that anyway
I wanted to say in previous threads on the subject that if the feds took this ridiculous line in the cohen case, Biden could have offered to emulate Ford and blank pardon Trump as a means to claim Trump is a criminal without needing a trial and still appear magnanimous, never mind that no real crime exists. That was always one potential play we had to be at least entertain as possible, absurdist as it is (and the backlash Biden would face from his most rabid base, and the chance that such a cynical gambit could backfire by being too transparent anyway). But that's not applicable to state charges here, and Hochul has fuck all political aspirations to care about here.
Raiding Trump's home, trying to arrest him on bogus charges, throwing Beria-esque legal fictions at him in the most over the top way possible- its every bit the banana republic antics that Trump denounces it as. The question is whether we're going to see this to the bitter end and fracture our democracy in the process. The way back to civility and sanity is so simple, just stop using government to persecute your political rivals. Just stop, get help. But as long as the democrats in power choose to drive the dagger deeper, the wound can't heal.
Yet another goom essay ranting about beria