I think a discussion of the merits and demerits of Mike Pence is suitable for a thread on impeachment.
I can see where the voucher discussion would derail this thread. I’ll abstain from furthering said derailments.
I copied this but am responding to @American Brummie ’s post as well... I fundamentally believe the only calculus that will go through GOP senators heads will be....can I vote to convict trump and survive my primary. Even if we remove the quotation marks, what is Trumps popularity amongst likely 2020 Republican primary voters?
Unfortunately, that starts at surviving the primary and while Trump is an anchor in the general election, he keeps piling up the victories in the Primaries. Any impeachment of Trump is going to run into 2020 (imho) and if Trump remains popular among Republicans, it's going to be hard for red state Republicans to turn on him and expect to survive a primary battle from a Trump supporting challenger. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not sure the Republicans that are up for re-election in 2022 have to be too concerned. If/when Trump is impeached, 2 years is a long time and there will be another (probably Democratic) President in office in 2022 for them to run against.
The answer, by the way, should almost always be "Yes, yes, I can survive a primary." His popularity will quickly wane if removed from office.
Depends.. Is he wearing an orange jumper, or making regular appearances on Fox News? The nature of Trump's issues that would result in his impeachment mean that he's going to stay in the news for a long time after. If he keeps doing campaign appearances, getting interviews on Fox, etc, his popularity could remain fairly high. The big issue is that politics will start to move on at some point. In 2 years there is going to be another Presidential election and the base will start to move on to that. If a Democrat wins that election, then the chances are even higher that the base will pull a "SQUIRREL!" and change focus to the new President and combating what they are trying to implement.
Right, I agree with this. However, I would have two arguments to any of this. 1) If the position as a sitting member of Congress is not strong enough to "survive" a challenge from within one's own party, that person is not very strong in that position. The game is so skewed for the incumbent that losing a primary challenge is borderline negligence. More often than not, the incumbent does not want to bother defending his/her record and position or simply cannot defend (and never had to, as no one gave a crap before). 2) If standing up and voting impeachment of somebody as deeply, completely corrupt and unfit for office for Trump costs you your precious incumbency, that speaks volumes more about the constituents than it does about politician. Except for the fact, that the sitting member of Congress does not want to bother defending his/her record and position.
The base has stood by Trump so far and I'm not sure that changes during any impeachment trial unless Republican media turns on him. If the Republican media continues to support him like they do now, I doubt the base will move away from Trump and it is likely to be an issue in the 2020 primary elections. Supporting Trump seems to be a litmus test for Republican candidates right now and there is no bigger signal for supporting Trump than voting to not impeach him (even if he deserves it).
If anyone does so it would be Kasich. He doesn't have a chance of winning enough to put a scare into Trump not to mention beating him.
Of course they will. Democratic voters need to not pull another 2010 and leave their president high & dry.
Well.. taking a hit in the midterm election is pretty common for Presidents tho. Bush II was able to avoid it because of 9/11, but I remember seeing that most other Presidents in recent memory took a hit in the midterms.
Not to Godwin the thread, but Hitler had an approval rating of 25%... in 1952 (Albery Speer, Spandau, the Secret Diaries) - 7 years after the end of the war. Nixon was at 25% the day after he resigned. 1/4 of the population would vote for Pol Pot if there was an (R) after his name. I suspect the same is true of (D). As of this morning, The Hill reports that a Hill.TV and HarrisX poll that came out prior to yesterday had 24% "strongly" approving of Trump, and 24% more "somewhat" approving of Trump - giving him 48% approval. I bring this up because there are now states where you are "born Republican" and to vote for a democrat is a vote for open borders and free stuff for the free stuff army of illegals - they rally against their strawman. For democrats to win both parties - and lets be honest, that's the only way an impeachment trial begins - it matters who cares enough to vote. This is why the Republicans are going after voter registrations and suppressing the vote. I still think red states are gonna vote red, but the toss up states will all go Democratic. We'll have a virtually even stalemate of pointlessness for another few years, and then Donny won't run again because he'll be in divorce proceedings. He'll hope Kavanaugh saves him, or he'll pardon himself. I hope I'm wrong.
or despite what his Dr said, his heart explodes from eating too many Big Macs and he becomes the first President since FDR to die in office without taking a bullet.
(Sept. 2016 photo) Now that Omarosa has stopped praying for him, look for "health" problems to lead to resignation or decision not to seek re-election.
If Kasich runs against Trump in 2020, I intend changing my voter registration so I can vote for Kasich in the Republican primary.
This is an untested proposition that I will now test. https://ballotpedia.org/Endorsements_by_Donald_Trump https://ballotpedia.org/Endorsements_by_Barack_Obama In 2016, when Obama was at his most popular during an election (excluding 2008 of course), this was his endorsement record: In all completed elections (2018 general election excluded but primaries included), Trump has endorsed 26 candidates, 6 of whom have lost. That's 69 percent. Among incumbents, he's 3/3. Among challengers, he's 65%. Given the small sample, hard to know if the differences are meangingful. But Trump isn't blowing it out of the park. And we'll know more in November. But we don't need to make the claim that his base listens to his every word.
We will have more data points on this shortly I suspect. Also - I think we can safely say that 29 people guessed wrong so far.
From the Senate alone, Trump endorsed 22. Of those, 10 lost. We don't know the outcome of Florida (Lord Voldemort probably wins there), but he's batting just above .500. From the state mansions list, he endorsed 19. Of those, 10 lost. We are awaiting to see Georgia's results (although the autocrat probably wins there), but he's batting just below .500. In the House, he endorsed 49. I'll need to peruse that list later, but I see Brat, Sessions, Arrington, Tenney, Donovan, Tarkanian, Blum, Rohrabacher as losses, so in a chamber where re-election is pretty reasonable and only 30 seats changed hands, he managed to pick 8/49 losses without breaking a sweat. Note he did far worse because I scrolled through six Minnesota districts where he endorsed generic white dudes and the GOP only won three districts.
Well, yeah. Those 10 guys didn't genuflect to Trump while campaigning and the people rebelled. Of course they lost.
Is it possible to do a "risk assessment" of sorts? Such as I don't think he endorsed Vulkmir v. Baldwin here in Wi as that was going to be a long shot, but did endorse Walker, who also lost in an expected close race. So in this case, he was not taking much risk by not supporting Vulkmir.
So....with the Cohen plea and the AMI non prosecution agreement, and new reports from the WSJ that Trump was in the room when the three discussed hush money payments in order to help his campaign...it’s clear that Trump committed felony campaign finance violations. That is the minimum he’s looking at. It’s clear that as Mueller continues and concludes his investigation into trump...the felonies will be both numerous and significantly more serious. Trump needs to worry less about the possibility of impeachment and more about a strategy to avoid dying in jail. If he tries to run again...he’ll lose. The day after he walks out of the White House...he’ll be looking at going to jail. His only out is going to be a pardon from Pence. Which leads us to what’s in it for Pence. With enough time, Pence could rehabilitate his image. But with each revelation, each indictment, and the closer it gets to 2020...the political damage associated with pardoning a criminal president increases. If Trump waits for the Mueller report to come out....what is in it for Pence? He’ll have at most....a little over a year as President. He will likely be unelectable....certainly less electible than if he sits on the sidelines at lets impeachment play out. About the only way I can see him not dying in jail is resigning, soon, with an agreement that Pence will pardon him and his family. Wait too long....and the cost to Pence makes it not worth his time. No doubt that Trump is too arrogant or stupid to see this. Which leaves us with him dying in jail.
He'll have our thoughts & prayers. A crook like him shoulda never gotten this deep into politics. The country depends upon our president to exercise sound judgment and put the country's needs above his own. This dumb load fails in every respect Once again - FU, Trump voters