The Tyrannical Minority

[_EAllusion]

It's more promising that the majority at least favor the investigation process.

The public tends to bias the idea of "looking into" things. If you don't know what's going on, its just easy to say to a pollster that yeah, someone should look into it more. It's not a big hurdle to jump. Questions phrased in terms of inquiry are a soft target. It's better that you have majorities in favor of it than not, but since it is obviously the right thing to do, elected officials shouldn't feel beholden to polls in this case. That kind of obsequious attitude to popular will is an anathema to how impeachment was and is supposed to work. It's not much of a mechanism to protect against demagogues if successful demagogues are definitionally immune to it.

Given the information we have from the statements being released from the inquiry hearings, and the sources of that information being who they are, I tend to view the current resistance in some pockets as a momentary position that could quite readily swing to supporting removal once the full weight and testimony is taken public.

Possibly. I think that's likely as well. It is a little concerning how much opinions on the question function as a proxy for prior support or opposition to the President. Sometimes, you need to take a step back and think about how overt the President's impeachable conduct is and how large the segment of the population is that can't be bothered to care.

Of course, I also caveat that with my concerns with the Democrat leadership having yet to show they can manage a public hearing without undermining their own cause so there is that to consider.

I'd be more concerned about their political cowardice leading them to fail to investigate the full breadth of corruption in the administration, both leaving the broader public uninformed and allowing those responsible to have zero accountability for it. Ukraine is bad, but obviously the tip of the iceberg. This is especially the case in an environment where said corruption involves the integrity of democracy itself. That seems to be the path they are on. Because of the relative helplessness of the situation, all we can really do at this point is wait and see.

[_EAllusion]

I appreciate that you can't investigate the President forever and he isn't going to stop being a lawless bastard just so Congress can catch up. But there are some obvious areas where the inquiry should be expanded to that Democratic leadership seems terrified to explore lest it get away from them.

[_Some Schmo]

The attempt to reduce Trump voters into a stereotypical and dismissable description isn't helpful.

I disagree. It makes me feel better every time I do it.

It's obviously true that I am exaggerating and generalizing, but as I've mentioned before, much of what I say here is a proxy for looking at a situation and just screaming Holy “F”!

Yes, reasons for supporting Trump are varied. I'm sure there are plenty of people with solid rationales for their continued support if you assume they are vastly ignorant of what's going on.

The problem is that they are vastly ignorant of what's going on. Unless you can do something to get them to quit right wing media, you're just pissing in the wind.

[_honorentheos]

However it may have been envisioned, impeachment is not a legal investigation in the sense the winner is the side that is able to capture the hearts and minds of the necessary segments of the American public to politically matter to the Senators deciding the outcome. Courage or cowardice, high minded or blinded, the reality is the case to be made is to the American people that what Trump has done is bad for them.

The Ukraine scandal as the point of focus has the value of being a case that can win the fight that has to be won. Maybe it's not the fight that should have been fought nor is it the most significant. Like convicting Al Capone for tax evasion, the fight that gets the needed result is all too often the one that has to be given all of one's energy and effort to stop the far worse and significant but more difficult behaviors where it's too difficult to make the charges stick. Is that putting politics over justice? That's cute that anyone would imagine the world has worked any other way, ever. Six years ago Republicans were certain justice was being robbed and Obama should be in jail. They were as sincere and certain of that as anyone is today that Trump should be impeached. There are people who are so certain they are right on both sides that it would be more concerning to me if there wasn't a middle resisting the urge to rush in either direction.

Whether or not the odds were always out there Trump would eventually take something too far, his own hubris would result in his undermining himself, and surrounding himself with sycophants would ultimately undermine his need for loyalty to protect himself because he no longer had people of principle working for him is another question. But it appears with the Ukraine scandal all three have finally overlapped. This one seems like it has the evidence, the sources, and the credibility to overcome the sense that witch hunts against political opponents are the norm in modern Washington and something is different this time.

[_honorentheos]

The attempt to reduce Trump voters into a stereotypical and dismissable description isn't helpful.

I disagree. It makes me feel better every time I do it.

It's obviously true that I am exaggerating and generalizing, but as I've mentioned before, much of what I say here is a proxy for looking at a situation and just screaming Holy “F”!

Yes, reasons for supporting Trump are varied. I'm sure there are plenty of people with solid rationales for their continued support if you assume they are vastly ignorant of what's going on.

The problem is that they are vastly ignorant of what's going on. Unless you can do something to get them to quit right wing media, you're just pissing in the wind.

If you take some time to listen to people on the fringe of Trump support, not the Ajaxs or the subbies, what you hear are people who are primarily disillusioned with Washington, hard stop. They listen to people arguing that everything everywhere is hate speech and wonder what happened to the need to protect free speech, see the alt-right and Antifa make play dates to get together on certain days and have a street fight, see every news cycle turn an issue into a matter of life or death only to be replaced moments later by the next one without anything changing or the world ending, look around at their own job security and imagine that things seem to be ok right now but not in a way one can feel confident in for long with the memory of the 2008 recession very fresh (off topic, I'm reminded of how everyone I've known who lived through the great depression seemed unable to throw away aluminum foil decades afterward because apparently living through some things leaves scars you don't heal from, and it would be interesting to look into the scars acquired by people living through the great recession...)

Put simply, I think far more people on the fringe are also screaming holy “F”, or some mid-western euphemism in it's place because Minnesota nice is a thing, but at the whole of politics as it appears to be to people who don't want to see their own world blown up to make way for what appears to be a different form of hate and blind certitude on the left. There is that middle position of people seeing both sides as bad and deciding which is the lesser. And once one takes a side, the other side starts looking less and less rational. It's psychology. We tend to start telling ourselves how much better the thing we chose was compared to the thing we didn't choose despite them being not that great to us in the moment of making the decision. Telling people that their having chosen bad while the world for them still seems ok or possibly better than it was two or three years ago isn't going to win them over.

So, yeah, it feels nice to stereotype. A person can kill a puppy more easily if they decide it was going to grow up to become a ravenous wolf or ignore a wolf because they think it's cute and wants to cuddle with them if we just let it instead of provoking it. Emotions aren't great for that reason, on both sides.

So, my OP was to point out that we ought to step back from the national polls and look at the places where apparently Presidential elections and possibly impeachment will get decided and try to be a bit clear eyed as to what's going on.

[_Some Schmo]

If you care about the future of this country, you have to hope that people will see the situation for what it is.

Given that we all heard Trump brag about sexual assault and ask the Russians in plain view to find Clinton's emails and he still got elected, I am not hopeful Trump supporters will suddenly remove their heads from their asses now. He admitted to the crime on TV. His support has remained steady.

His supporters are either stupid or assholes. Try curing that.

[_honorentheos]

If you care about the future of this country, you have to hope that people will see the situation for what it is.

I do. It's why I'm personally quite satisfied with Pelosi focusing on the Ukraine attempt to undermine Biden and influence the 2020 election.

[_Some Schmo]

I do. It's why I'm personally quite satisfied with Pelosi focusing on the Ukraine attempt to undermine Biden and influence the 2020 election.

But you already see the pattern. For Trump supporters, it's one of those jumbled pictures you have to stare at to see the 3D image, but it never appears for them. They are the type that thinks everyone else is lying about it being there, and hence will never see it because their fallacious belief has cut off their own ability to look at it correctly.

[_Dr Exiled]

At some point the Democrats need to pivot away from impeachment and deal with pocketbook issues. Impeacement makes Trump into a victim, unless there is something there when the big reveal finally happens. Even so, impeachment has worked politically as a proxy for who likes Trump or not and it may continue to lower his standing in the popularity polls. However, expect more raids like just happened so Trump can stand behind the flag as impeachment continues on. Maybe he will start wearing a military uniform the next time he does some operation then explains it to the media? He wanted to have the military parade a while back.

Anyway, the Democrats need to propose what the people want and not continue to act as Wall Street apologists. Maybe don't take their money? Maybe denounce Bill Clinton's third way? I think a platform of reducing the military budget and using the money to pay for things that will benefit the people would be a winner. Medicare for all seems popular. Using military money for college scholarships instead of bombs could be something young people would get excited about and then actually vote. The democrats could win in a landslide if they wanted to.

[_ajax18]

Just out of curiosity. What changed about the electorate in 2012 compared to 2016? I didn't see many converts from the other side. Trump rallies certainly seemed to energize hard left protest and even violence. Did these people just stay home on election day?