Well they've done it. Straight partisan vote. No Republicans at all voted in favor while there were a few Democratic defections. Since Nanner McBotox is apparently considering not sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate at all unless the Democrats get the trial set-up that they want, since Mitch McConnell is not going to go out of his way to oblige the Democrats and since the issue in the Senate is a foregone conclusion anyway, the impeachment of Donald Trump is basically as dead as Millard Fillmore.
Two predictions. Donald Trump's reelection next year is going to be massive. And the next time a Democratic president has to face a Republican Congress, that president will be impeached. For something or other.
UPDATE: One of my two senators.
Two predictions. Donald Trump's reelection next year is going to be massive. And the next time a Democratic president has to face a Republican Congress, that president will be impeached. For something or other.
UPDATE: One of my two senators.
10 comments:
The question of whether Pelosi can validly refuse to forward the articles can be settled by the Chief Justice. He shows up in the chair, the answer is no.
I think the President may lose next year and that whoever wins will do so by a fairly narrow margin. I'm expecting a great deal of vote fraud in California, Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, and other states where ballot security is grossly deficient. These will be appended to charges of 'voter suppression' in states where they are inhibited from stuffing the ballot boxes with absentee ballots cast in the name of relict entries.
The real problem is that most of the public is indifferent to proper procedure and just want what they want. You cannot have a sustainable constitutional system when respect for procedure falls below a critical level.
For my part, I think Civil War II is pretty much inevitable. The only question is how soon?
Don't know if it's inevitable. The trouble is, just at the point where China is overtaking the U.S. in productive capacity, we may be facing a destructive existential crisis. I don't see the up and coming generation saving us. My grandparents contemporaries ceased to be a majority of those in positions of institutional leadership around about 1955. It seems like each succeeding generation has behaved more execrably than the last.
My gambler's sense has it that the future will feature escalating levels of corruption and dysfunction and relative collective decline, without any resolution. The most optimistic scenario might be something short of a civil war - a Year of Living Dangerously on the Indonesian model, over in 16 months. That was grisly bloody. It had one agreeable outcome: the axes of political conflict and competition were completely readjusted.
Doubtful. I keep hearing that China is secretly in terrible shape and knows it. And I don't see anyone on the Democratic side capable of beating Trump and taking down this pot next year.
Biden? Oh please.
In any case, the potential for Civil War II is built into the national DNA and has always been there. Celts-Saxons, Saxons-Normans, Cavaliers-Roundheads, whites-blacks, whites-Indians, North-South, religious-atheists and so on. The national miracle here is that it only happened once. But I do agree that something just short of an actual civil war may be what we're in for.
I have to agree with Art Deco about the level of voter fraud that will be perpetrated by the Democrats in 2020. I think what has so enraged the Democrats with respect to the 2016 election is that they committed a huge degree of voter fraud and still didn't win. All stops are out for 2020. Hopefully the Democrats fraud will still fall short of the mark. As sloppy as they have gotten the fraud may be so blatant that it will quickly be exposed. They will though have the popular vote because of New York and California; and they will scream about the Electoral College being illegitimate.
As to CW II, it may start in Virginia this spring. Elections will go sideways if this occurs.
90% of Virginia counties have passed gun sanctuary resolutions. Large crowds are turning out in support. If the urban Democrat majority of Delegates passes a gun restriction or gun registration law, and if the governor sends troops to enforce it, that civil war might indeed break out.
I am encouraging my conservative relatives in California to vote, even if it's pointless in CA. We need to knock out this stupid "popular vote" meme.
Last time around I didn't vote for either Trump or Hillary -- both of them scared the crap out of me, although Hillary scared me more. I reasoned that since I lived in IL, its electoral vote was in the bag for Hillary (and would only have gone to Trump in the face of a massive landslide in which he wouldn't "need" IL in order to win), and the popular vote really didn't count, there was no reason to force myself to vote for someone I could not wholeheartedly endorse.
Next time around, however, I am voting FOR Trump if I have to walk over hot coals or broken glass to do it. Yes, he still makes me cringe at times but the alternatives are far more cringeworthy. Plus, even if the popular vote doesn't officially count, it sure does have a lot of symbolic/public relations value, and it would be nice to have Trump win that as well.
For all the talk about Civil War 2.0 being just around the corner I'd like to see more advice on what to do to survive it, or places to go where "normies" like us are more likely to be relatively safe from it. I know lots of conservative types talk up moving to places like Texas or Wyoming or Arizona but that just wouldn't be feasible for us (it would cost hundreds of dollars just to make a weekend exploratory trip). I've lived in downstate IL all my life and many areas are pretty conservative -- there are "2nd Amendment sanctuary" counties here as well -- but it's still IL and I dunno that it would be safe to stay here. I wouldn't mind moving to Missouri, Indiana or maybe Arkansas but would that be far enough?
I'm afraid the civil war will be country-wide, Elaine. You're probably as safe in downstate Illinois as anywhere else.
"The question of whether Pelosi can validly refuse to forward the articles can be settled by the Chief Justice."
A similar issue came up in 2008-09 when Illinois Gov. Hairdo Blagojevich was being impeached. When Blago got busted by the feds it was just after the 2008 general election and a new General Assembly was to take office in January. The lame duck House assembled an ad hoc committee to conduct impeachment hearings and proposed three impeachment articles to be voted on by the full House.
The question then arose as to whether an action voted upon by an outgoing House that was about to adjourn "sine die" could be validly acted upon by the Senate of a "new" General Assembly. Normally all actions that haven't passed both houses die at the end of that GA. The President of the outgoing Senate was Emil Jones, a staunch Blago ally who had not run for reelection. IIRC there was concern that he wouldn't allow the Senate to vote on the impeachment articles as long as he was in charge so everyone wanted to have the "new" Senate take them up. There was no partisan split in play since both houses were controlled by Blago's own party (Dems) and would continue to be so in the new GA.
In the end, the House voted on Blago's impeachment twice: the "old" House on 1/9/09 and the "new" House on 1/14/09, just hours after they were sworn in, so there would be no question as to the validity of the action. In both cases the vote was almost unanimous -- the only dissenter the second time around was Blago's sister in law, Deb Mell.
So based on that experience (the legislative branch agency for which I worked then and still do was tangentially involved in these proceedings) I would have to say there is no way Nanzi could hold onto the impeachment articles until next year in hopes of Dems taking over the Senate. She would at the very least have to do the vote over again in the House.
I think it's the same deal in Congress, Elaine. House bills passed in one two-year Congress and not taken up by the Senate die, and they have to start over with the new Congress.
Even one of the Dems' constitutional law witnesses, Noah Feldman, is saying that an impeachment resolution which is not transmitted to the Senate isn't really impeachment. Pelosi is turning an impeachment vote into a censure vote, essentially.
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