The Democratic electoral impeachment mistake
If you read Daily Kos or Salon.com, you’ll read all about how the Republicans will be in trouble because the majority of the American public wants testimony at the trial.
Bullshit. They won’t be in trouble.
This is like saying that Trump will lose because the majority of voters won’t vote for him. The majority of voters didn’t vote for him in 2016, and yet where is he?
It doesn’t matter that the majority of Americans want testimony or even if the majority of Americans want Trump removed. What matters is where those Americans live. If the majority of Americans in Red states don’t want him removed and don’t want the Impeachment hearings conducted like a legitimate trial (which it sure as Hell is), there will be no consequences to the Senators from those states for violating their oaths of office and protecting their guy at the expense of the Constitution.
They’re getting away with a lot of crap already. Let’s go to the obvious and observe that they’re complaining that the President didn’t have a voice in the indictment process in the House. The House in Impeachment proceedings functions as a Grand Jury. Defense attorneys never have a role in Grand Jury proceedings. They don’t defend at the indictment phase, they defend at the trial phase. The President should not have had a voice in the House proceedings because that’s how American trials work and have worked for over two centuries. Have you seen the NYTimes say this? Have you seen the Washington Post say this? Hell, I’m not sure Rachel. Maddow has even said it. Democrats should be repeating that over and over, specifically comparing the House to a Grand Jury. They’re not. Why not? A lot of Congress is comprised of lawyers, who should know better.
One of these days I suppose I’ll get fed up and write a letter to the Post (because I’m at least a digital subscriber to the Post, which I’m not to the Times) and say that they ought to turn political coverage over to the Sports desk. Why? Two reasons:
- The Sports desk are better scorekeepers, which is really all the Political desk does these days.
-
Unlike the Political desk, everyone at the Sports desk holds the integrity of the game as their highest priority.
That’s not how political coverage, the “fourth estate,” works any more. They face a choice between impartiality and objectivity, which used to overlap a great deal and now hardly overlap at all. Being impartial rewards whichever party acts worse. The press has overwhelmingly opted for impartiality over objectivity – because the accusation of bias stings so badly, in spite of the fact that they tolerate it from Fox News just fine – and, in doing so, has betrayed American democracy to an insane extent.
I don’t see an end in sight. Money from businessmen will continue to back Trump, in some cases suicidally because they’re killing America’s customer base. We keep hoping someone will do something. Even the intelligence services and the Pentagon hope that someone will do something. We have reached the point where American democracy would have a better shot if we had a military coup for the simple reason that the Pentagon and intelligence services are now more serious about safeguarding democracy than the Republicans are.
01/24/2020 @ 1:06 am
“The facts supporting the allegations that Trump has abused the power of office and obstructed justice are indisputable and, for the most part, uncontested.
Because the Senate Republicans will not vote to convict Trump on the evidence to be presented in the Articles of Impeachment, it is incumbent on the House Democrats to ensure that Trump is convicted in the Court of Public Opinion.
It is in this regard that the role and responsibility of the media must come into sharp focus as it devolves upon the media to take the utmost care to get it right.
The media’s presentation of the case against Trump must be accurate, clear, concise, and convincing. Nothing less than this will do.”
01/24/2020 @ 10:09 am
“We have reached the point where American democracy would have a better shot if we had a military coup…”
So you’ve finally come around to what I’ve been saying for at least the last two years (i.e. “Burn the fucker DOWN!” / “Working with the “party” is NOT better than working for diametric change because working with the “party” gets you EXACTLY what you have right now!”)???
P.S. The LAST people I want to hold a coup is the military, btw. We don’t need more war mongers to be in charge, we need less!
01/24/2020 @ 10:36 am
No, I’m not talking about the Democratic Party at all. This is a Republican problem. No branch of the Democratic Party has so little regard for the Constitution or American democracy. If a Democratic President had done what Trump has done, Democratic Senators would vote for witnesses to testify and many if not most would vote to convict. One partisan difference is that Democrats have a great deal more respect for process. This would be true of everyone from AOC to Joe Biden.
I don’t think a Pentagon military coup would be like a Third World military coup because the brass of the American military view the Constitution as sacred, what they’re sworn to defend. I think we’d get a reset. At this point, I trust the Joint Chiefs to have more respect for the Constitution than the Republicans do. I think they have more of a sense of honor and much more of a sense of patriotism in a real sense. In many respects they have more American values. They’re certainly more egalitarian than Republicans are- they had a handle on racial bigotry way before the civilian population and they are not Islamophobic, even in the aftermath of 9/11. The military had way less of a problem having Colin Powell as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs than the civilian population had having Barack Obama as President. Unlike the Republicans, they view climate change as a matter of national security. I don’t think the military would attack abortion rights or contraception. They take far better care of the people at the bottom of their hierarchy than Republicans take care of people at the bottom of the civilian hierarchy. I have more faith in the American military than I do in the Republican Party. Far more.
01/24/2020 @ 12:50 pm
“I don’t think a Pentagon military coup would be like a Third World military coup because the brass of the American military view the Constitution as sacred, what they’re sworn to defend. I think we’d get a reset.”
Given Trump’s disdain for the Constitution and process, we may require the military to physically remove home from the Oval office in 2021…
01/24/2020 @ 12:55 pm
More likely someone like the Executive Protection Service, which the Secret Service is a branch of. Or, better yet, the FBI, which would just be great.