The Tyrannical Minority

[_EAllusion]

Lindsey Graham is using the Joseph Smith argument in defense of Trump: Instead of Smith being too ignorant to have penned the Book of Mormon, Trump is too incoherent to have entered into a quid pro quo extortion scheme.

Republicans have repeatedly said Trump's behavior is fine because it didn't cross an imaginary line they invented that they think Trump couldn't possibly be that incompetent or corrupt to cross only to find out Trump crossed it. I've seen this happen in the past 3 years more times than I can count.

Graham has been caught in this a couple of times with Ukraine. It's fine because Trump didn't do X. Oh he did X? Well, it's fine because he didn't do Y. He did Y, you say...

Graham has now jumped to the argument used a lot during the Mueller investigation era where Trump is proposed to be too incompetent to knowingly behave improperly. While it's ludicrous when compared against the facts, what gets me is they are defending the President by saying he has no business being President. "Does not accidentally extort nations with military aid for electoral benefit..." is a trait I definitely would like to have in a President.

[_Some Schmo]

Lindsey Graham is using the Joseph Smith argument in defense of Trump: Instead of Smith being too ignorant to have penned the Book of Mormon, Trump is too incoherent to have entered into a quid pro quo extortion scheme.

Graham's defense is the best yet. We all know how complex it is to bribe someone. It takes, like, a stable genius or something.

[_honorentheos]

I contend that the impeachment inquiry itself is the best possible deterrent

On this we agree.

The need is to win over the American public to the understanding there is a serious, real issue that needs Congressional action.

One approach is to turn the House into a non-stop mill of complaints against Trump. Most of those have public familiarity, most are issues on which people have a decided opinion on their validity that isn't likely to change. This will carry on indefinitely.

The other approach is to take a clear, defined issue that has witnesses from both sides of the political divide willing to speak up, has clear supporting testimony and evidence, and is currently being given the Clinton email treatment by daily drips of information from the weeks of closed door testimony to try to win the public over to understanding the issue is both real and serious. And once the case has been made, take the vote ASAP before public opinion softens.

It's about human nature.

- A neighbor who has a serious, specific grievance due to another neighbor's actions has your sympathy. A neighbor who does nothing but complain about the guy next door to him though from your side of the street things seem about the same when you look at both of their houses, and has a new issue every time you talk becomes the neighbor with an ax to grind. You stop taking them seriously.

- The businessperson who complains of being cheated by someone specific in a specific way has your support and belief in their being cheated. A businessperson who complains of always being cheated by everyone gets seen as the likely person doing the actual cheating.

- Eventually the townspeople are going to stop caring because they have their own jobs to do if the boy constantly is crying wolf even if there are always actual wolves around that can be seen as a threatening the sheep when the townspeople show up to defend the sheep. Even serious issues have a halflife.

You only get so much capital to spend on public opinion and then it's gone.

[_honorentheos]

They can end up putting that in the obstruction basket if they want, but it's meaningless because the Senate is not going to remove Trump on those grounds and it is too fine grain of a detail to matter to the public.

Exactly.

[_EAllusion]

I think I see where we differ Honor. While I agree that convincing the public is good and we fundamentally disagree about what would be persuasive, what I think you are missing is that this is secondary to Congress having and exercising investigatory oversight to uncover and share improper actions by the President that have not been committed yet. This ability should act as a deterrent and to the extent it doesn't, at least information to the public about what is happening. An impeachment inquiry gives them power to do that that they do not necessarily have outside of that context.

By taking impeachment off the table for a full year before the election, I think Democrats are giving the green light to Trump (and/or his allies) to cheat in an election and Democrats are basically just hoping someone who has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to do that won't do that. I view that as surrender with all that word implies.

I asked you that once you give up investigatory power in the context of an impeachment inquiry, what do you see as preventing Trump et. al. from destroying a truly free and fair election. You didn't really answer. You just went back to arguing what you think will make the public want impeachment the most.

[_EAllusion]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/worl ... ensky.html

This is an article that is a reminder just how close Trump was to being successful in the Ukraine plan. Zelenskiy was going to make the announcement Trump's people had essentially written for him in an interview with Fareed Zakaria. We've had a ton of people from the Whitehouse who knew about this plot (and now that it has been uncovered claim they were troubled by it), but just one whistleblower made it a matter of public concern. Ask yourself if there will be a person willing to come forward every time.

[_subgenius]

but just one whistleblower made it a matter of public concern.

Not true...a scheme made it a matter of public concern. This "whistleblower" has denigrated the concept inasmuch as it is becoming more apparent that the concern is unwarranted and the whistleblower is just a disgruntled former employee.
Your feeble attempts to prop up this "concern" are eroding, and relying on witnesses who never heard or saw anything outside of NYT editorial is not going to last until November 2020. The impeachment was sideshow coincidental to recent elections by design.
The real irony here is that you are literally defending a person who made up a charge about Trump to deflect from the crime that Biden committed...but hey, you be you .
#2020

[_moksha]

I am uncertain about cajoling the American public with a simpler to understand message. How much simpler than encouraging election meddling by a foreign power through extortion can you get?

A prima facie case for impeachment has already been made. Trump's supporters do not care. Wrongdoing in an effort to assist Trump's reelection is hunky-dory in their book. Chances are the Republican Senate will pull off their ethically empty ploy and Trump will emerge as a tyrant whose abominable behavior continues unabated.

I'm thinking historians will question an all-eggs-in-one-basket approach when Congress could foresee the outcome.

[_EAllusion]

I'm thinking historians will question an all-eggs-in-one-basket approach when Congress could foresee the outcome.

The work of historians under authoritarian regimes is often not as hard on those regimes as what really happened dictates.

I find the common fantasy of historians examining the work of monastic scribes in the present recording the corruption of the country to be naïve.

[_canpakes]

but just one whistleblower made it a matter of public concern.

Not true...a scheme made it a matter of public concern. This "whistleblower" has denigrated the concept inasmuch as it is becoming more apparent that the concern is unwarranted and the whistleblower is just a disgruntled former employee.
Your feeble attempts to prop up this "concern" are eroding, and relying on witnesses who never heard or saw anything outside of NYT editorial is not going to last until November 2020. The impeachment was sideshow coincidental to recent elections by design.

Apparently you don’t get out much, as your recap of events and the people related to them is pretty much completely incorrect.

The real irony here is that you are literally defending a person who made up a charge about Trump to deflect from the crime that Biden committed...but hey, you be you .
#2020

The actual real irony would be if you actually believed this. But there’s no Biden crime for you to point at, and any attempt to invent one out of past events would just make you look like a complete tool.

You can go, now.