Now That Trump's President... (not any more!)

In the grand scheme of things, my question is why are the majority of Republicans still fiercely loyal to Trump, despite everything that's transpired? Have they turned off their brains and allowed him to take control?

I could go on, but rhetorical questions only accomplish so much. American politics have effectively become a perpetual match between the top two teams in the NFL.

  On 12/19/2019 at 12:03 AM, very honest said:

By doing that he puts the Senate on the chopping block in November. It would be cleansed by voters. They are sweating. Pelosi played this well.

he's not, most R Senators are safe from the little i've seen about it this early on. Senate being 'cleansed by voters' is almost impossible given the Rs grip on it electorally/etc. they're not sweating, they don't have hearts or souls, why the fuck do they care. Pelosi played this straight, which in this time with this president and with this congress and these voters, is not well. i respect how she's handled it but...

  On 12/18/2019 at 10:38 PM, marf said:

nothing is going to happen, right? I don't know what the dems are trying to accomplish. Maybe get his tax returns?  

Dems might be hoping something like his tax returns or some other magic ball drops from out of the sky, but that's just a pipe dream. they're just going through the procedures because that's really all the can do. unless they go apeshitwild and fight fire with fire and out-Trump Trump, they're going to fail at doing anything other than the scarlet letter I of impeachment....which at this point is starting to look very very weak and useless. it will mean very little if anything to voters. 

yeah, stormy daniels would have done in any dem. They think some lawyer jargon is going to strike at the hearts and minds of the public ? The economy is doing really well. One of those silent majority things. Trump will probably get another four years. 

Welp the vote is pretty much going as expected. Ridiculously partisan...

this is not good

heavy sigh

Hyper-partisanship...

if you aren't watching it already, get on this. 

Holy shit.

Well, so far so good. 

what do you even mean by that?

  On 12/19/2019 at 9:51 AM, Salvatorin said:

what do you even mean by that?

He's been impeached. But again, that doesn't mean anything until the senate has done their thing.

jesus fucking christ of course hopefully we all understand that but where is the good in this? this is the biggest, self-destructive act i have ever seen the democrats engage in. and they have had 20+ years of practice.  i feel like i'm taking crazy pills over here!

Was there ever a president that got impeached by the House of Representatives and the Senate?

Even Nixon's impeachement didn't pass the senate but everyone today thinks of him as the guy who was impeached.

This whole impeachment process is less a legal procedure than a political one and you shouldn't expect a fair outcome from it in any case which clearly shows that the American president is above the law and some sort of dictator in a fake democracy.

  On 12/19/2019 at 11:01 AM, Salvatorin said:

jesus fucking christ of course hopefully we all understand that but where is the good in this? this is the biggest, self-destructive act i have ever seen the democrats engage in. and they have had 20+ years of practice.  i feel like i'm taking crazy pills over here!

Ok, cool.
I think you should focus on your industrial psychedelic goth drone nu-metal band.

let me make myself clear. i am not a trump supporter or a right-winger. i'm not a democrat or some self-identifying leftist. i vehemently hate the republican party. i am utterly disgusted by the vast majority of democratic representatives and senators. and it is my belief that the democratic party, in pursuing impeachment on the frankly banal grounds that they did, have made a very bad move. whether or not trump actually is forced to leave office is not really the point. i think the democrats decided to pursue this shitshow of political theatre for utterly foolish reasons and it's going to haunt them. i think the republican party is going to hit back with a vengeance. what the fuck do you know? trump is the test run of this type of american leader. i think this day marks the death of the already nebulously existing never-trump republicans. if people can't fucking see this i don't even know what to say.

  On 12/19/2019 at 1:13 PM, Salvatorin said:

let me make myself clear. i am not a trump supporter or a right-winger. i'm not a democrat or some self-identifying leftist. i vehemently hate the republican party. i am utterly disgusted by the vast majority of democratic representatives and senators. and it is my belief that the democratic party, in pursuing impeachment on the frankly banal grounds that they did, have made a very bad move. 

sounds like you're getting info from right wing media. they've been slinging shit at dems for manipulation purposes. by making people hate dems, they don't need them to like trump.

asking a country to announce politically beneficial investigations is a corruption of the elections and a threat to democracy. even with no quid pro quo this would be impeachable. trump does not believe in democracy. he exhibits authoritarian intent. do you care about that, @Salvatorin?

conditioning a white house meeting on the request just makes it worse, making it abuse of power, soliciting a bribe, and extortion. not only that, but the country is fighting russia and badly needed the white house meeting for strength in negotiations. trump, bizarrely, really weakened an important ally in a crititcal way - a way which, coincidentally, was the exact place where putin would really appreciate some help.

conditioning the aid on the request just makes it worse, compounding the criminal and constitutional offense.

it would be a dereliction of duty for congress not to enact the check intended to protect the country from this type of threat to the country. as the GOP are doing. but fox news won't tell you that.

  On 12/19/2019 at 1:13 PM, Salvatorin said:

impeachment on the frankly banal grounds

As very honest described, the grounds on which the impeachment stands are not banal. If a leader of any other Western country would act like Trump does they would be gone very soon. Only the "leader of the free world" (lol) is allowed to commit crimes and undermine democracy in such ways.

I'm with salv... once again the dems pursue justice at the expense of public opinion. The "demo" in democracy is people, not law, and a lot of those people are vindictive dipshits that are only going to strike back when they feel threatened. Trump just got his underdog seat back.

-Should- he be impeached and punished for his crimes? Yes.

-Will- it make the right come to Jesus and stop supporting destructive populist fucks? No way.

  On 12/19/2019 at 12:33 AM, ambergonk said:

In the grand scheme of things, my question is why are the majority of Republicans still fiercely loyal to Trump, despite everything that's transpired? Have they turned off their brains and allowed him to take control?

I could go on, but rhetorical questions only accomplish so much. American politics have effectively become a perpetual match between the top two teams in the NFL.

your football analogy is correct. largely thanks to donnie's belligerence, it's become a shirts vs. skins game, us vs. them, our tribe against theirs. doesn't matter what the play is, we're going to go in there and kick their ass... also, they're sticking to him because coach turtle man tells them to.

which begs another rhetorical question(s) - wtf is turtle man's end game in all of this? hang on to senate control as long as he can, so he can keep killing any progressive bill in order to spite the dems and keep his 'merica back-assward? I mean it seems incredibly fucked up that one guy can prevent bills that have passed in the house from even getting a vote in the senate. the founding fathers totally overlooked that one...

  On 12/19/2019 at 3:13 PM, sweepstakes said:

I'm with salv... once again the dems pursue justice at the expense of public opinion.

huh?

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/impeachment-polls/

before the Ukraine scandal broke there was a clear gap in the polling in favour of not impeaching, since then there's been a big swing towards impeachment. the rabid base are never going to be won over, so why bother even taking their views into consideration? you only need to win over a couple % of ppl who voted for him, or even just demoralise them into not showing up on polling day.

  On 12/19/2019 at 3:22 PM, caze said:

huh?

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/impeachment-polls/

before the Ukraine scandal broke there was a clear gap in the polling in favour of not impeaching, since then there's been a big swing towards impeachment. the rabid base are never going to be won over, so why bother even taking their views into consideration? you only need to win over a couple % of ppl who voted for him, or even just demoralise them into not showing up on polling day.

Expand  

I had read the opposite, that he surged in the polls once it was clear that the impeachment train was full steam ahead. I realize that without a reference that's just hearsay...

  On 12/19/2019 at 12:12 PM, darreichungsform said:

Was there ever a president that got impeached by the House of Representatives and the Senate?

Even Nixon's impeachement didn't pass the senate but everyone today thinks of him as the guy who was impeached.

This whole impeachment process is less a legal procedure than a political one and you shouldn't expect a fair outcome from it in any case which clearly shows that the American president is above the law and some sort of dictator in a fake democracy.

Andrew Johnson was almost impeached by both, he escaped by one vote in the Senate.

Buchanan, the president who preceded Lincoln, was found by a House Committee in 1860 to be "the most corrupt administration since the adoption of the US Constitution in 1789" but they could not find any offense that warranted impeachment proceedings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_in_the_United_States

  On 12/19/2019 at 3:20 PM, zero said:

I mean it seems incredibly fucked up that one guy can prevent bills that have passed in the house from even getting a vote in the senate. the founding fathers totally overlooked that one...

GOP and complicit Dems are fully committed to an authoritative state. They also overlooked the potential of states like Wyoming (500k), North & South Dakota having literally as much power in the senate as states like TX, CA, and NY - the former of which literally account for most of the country's GDP and tax revenue. They also overlooked the obsolescence of the electoral college, which has now twice awarded right-wing presidency victories to candidates who lost the election by over a million votes. 

I'm not naively for impeachment the way I was regrettably hopeful about the Mueller probe, but I don't see how it wouldn't hurt and I especially think any form of actual assertiveness by the Democratic party needs to be encouraged. The whole effort is to mark down in history that the Republican party will literally support a treacherous criminal in office instead of uphold the law. It will help eliminate any false perception that any moderate or sensible GOP congressional members still exist. 

I agree with Salvatorin, the GOP will hit back hard. The thing is they will regardless. They have literally built their entire platform on lying, hypocrisy, and wedge issue identity politics for decades now.  The Dems can't just stick with the finger-waving anymore. They need to start pushing back hard with strong populism from the left. My issue isn't with the impeachment itself. I understand the tactical focus on the Ukraine scandal, the mistake many liberals make is getting too focused on that while neglecting to focus on Trump and the GOPs many other offenses. It's such a shame the impeachment isn't coupled with calls to eat the rich and oust the corrupt scumbags in power. 

  On 12/19/2019 at 3:20 PM, zero said:

which begs another rhetorical question(s) - wtf is turtle man's end game in all of this? hang on to senate control as long as he can, so he can keep killing any progressive bill in order to spite the dems and keep his 'merica back-assward? I mean it seems incredibly fucked up that one guy can prevent bills that have passed in the house from even getting a vote in the senate. the founding fathers totally overlooked that one...

Bitch is there to serve the agenda of of his conservative (and his increasingly international!) bloc of oligarch backers, which takes the form of

- preventing any sort of meaningful progressive legislation whatsoever, be it gun control, health care, gender rights, election reforms, even basic bipartisan shit like just protecting elections from foreign interference.

- pushing through those sweet, sweet, tax cuts, cuz why should rich people pay for anything

- appointing conservative judges to lifetime seats and keeping the religious right's wet dream (overturning you know what) alive

Short answer to the rhetorical is that Bitch needs an (R) in the White House to most effectively do this bidding, and despite all of the current idiot's flaws, he's still a useful idiot and far more preferable to any alternative.

I agree about the founding fathers missing this one, there's too much power in the major leader's position.  Then again I don't think they could've predicted the normalization of full-on obstructionism - that dickheads can get reelected despite accomplishing zero for the benefit of constituents, only on the basis that they block the opposition party from accomplishing anything.