— Musings —08.08.2017 07:08 AM
43 years ago this week
An important anniversary. Any bets on when history will repeat itself?
— Musings —08.08.2017 07:08 AM
An important anniversary. Any bets on when history will repeat itself?
I’m not a calendar watcher per se but I think today is the 8th.
Won’t under Trump. He won’t leave on his free will. Either he will be impeached (won’t happen until 2019 at the earliest and only if the Dems win big in midterms), he dies, he gets defeated in 2020, or worse case scenario he is president until January 2025 and leaves due to term limits. Nixon had many negatives but he at least had some even if limited integrity whereas Trump has zero.
He won’t resign. He might be impeached by majority vote in the House if the Dems win a majority in the 2018 midterms, but unless the Dems get something close to a two-thirds majority in the Senate, he will not be removed from office. There were enough Republicans with integrity in Nixon’s day who would have voted to impeach in the House and convict in the Senate that the writing was on the wall. Not so now, and extremely unlikely the Dems would have the votes in the Senate on their own. Barring illness or death, he’s in there until January 2021 at the earliest.
Actually that means it is mathematically impossible as 25 Democrat held senate seats are up for re-election in 2018 while only 8 GOP are so even if the Democrats made a clean sweep, it would only put them at 56 and while there are a few mavericks who might support it, they would need to get 11 GOP to do so and that seems highly unlikely. Very true though that nowadays partisanship is so entrenched people will defend their leader no matter how awful. For too many seem to put party over country.
dont know about all that but I hope the Whitehouse has improved its letterhead
Preferably he leaves office before starting a war with North Korea. Good grief that video clip from CNN is mortifying.
There’s a better chance of Trump standing out on Fifth Avenue, shooting someone and still being revered by his loyal base than there is of him penning anything that resembles the letter here.
I can’t believe Donald Trump is making Nixon look noble.
Warren,
In Canada we call it constitutional convention: happened with Johnson and Clinton – – opposing party senators will not convict at trial. Don’t want to create a dangerous precedent for the United States.
I dunno – my recollection of the Clinton trial was that the vote pretty much broke down along party lines, with only a handful of Republicans voting to acquit on at least one charge, and even fewer voting to acquit on both. Of those who voted to acquit on either charge, only Richard Shelby and Susan Collins are still in the Senate.
Not one Democrat voted to convict Clinton on any charge. By contrast, there was much more bipartisan support for Nixon’s impeachment on the House Judiciary Committee in 1974, with some Democrats voting to defeat some of the proposed articles of impeachment.
Johnson is not only ancient history, but a unique case in that he was a southern Democrat elected on a National Union ticket with northern Republican Lincoln in the middle of the Civil War. His impeachment occurred against the backdrop of widespread intra-party strife on both sides of the aisle over Reconstruction, and the Republicans had a commanding majority in the Senate with the former Confederate states completely unrepresented. Again, all Democrats voted to acquit and only 10 Republicans crossed party lines. Not really a convincing precedent by any stretch.
All of which is by way of saying that *if* Trump were impeached, I have no doubt that every single Democrat would vote to convict and all Republicans save one or two would vote to acquit.
Trump Watching is increasingly a zero sum game. I now see Stanley Kubrick, Michael Haneke and Antonioni as sunny optimists when it comes to the human condition and watch The Handmaid’s Tale for light relief. TS Eliot once wrote, “I think we are in rat’s alley…”. Well, we now know that alley looks more and more like the inside of a rat’s [INSERT EXPLETIVE HERE].
Reflecting on the above sentence, after a suitable aperitif and some serious drugs, I am afraid we are stuck with Trump for a long time. The mitigating factor, as Spy Magazine used to say in what now looks like a more innocent time, is that Trump is stuck with a growing planet of people who truly loathe him…and who knows what a Grand Jury or two might come up with in the interim. Finally to echo Beckett, another sunny optimist, we can’t go on, but we must go on.
There won’t be enough shift in power in 2018 to give the Dems enough vote to impeach. Republicans always put party before country or the truth. Sorry, but unless Trump dies from one too many buckets of KFC, the circus will continue until 2020. Unless we all die under a mushroom cloud first.
It wont happen at all. In 1974 when they started impeaching the PReident Repuublicans like Caldwell Butler (R VA) were willing to look at what good for their country, not their party and paid a terrible price. In order to impeach a perident you need 2/3 vote in favor of impeachment., that means that 95 republicans would have to vote with all 194 Democrats in the house, and 18 republicans would have to vote with all 48 Democrats to IMpeach. There isn’t that much backbone in the republican party. THEY ARE THE PARTY OF SNAKES! NO BACKBONES!
You only need 50% in the House and 2/3 in the Senate.
When they vote to impeach, they will be voting to try and save the Republican Party. They will fail.
I Bow to your superior knowledge. BUT IT IS STILL NOT HAPPENING!