Speaking for CO, Gardner is likely DOA in the general. It's more than a year and a half off, but a few months back. Colorado had a blue avalanche that saw every statewide Republican officeholder replaced with a Democrat, the Democrats increase their control of the State House from 36-29 to 41-24, and the Democrats take the State Senate by going from a 16-18 minority to a 19-16 majority. In addition, the Democrats went from having three of Colorado's seven Congressional seats to having four, after Jason Crow soundly defeated Mike Coffman, who had previously shown a Rasputin-like ability to stay elected in a solidly blue district. Gardner has tut-tutted as well as Jeff Flake did, but his votes the last few years will doom him. Democrats are already lining up to run for his seat. It wouldn't shock me he decided to make a somber announcement that he's not running for reelection, but he's not stepping down and giving Gov. Polis the ability to choose his successor.
You mean like the person in the NYT article last week who expressed disappointment that Trump wasn't hurting the people she assumed he'd be hurting?
The first 4 or 5 states there is a chance of being flipped but the other ones are solidly T as long as the Senators are smart enough to remember they are Trumpians not Republicans.
Ahh the good ol days. Where things ran smoothly, our allies liked us and the racism wasnt totally mainstream
Turning on Trump would be a political disaster for the Republican party. But if things get bad enough, not turning on him might also be a political disaster. Up until November 2018, the GOP strategy of excusing or ignoring Trump's bizarre and grossly unethical conduct was working out well for them. They won the presidency and both houses of Congress, passed tax cuts for the rich, threw out regulations and got two Supreme Court justices and a bunch of other federal judges. So, they had no motivation to change course aside from ethical principles (in other words, they had absolutely no motivation to change course). The huge defeat in the House election was the first time that any sort of bill came due. Future defeats (actual or prospective) may prompt some rethinking of that strategy.
It was pretty easy to predict this would be the case back even before Trump was elected. It's that short term thinking we always decry among the publicly-traded company CEOs - yes he is going to help you win this time, but he's going to end up destroying the party. I bet the Republicans will wish they had superdelegates. Or at least that they had read Faust in college instead of paying someone to write their paper.
That was my point, yes. But my larger point is that when faces are under boot heels, the number of people wearing the boots is a lot smaller than those people think that it is and that it doesn’t take much to wind up on the business end of the boot.
Hard to keep any kind of optimism with this ongoing democracy-destroying shitshow. Cohen congressional testimony & then Mueller report will do wonders.
Mueller's office says Buzzfeed's Cohen report is not accurate: (CNN) — Special counsel Robert Mueller's office disputed an explosive story from BuzzFeed News as "not accurate" Friday night, after the news outlet reported the President had directed his personal attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, for which Cohen was later prosecuted. "BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the Special Counsel's Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen's Congressional testimony are not accurate," said Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller's office, in a statement. https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/01/18/politics/mueller-statement-buzzfeed/index.html?r=https://www.cnn.com/
Oops...Mueller's office put a statement out there saying the buzzfeed story is not accurate. https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/18/politics/mueller-statement-buzzfeed/index.html Edit: Beat by a split second...
Interesting that the Special Counsel didn't say anything about the "Cohen was in Prague" report (for example), but are publicly taking issue with this one. Why would Mueller break his silence for this particular story, but not others? I doubt that this is the first time that inaccurate assertions about the investigation have ever appeared in print. Seems likely that there's something going on behind the scenes here, but who knows if we'll ever find out what exactly.
Also, while we don't know how directly Trump himself was involved - or, equally importantly, what evidence of that involvement exists - it's hard to believe that the false testimony of Cohen or anyone else was somehow spontaneous and uncoordinated. If you're going to go out and lie to Congress or law enforcement, you'll also want to (at the very least) make sure that you've got your false story straight with other witnesses. That takes some sort of planning.
Maybe Mueller wants to put a wet blanket on all the heat coming from Dems wanting to impeach Trump after hearing this story. IMO he's going right at Donnie then. Cohen already pled guilty to lying to Congress. It's only the "Trump made him do it" part that the SCO is saying is not accurate.
They actually aren't denying that either - the statement doesn't say anything about what Trump did or didn't do. They just say that some of the article's assertions about evidence/information in possession of the SCO are inaccurate or mischaracterized. That could mean that the article is completely wrong, or that it was only imprecise on some minor points, or anything in between. I'm sure that ambiguity was created intentionally, but there's no way to know why. One thing that is clear is that Felix Sater is deeply involved with the substance of the Buzzfeed report, and is probably one of their main sources. Needless to say, nothing that Sater might claim can be taken at face value, so the question of what kind of documents and evidence exist is pretty important.
Seems SCO is saying it doesn't have the Trump Org. communications corroborating that Trump ordered Cohen to lie.
If true, that just means it could all be SDNY. Buzzfeed’s sourcing isn’t as specific as Team Mueller.
This isn't probably the right thread, but since you're here, I have to imagine that Tipton isn't safe either. If the new redistricting commission change things to make the West a little bit less Pueblo and a little more Fort Collins, he could lose, too.
That's what I thought. My guess is this is Mueller's attempt to keep things from blowing up before he has a chance to complete his investigation and roll out the indictments on his terms. It's sort of like him saying "Wait, there's more!"
Roadkit, that’s a good theory. But Cohen will testify on February 7. I would guess that the Dems will ask questions on this topic until it’s resolved.
I'd be curious to know what limits Cohen will have on his testimony as a result of his cooperation with Mueller. I'm sure there will be some questions he won't be able to answer because of his ongoing cooperation. This is definitely going to be "must watch" TV!