The Tyrannical Minority

[_EAllusion]

Hahaha! I though that article sounded like Chris Cillizza. Sure enough, it's him. You probably should reconsider your position, and possibly your life, if you are thinking that Chris Cillizza has the savvy take.

[_EAllusion]

What do you think of the several reports from credible Republican sources that claim that up to as many as 35 Republican Senators privately admit to disliking Trump enough to vote against him if they could do so anonymously?

There's a whole genre of "in private, Republicans don't like this stuff" stories while their public statements and actions say otherwise. The assumption from people getting those stories is that Republicans are lying in their public actions and revealing their true self to them in those private moments. I don't doubt those private moments are occurring, but the people who are reporting them need to consider the possibility that Republicans are lying, but they are lying to them because they want to be seen a certain way in the elite cocktail party set. Then they go about doing the politics they want to do.

Once they understand, by Republicans own telling, that they are massive liars, they shouldn't be so vain as to think they'd never lie to them.

[_Gunnar]

Once they understand, by Republicans own telling, that they are massive liars, they shouldn't be so vain as to think they'd never lie to them.

Good point. I hadn't fully considered that before. It certainly makes sense.

[_EAllusion]

All the proof you need of how these sorts of investigations can explode in a million directions -- and to the detriment of the investigators -- is Ken Starr and the Starr Report in the mid-to-late 1990s. Starr was initially appointed independent counsel to continue the investigation of the Clintons' real estate dealings in Arkansas, known collectively as Whitewater.

By the time Starr was done, he had looked into, among other things, rumors of foul play in the death of Vince Foster and Bill Clinton's affair with a White House intern. House Republicans' decision to impeach Clinton over his relationship with a White House intern grew out of Starr's investigation, and led to massive defeats at the ballot box in 1998 as Democrats rallied around Clinton -- and against Starr who was effectively portrayed as an out-of-control partisan looking to bring down the former President any way he could.

Yes, Kenn Starr went on a fishing expedition after the Whitewater investigation, initiated because a member of the media made a mistake, did not find evidence of wrongdoing. This fishing expedition eventually led to finding that Bill Clinton lied about his sexual behavior in a civil sexual harassment case that ultimately was dropped. This led to Clinton's impeachment.

The public was opposed to impeaching him for this and part of that opposition was the perception that Republicans were trying to nail Clinton with whatever through endless investigation. Notably, that perception was correct.

Chris Cillizza, probably one of the worst people in media when it comes to both-sides journalism, fails to mention that just because Ken Starr was grasping for straws to nail Clinton, that doesn't mean Democrats are doing the same when they look into already existing evidence of serious wronging doing by Trump and his administration. Just because it was a fishing expedition to see if the Clinton s had Vince Foster killed (!) does not mean it is a fishing expedition to find out what Trump has said on other diplomatic calls that he has also sought to illegally conceal. Cillizza just equates the two. It's not surprising that a person who wrote over 100 "Clinton's emails!" articles would treat ginned-up pseudoscandals pushed by Republicans as equal to actual evidence of serious wrong doing, but not everyone has to have his judgement about what is serious.

The public might be able to tell the difference. Chris Cillizza then just asserts that Republicans suffered "massive defeats" in the 1998 election as a result of this behavior. One, they didn't suffer "massive defeats" at all. They lost a few seats when Presidential midterms usually result in a gain of at least some seats for the opposition party. The election was actually quite close. Democrats picked up a few seats in the House and stayed in the minority while narrowly losing the popular vote. The Senate stayed the same, with a solid Republican majority, while Democrats narrowly won the popular vote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Unit ... _elections
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Unit ... _elections

Since Clinton was embroiled in scandal, Republicans were hoping to have a repeat of 1994 and the psychology of that not happening shook them. Did the unpopularity of their impeachment contribute to this? Possibly. Maybe to some extent. But the economy was also the best it had been in in several generations (and has good as it has been since then). That election occurred at the peak of the best economic run in nearly a century. Presidential incumbent parties tend to do well in that environment. Based on those trends alone you can explain the outcome of the election, though I wouldn't discount the unpopularity of impeachment possibly having some explanatory role.

So the defeat wasn't "massive" and it wasn't straightforwardly explained by Republican impeachment efforts.

Cilliza then just ignores that Democrats lost the presidency two short years later. You can't lay that at the feat of impeachment either, but it's hard to forget that Al Gore had to work hard against the sense that Democrats were ethically tainted in the public conversation of the time. Al Gore, basically an eagle scout, had to select Joseph Lieberman as his running mate in an effort to balance the sense of ethical taint associated with him that came from Clinton. Clinton was effectively sidelined in that election. Despite his popularity, Democrats were afraid to run on the message of continuing the previous 8 years for 4 more. A very popular outgoing President had to be distanced from by his own party when trying to win the Presidency. Pretty wild. Did Clinton's impeachment cost him the election? Maybe. It was close enough that it's plausible.

[Guest]

What do you think of the several reports from credible Republican sources that claim that up to as many as 35 Republican Senators privately admit to disliking Trump enough to vote against him if they could do so anonymously?

I think they will vote on a partisan basis with no regard for the crimes substantiated in the inquiry.

If that does turn out to be the case (which I still hold out hope that it doesn't) one of the most tragic casualties will be the once highly vaunted U.S. Constitution itself. It could, in effect, reduce the value of the Constitution to less than the value of the paper on which it is written. It will set the horrible precedent that any future President is entitled to ignore it at will, whenever desiring to do something proscribed by it (if his party controls the Senate), and make a mockery of the oath of office every President is required to take.

[_EAllusion]

If that does turn out to be the case (which I still hold out hope that it doesn't) one of the most tragic casualties will be the once highly vaunted U.S. Constitution itself. It will, in effect, reduce the value of the Constitution to less than the value of the paper on which it is written. It will set the horrible precedent that any future President is entitled to ignore it at will, whenever desiring to do something proscribed by it, and make a mockery of the oath of office every President is required to take.

If he's not removed, and he probably won't be, the message is that it's fine for the President to use the executive branch's powers to pressure foreign nations into aiding in domestic campaigns. In this case, aiding by manufacturing propaganda against opponents, but the principle seems more general.

In a world where that flies, we will not have a democracy. I'm not being hyperbolic about that. I wish I was.

[_Gunnar]

If he's not removed, and he probably won't be, the message is that it's fine for the President to use the executive branch's powers to pressure foreign nations into aiding in domestic campaigns. In this case, aiding by manufacturing propaganda against opponents, but the principle seems more general.

In a world where that flies, we will not have a democracy. I'm not being hyperbolic about that. I wish I was.

Well, let's just hope that our fears about that happening are not realized!

[_Some Schmo]

I'm getting a tad tired of all the "Pelosi is handling this masterfully" talk. She can count to a majority, so that makes her masterful?

Sorry, but people saying this kind of thing are holding out hope that there will actually be a conviction in the senate. Keep damned wishing. The fact of the matter is that she should have done this months ago, if it wasn't, indeed, a political consideration. She wouldn't have gotten conviction then or now, but at least she'd have done the right thing when it was required.

If Trump gets removed from office, I will praise Pelosi to the heavens. Until then, people can shove those "masterful" comments up their collective ass.

[_honorentheos]

What these hearings can't be, Pelosi knows, is a grab-bag of grievance -- Russia! Ukraine! Nepotism! Giuliani! -- from her caucus. Which, as Pelosi knows, loathes Trump and wants him removed from office like yesterday.

Cool. Trump's not likely to be removed, though, so if that is her goal, she is really bad at this. If the goal is to hurt Trump's reputation and public support, then it's worth noting that Republicans have been able to reconcile themselves to individual acts of Trump, no matter how bad. His polling numbers and institutional support have remained steady through often weekly revelations of very damning information. There has been nothing too bad, not images of children being literally tortured by deliberate Trump policy, that have hurt Trump. When Trump's numbers have struggled a little, and when Republicans have seemed staggered, is when a deluge of bad stories have come out all at once.

The other argument is Trump's numbers drop when the story hits UNTIL it gets reframed as a partisan issue. The deluge of bad stories, as you call it, has also worked in the opposite direction, coming across as Democrats trying to find something that will finally stick.

The couple of most impactful items that share wider Republican and Democrat concern have been issues that have been able to largely avoid partisan reframing. The abandonment of the Kurds is an example. And we're seeing witnesses testify on the Ukraine scandal who are doing so, not because Trump went after Biden but because Trump's going after Biden was letting politics undermine our support of a critical ally against Russian aggression.

It's simple. It's a different case. It has the ability to bring out different witnesses and different issues that can avoid the intense attempts to cast it as a so-called witch hunt.

It's a war for the public's opinion, and wider cross-section of the public than participates on this board. If the case to people who want Trump's head on a platter can't be made that the Ukraine scandal is a good candidate to carry forward, needs to be handled deftly, and there is a good chance it would be compromised by turning the impeachment inquiry into airing of grievances that makes it absolutely partisan then that doesn't really matter, either. If it works, you'll be mumbleberry about how it could have been better. And if it doesn't, you'll be angryberry about how it would have been better to set fire to Trump in effege in the House, know the Senate won't convict for sure but then go into the 2020 election having made sure everyone knows how bad of a guy Trump REALLY is...and then smugberry how Trump was going to win in 2020 and the Democrats did everything wrong...

At some point, people stop hearing the details and just see...

[_honorentheos]

Hahaha! I though that article sounded like Chris Cillizza. Sure enough, it's him. You probably should reconsider your position, and possibly your life, if you are thinking that Chris Cillizza has the savvy take.

This sounds very much like a mirror of a comment Ajax would make. Or droopy. Interesting choice of argument.