2020 US Election (Part One)

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I said it was opinion. I "FEEL" that if impeachment fails, that Trump will use it to reiterate that he is totally innocent and many will buy it.
And if you actually read my post, I just said it was a possibility. You seem to be claiming there is 0 possibility. That is your opinion that can not be proved until it happens. Trump has already turned the norm upside down. Those that continue to ignore that are doomed to fail again.
I never said you were wrong, I just said that I disagree. There is almost 0 chance of impeachment from the senate. There is a slim chance that Trump gets advantage from it. I don't want him to have that advantage. You are claiming 0 risk of that. I don't see how you can claim 0.
 
Fact: Trump has already obviously committed impeachable offenses with no measurable dip in support from Republicans let alone any materialization of support for impeachment.
Fact: the week after the Mueller report was released Trump's approval rating reached the highest point of his entire Presidency. His approval hit 91% among Republicans.

I don't see how you can claim 0.

What I've noticed over the two and a half years of Trump's presidency is that whatever actually happens is worse than what I thought was going to happen, and much much worse than what liberals drawing analogies with Nixon thought was going to happen. I've tried to adjust my expectations accordingly.
 
While I agree that those that ignore History are likely to repeat mistakes, I also believe that people that use the past to predict the future can sometimes be horribly wrong, so yeah, I'm with you on this one Lex.
 
I mean if Pelosi says we're having a constitutional crisis and other congresspeople agree, it is a significant abdication of duty to not impeach, and if the Dems don't, just an incredibly spineless precedent setting move. Trump's approval rating is still in the lowish 40s. The big thing is turning out the Dem base to vote for him. It's bigger, there are more Dem voters, and as long as Dems can turn out some more black voters in Detroit/Flint/Milwaukee/Akron/Cleveland, or some suburban women in Auburn Hills and Ferndale or whatever, what his base thinks doesn't matter much.

Again, if we say impeachment is maybe not the most electorally successful strategy at this point in time, then the only consistent move with that is to fully support Biden, who is lapping the field right now.
 
It is 46% as of the most recent Gallup poll.

It's also 42% in YouGov and 39% in Ipsos. His collective average is sitting around 43%.

What, based on those polls with no data from anyone younger than like 55?

Based on like all of them.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/democratic_nomination_polls/

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-d/

Primary voters are even older than the Dem base, and this is setting up to be a real generational divide type thing, but yeah, younger voters turnout is even worse in these than the general election. If Biden wins it will be because of the over 50 vote.

We can talk about overall impeachment polling all we want, electoral success, etc., but I think we can agree that the Dems need to do better on courting black voters and actually put forward solutions that don't just bow to white America, and address racism and poverty. It's what might decide the election for them. So they might want to consider this: 70% of black voters support impeachment.
 
Yeah he's up in the 40's when he was languishing in the 30s before the report came out. If the release of the report raised it to new highs, I have no confidence that a failed impeachment will make it go the other way.
 
Based on like all of them.

I dunno, after seeing that one where the raw data apparently only came from old people I don't trust any of them anymore.

Accepting them for the sake of argument, the fact that Biden leads in the primary polling doesn't mean that he is the best bet in the general election. And it's too early to set much store by polls anyway.

In any case, here is my view of the matter: The Presidency and by extension the executive has been accumulating powers at the expense of the other branches for a long time now - at least since World War II. As much as it sucks I think that process has basically culminated in a situation where the President is functionally a monarch and above the law while he is in office and there's just not much we can do about it. We may really end up in a Roman Republic repeat situation where Trump's fear of losing the immunity that comes with holding office leads him to finally destroy whatever flimsy Constitutional restraints on his power still exist.

I suppose, if Trump wins reelection he will probably be able to thoroughly reshape the executive and the judiciary, maybe enough that he doesn't need to fear leaving office in 2024. I suppose we'll see. But @Timsup2nothin and I have been saying that the only real solution at this point is putting our conservatives to the sword. I essentially have no faith in the working of the Constitution and the law to restrain the Republican Party, maybe that approach would have worked 20 years ago but it is too late now.
 
I "FEEL" that if impeachment fails, that Trump will use it to reiterate that he is totally innocent and many will buy it.
See, but there's no loss on this count, because Trump will take the Dems not aggressively pursuing Mueller's evidence as grounds for the claim that he is totally innocent. He is already using the Mueller report itself as grounds that he is totally innocent. You can't stop Trump from using anything as grounds that he is totally innocent. So you don't base your strategy on what Trump will claim.
 
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And it's too early to set much store by polls anyway
Amen, and I work for one of the companies mentioned. And on some of the polling data.
 
You can't stop Trump from using anything as grounds that he is totally innocent. So you don't base your strategy on what Trump will claim.
But we can limit the opportunities. His numbers are going up, not down. That would lead me to rethink my strategy.
An impeachment just fuels the fire of "partisan witch hunt". I would say that everyone's mind is already made up, but if so, why did his numbers go up? Of course, maybe it's all totally unrelated and the economy is what's creating converts.
 
The Democrats, particularly the older, House leadership Democrats, are probably way too spineless to impeach. The Democrats have a pattern of caving and backing down and I'm not convinced this will be any different. I was pretty surprised when they held firm on the debt ceiling, though... so maybe they surprise me again.

The other possibility I can see, is that they fully intend to impeach, but they are trying to set it up as a "We had no other choice" situation by all this handwringing, subpoenas, contempt votes, etc. This way, the process drags out as long as possible, and the actual impeachment-and-trial occurs much closer to the election to have the maximum rallying impact on the Democrat's base. I think a failed impeachment will be an effective rallying tool to drive out the vote for Democrats, as the voters will see that they tried but the Republicans in Congress blocked them... so now its up to them (the voters).
 
If it's too early to base Biden/vs the field on polls, then it's too early to use polls on impeachment as a guide too. Proceedings haven't even started and don't look like they're going to anytime soon. It's basically a hypothetical at this point. The primaries at least are not.

Again, Trump's collective polling average hasn't really moved much. It's still around 43%. Let's at least agree to use more than one poll source for his approval and chance at re-election if we're going to disregard Dem primary polls.
 
^^Yeah, one can stage the impeachment proceedings to whatever is the most advantageous political effect.

You can't stop Trump from screaming witch-hunt. You can't stop the people predisposed to favor that framing from doing so.

You can do your damn job with a criminal president.
 
The other possibility I can see, is that they fully intend to impeach, but they are trying to set it up as a "We had no other choice" situation by all this handwringing, subpoenas, contempt votes, etc. This way, the process drags out as long as possible, and the actual impeachment-and-trial occurs much closer to the election to have the maximum rallying impact on the Democrat's base.

Well....this actually might not be a bad strategy.

then it's too early to use polls on impeachment as a guide too.

I'm not using the polls on impeachment:

What I've noticed over the two and a half years of Trump's presidency is that whatever actually happens is worse than what I thought was going to happen, and much much worse than what liberals drawing analogies with Nixon thought was going to happen. I've tried to adjust my expectations accordingly.

Understand that I've read two years of liberals claiming the Mueller report would bring down Trump....now many of the same people are stating Congress must impeach. I've grown wary, is all I'm saying.
 
It's also people like AOC, Omar, Tlaib leading the calls for impeachment. And yeah, I know. anyone who runs for office is really not that radical, but this is the young progressive, nonwhite face of the party. PoC are supporting impeachment in higher numbers than white Dems, and registered Dems as a whole are >50% in many polls in favor of it. Younger voters are more in favor of it. Can we at least throw a bone to PoC in this country as a party? Or do we want to lose because we drop the ball on this and throw up our hands and run another white superpredator candidate and black voters in Detroit and college students in Raleigh rightfully stay home.
 
Understand that I've read two years of liberals claiming the Mueller report would bring down Trump....now many of the same people are stating Congress must impeach. I've grown wary, is all I'm saying.

The Mueller Report would have ended up with any other American being indicted on several counts of felony obstruction. Maybe these liberals you speak of had a poor understanding of how this would play out in the real world, but the president committed felonies and it's hard to blame people for thinking that committing felonies should have some kind of consequence.

You can't stop Trump from screaming witch-hunt. You can't stop the people predisposed to favor that framing from doing so.

This is a good place to bring up an important point. Democrats don't win in 2020 by trying to peel away Trump voters. I vehemently oppose any candidate talking like this is how they are going to win.

So any strategerizing around what Trump and Trump-curious voters are going to think is absolutely irrelevant in a world where you are realistically going to beat Trump.
 
The Mueller Report would have ended up with any other American being indicted on several counts of felony obstruction. Maybe these liberals you speak of had a poor understanding of how this would play out in the real world, but the president committed felonies and it's hard to blame people for thinking that committing felonies should have some kind of consequence.

Well, ironically this is making the same mistake those liberals did. You are not distinguishing between what you think should happen and what might actually happen :(

I should also probably note, as far as I'm concerned the worst crimes of the Trump administration have bipartisan support: lending cover to the apartheid regime in Israel, murdering civilians in the Middle East with high explosives, attempting to overthrow the government of Venezuela, an immigration policy that deals with the "problem" of immigration by incarcerating people....
 
Well, ironically this is making the same mistake those liberals did. You are not distinguishing between what you think should happen and what might actually happen :(

Impeachment might actually happen, and every day that goes by where the administration refuses to comply with subpoenas and such, it becomes more likely.

It's also not insignificant that an impeachment inquiry makes it easier to force production of evidence to Congress, and to get it more quickly. It's quite likely that without impeachment proceedings, Congress can be successfully stonewalled from bringing any evidence of wrongdoing before the public.
 
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