he’s just another clington waste of taxpayer dollars. degenerate lefty scum who wastes everything all for nothing

Just to be precise, i represent him as a private citizen

You're confusing things here. Instead of making an argument grounded in the best way to carry out a Constitutional duty, you're arguing from authority. You're saying "Mitch can rig the trial legally, therefore it's justifiable". It's weak. It's like the people who argued after Trump released classified information to the Russians that "he had the authority to do it". It's technically correct, but it's not a valid excuse.

There's a subtle attitude I've noticed with people who aren't pro-Trump, but anti-Democrat. They tend to minimize Trump's abuses. It's not surprising, but kind of sad. I don't think you would consider it a joke if Obama or Hillary were being impeached for the same behavior.

Whether it's weak or an abuse of power or a malicious neglect of constitutional duties is up to the American public to decide. If the GOP holds the Senate in 2020, then the American voters will have retroactively endorsed Mitch's approach and given it democratic legitimization. On the other hand, if the American public agrees with your take, then the GOP will be punished at the ballot box. Isnt democracy wonderful?

This is exactly the wrong attitude. It's the notion that "if the mob is with us, everything is justified". No. Any reasonable person can look at the facts present and understand that this isn't some nonsensical issue. It's serious, and it deserves scrutiny. Not seeking testimony from key players like Parnas, Pompeo, Bolton, and Mulvaney is absurd.

You're piggy backing on Bogie's attitude. "If they can get away with it, it's justified". What an absurd way to look at government.

This post was edited by IceMage on Jan 18 2020 06:57pm

The Senate has the authority to make the best decision they can. That's what they're doing.

Mitch is doing something you don't like, so you want him to follow an arbitrary definition of "fairness" rather than trust tried and true constitutional processes.

We don't live in a country ruled by courts or ruled by bureaucratic officials.

Huh?

The Senate can do a multitude of things. The criticism from some Republicans earlier was that we don't have all the facts. So there's good reason to seek further testimony from key witnesses. I don't know why Republicans would oppose doing that unless they presumed that more testimony would lead to more incriminating evidence.

Impeachment has only happened a few times, so there's no permanent rules. I don't know what tried and true constitutional processes you're referring to.

I don't know why seeking testimony from key players is suddenly a biased position. It's just common sense. And hey, all the Trump supporters say that this thing is helping him politically, so you should support it on those grounds alone.

Note how I wasnt talking about the behavior by Trump or the Senate being morally or rationally justified, I was talking about voters endorsing it and giving it democratic legitimization. That's not a contradiction, in a democracy, voters can support shitty actions.



Oooooor they think they have enough facts from the proceedings in the House to assess what happened in Ukraine. The disagreement between Democrats and Republicans, at least according to my own personal perception, is less about the things that happened, it's about how to judge them. Democrats think what Trump did was bad enough to warrant removal from office over it. Republicans think that what he did was less than ideal, but doesnt nearly rise to the level of being worthy of removing a sitting president from office. I dont see how further testimony could change the basic facts which we already know in a way that would change this judgement.

Moreover, note that these facts which the Democrats laid out during the process in the House didnt move public opinion all too much either. If an overwhelming majority of independents had been swayed and would now support Trump's removal from office while only the registered Republicans stick with him, that would be an entirely different story. But that's precisely what did NOT happen.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jan 18 2020 07:33pm

The criticism from Republicans is that the impeachment trial was a rushed, partisan sham trial with a predetermined outcome.

The Senate is tasked with deciding the merits of the case, that is the process here. They don't need to act like court judges, or we'd have court judges responsible for making this decision.

The ability to call witnesses helps frame the narrative and control debate. Look at Kavanaugh, we know now that he is almost certainly innocent of everything he was accused of, but the ability to control debate was central to the Democratic strategy.

This post was edited by bogie160 on Jan 19 2020 10:14am