Krystal Ball on the Ukraine thingy

Also, quick note on Hunter Biden. I don’t see the Dems trying to protect him. That hasn’t been their focus. And he doesn’t need any protection. Yes, it looks bad when the sons and daughters of the rich get good jobs. But that’s the nature of capitalism, and that’s the American Dream, really. As long as we have the former, we’re gonna have a virtual aristocracy. It comes with the mechanics of the system itself.

Speaking of hypocrisy, Trump making a huge deal about Biden’s son, when he was given 400 million dollars by his father, and he hired his own kids to work on the public dime?

At least Hunter Biden was being paid by a private company in the Ukraine. That didn’t come from American taxpayers, etc.

wv wrote:

Perhaps it doesnt make one iota of difference what the Dem-politicans do regarding impeachment. Didnt Kiergegaard say something about marriage once: “Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way”

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Kierkegaard’s famous battle within himself over marriage to Regine Olsen. Similar, I always thought, to Kafka’s battles with himself over his fiances.

A foundational book for me as a young adult: Irrational Man, by William Barrett. Turned me on to Kierkegaard for a lifetime, as well as a host of existentialists I hadn’t read prior to that day. It’s been nearly forty years now.

I just got around to this thread which I’ve had in an open tab for a couple of days, and I don’t think much of Ball’s opinion.

Unless I missed something, or misunderstood something along the way, her position makes no sense to me.

Now…I did not listen to nor read Pelosi’s statement, but I haven’t seen or heard it reported anywhere else that she said that they would focus exclusively on the Ukraine issue.

I did hear that the plan was to put together, as quickly as possible, comprehensive Articles of Impeachment from the findings of six different investigations that the Democrats have been holding. That came straight from the mouth of Maxine Waters who is many things, but a misinformed bullshitter is not among them.

Furthermore, the notion that this is about protecting their “own” in Biden is preposterous.

I have no reason to doubt that Pelosi would do a great deal to support Biden’s ascension to the White House, but impeaching Trump does not fall into that realm. First of all, if this was about protecting Biden, the best move would have been to downplay, then ignore this whistle blower report, not put it directly in the red hot center of the world media spotlight. That makes zero sense. Of course, the first thing Republicans did was claim that the Real Issue is Biden, not the phone call, and this entire thing will probably make Biden’s slump in the polls even worse. No way it’s gonna help, right? So I don’t buy that at all. Secondly, nobody stakes their entire political career on a gambit to protect Hunter Biden from scrutiny. Even if what he did was illegal, and it wasn’t. It was unethical, for sure, but less unethical than the president asking foreign dignitaries to pay to stay at properties he owns. Not even close. So she’s gonna throw impeachment at Trump in order to protect Joe Biden. FFS. No. Just no.

The Ukraine is similar to Syria, in the sense that it’s difficult to know which reports to trust. To oversimplify: there is a Russian narrative and a US narrative . . . Obviously a host of others outside those camps have their own take.

Trump and his followers are supporting the Russian narrative, basically, knowingly or not. It says Russia is the good guy, trying its best to return the Ukraine to a democratic, corruption-free state, which the US forced on it. The US narrative is roughly the opposite. It says the US (with NATO support) worked to get rid of the Russian-backed, alt-fascist, highly corrupt government previously in place.

In one, the Bidens are opportunists/bad guys, who took advantage of US/bad guy geopolitics. The other says that Joe Biden actually helped remove a corrupt prosecutor, at the behest of the US and its NATO allies. In that narrative, the corrupt prosecutor wasn’t doing enough to root out corruption, and held off on investigating Burisma (Hunter’s employer).

Hunter Biden doesn’t look so good in either narrative, but much worse in the Russian-backed one. His father looks much better in one than the other, but by no means angelic in either.

wv wrote:

“…Trump may have withheld military aid to seek a probe into Biden, but it is hypocritically being framed by Democrats as an abuse of power out of the ordinary. But it is very much ordinary…”
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Well, I just dont get yall’s take on impeachment. Cuz if you agree with that quote up there, from the article up there, I just dont see how you can think Dems voting yes on Impeachment, and Reps voting no on Impeachment leads to…anything. I just dont see how any of it changes anything in today’s political landscape.

I mean read that quote slowly. Let the consequences of it sink in.

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This is just me, WV:

I don’t accept that quote as logical or right. I don’t think it’s a valid conclusion, given the premise. First off, it’s simply not the norm for a sitting president to use taxpayer dollars as bait, threat, carrot and stick to go after political opponents in the upcoming election. Second, the Dems aren’t responsible, now, today, for what other administrations have done in the past. Each new Congress, each new Executive branch, each new Judiciary, is responsible for their own actions, not those of others in prior times. I don’t believe in “sins of the fathers” other than in the sense that we should learn from them, show humility because of them, and work hard never to repeat them.

But “hypocrisy”? Naww. The Dems gets to focus entirely on Trump’s actions in the here and now, and they should not, ever, not ever, not even remotely, feel afraid to do so simply because previous regimes have acted in bad faith or worse. This is now. That was then.

Just my take.

I understand why some people don’t see the point of impeaching Trump when there’s little chance of him being removed from office.

Polls show that less than half of the country wants him to be impeached. The same was true for Clinton’s impeachment and it backfired on the Republicans. His approval rating shot up to 60% as a result. Impeachment could be the best thing that could happen to Trump.

wv wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

I understand why some people don’t see the point of impeaching Trump when there’s little chance of him being removed from office.

Polls show that less than half of the country wants him to be impeached. The same was true for Clinton’s impeachment and it backfired on the Republicans. His approval rating shot up to 60% as a result. Impeachment could be the best thing that could happen to Trump.

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Well, I cant imagine it changing one single solitary person’s mind about the situation. Thats the thing for me. People on Planet-MSNBC will cheer and people on Planet-Fox will jeer, and how will it change….anything?

The ‘symbolism’ wont mean anything except to the people who ‘already’ think he’s the devil. To the rest of the Nation it will just look like Dem-bullshit.

I dunno. I should shut up. Maybe my algebra is way off. Maybe I’m too influenced by all them rightwingers around me. They still blame Bill Clinton for everything 🙂

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Judging from the most recent polls, it looks like Americans have already changed their minds a bit. We’ve gone from a minority to a majority in favor of impeachment, and in one poll the question included “removal.”

Personally, I think the process will change minds. Not just centrist and conservative fence sitters. I have a feeling more than a few of our fellow leftists will reconsider things as well. Enough stuff has already come out to make it pretty obvious that Trump and his administration aren’t your run of the mill public trust abusers, and they’re a far bigger threat to the biosphere than previous regimes. They’re in another league, entirely, in fact. I mean, when has the EPA gone after a state (California) for having higher anti-pollution standards than the Feds? When has the Interior department given away two million recently protected acres to fossil fuel giants? Obama just protected them a few years ago, and now that’s all been reversed.

Trump is a tyrant and a danger to all of us. He needs to go. At worst, impeachment, even if it fails in the Senate, should act as a restraint of sorts on his worst impulses until he loses in 2020.

To me, it’s worth it just for that alone.

nittany ram wrote:

He won’t be the last president to try and take away a woman’s right to agency over her own body or deport brown skinned people who are simply looking for a better life, but I pray to Cthulhu he’s the last president to invite destruction of the last few pristine areas on earth by opening it up to his fossil fuel overlords.

Damm that was articulate. Nicely put.

So I have a slightly different take on the value of impeachment.

I completely understand (and agree with) wv’s fatalistic perspective that it doesn’t matter because it won’t change the system, and it’s quite possibly too late to do any good even we could change the system. And I understand Nittany and wv’s skepticism about this changing anybody’s mind. It won’t, at least in the sense that people aren’t going to change their party affiliation as a result. Ya know, Max Boot, and George Will, and Bill Kristol, and all those other famous assholes have repudiated Trump, but they aren’t exactly cancelling their subscriptions to National Review and subscribing to Current Affairs instead.

But as Billy pointed out, the support for impeachment has already risen. Historically, support for Nixon’s impeachment rose after the hearings began as well (and, in fact, the support for Nixon’s impeachment began with lower support than this impeachment proceeding started with).

Clinton’s situation was different, I think, because Clinton’s impeachment was a tempest in a teapot. The guy had sex with a consenting adult outside of marriage, and lied about it. It was probably abusive in a # MeToo sense, and Clinton is a pig. And he lied under oath. But I think most observers believed that the impeachment was unwarranted. Lying about having sex, even while under oath, is just not a threat to the State, especially when stacked up next to Nixon’s misdeeds.

Trump’s misdeeds exceed Nixon’s, and there is no question that they are far more damaging to the country, and far more deserving of impeachment than Clinton’s crime. I think you undersell the American public – which IS largely uninformed and apathetic about politics, etc. – if you think that distinction is lost on everybody. When the case is laid out, piece-by-piece, people are going to recognize the shape of Trump’s presidency, and understand that he has committed multiple impeachable offenses beyond the ordinary, and that he deserves reprimand. There are numerous actions that deserve impeachment in and of themselves, and the heft of the Articles will be damning. The situation is so bad, in fact, that privately a significant number of Republicans wish he was never born, or that the Kanamits would take him to visit their home planet.

The Senate probably will not convict him, but we are a long way from that vote hitting the floor. Given their history of party discipline, it would seem unlikely. But according to Jeff Flake, if the vote were held privately, Trump would be convicted. It is important to note that the GOP is a House Divided, in spite of their ability to stick together publicly…so far. So what’s stopping them from turning on Trump? Fear of voter reprisal. Well…a lot is going to happen between now and the time the Senate takes this up, and the circumstances of each senator are different, and the public’s attitude will take some turns between now and then. Still…it would take nearly half of the Republicans in the Senate to convict him. So if actually removing Trump from office is the standard for making this worthwhile, then…yeah…probably not happening.

But this is really more about the effect Impeachment has on the voters than it is about when Trump leaves office. And here is where Impeachment has value.

If the Democrats make a good case for Impeachment (and I don’t know how they can screw this up, honestly, even as ineffectual as they are in some respects. Donald Trump has been on a crime spree in broad daylight, and the evidence is overwhelming)…if they make a good case, voters WILL take it out on the GOP in 2020. If Trump is repudiated formally, especially if some Republicans break ranks to condemn him, it will demoralize the party, even many of the orcs. And demoralized orcs are less likely to vote. Furthermore, impeaching Trump will excite voters on the left, and increase their turnout in 2020.

And that matters a great deal. I believe that the district lines are redrawn after the 2020 elections, and that affects representation for the next decade. The more Democrats that get elected in 2020, the more the GOP will be marginalized. And that is important. These people want to stack the court with Ayn Rands, ban abortion, take away Medicare and Social Security, roll back environmental regulations, further undercut public education, take away pensions, food stamps, health insurance, safety protections…the whole thing. They have got to be weakened and outnumbered as much as possible. It won’t save the planet, but it will make a big difference in the quality of lives of millions of people.

Finally…and this may be the most important aspect of this so far…this Ukraine story, and the Impeachment hearings, have ALREADY created fractures within the right wing propaganda machine. FOX News has already had some fractures, and they are reportedly debating a Donald Trump exit strategy. That is gigantic. If there is any disarray in the mouthpieces, that will create disarray in the party. The value of that would be significant.

This will also demoralize the nazis. Impeaching Trump will lead to a surge in rhetoric, and maybe even violence from the orcs, but a successful Impeachment – especially if a clear majority of Americans support it along with some GOP politicians – will reduce their confidence and resolve. For all their big talk of a popular uprising and launch of the Race Wars, the nazis have historically largely sat on their asses waiting for somebody else to start it, so they can join. If their dream guy fails to lead them, they are going to be left standing there all dressed up for Halloween, and no party to go to.

Impeachment will not change the system, and it won’t change the political loyalties of Americans.

But it could shift the balance of power with significant consequences for the lives of millions of people.

Excellent post, Zooey.

I favor impeachment, as mentioned already. In fact, I was for it long before this call came out. I think the Dems should have begun the inquiry on Day One, after they took the majority. But they were too afraid to be aggressive and actually fight tyranny. It seems that now, with this call, and the whistleblower report, they just have no other choice.

Trump has committed more than enough to do this, from kids in cages, to moving funds appropriated for schools to build his racist wall instead, to his unprecedented roll backs of our already too weak environmental standards, etc. etc. He’s also broken the law several times via emoluments and obstruction of justice. Even though Mueller’s sad, awkward testimony basically ended that stream of inquiry, his report is clear about Trump’s lies and obstruction. At least ten examples of his and his administration’s breaking the law concerning that.

The list is endless of his abuses of power, his cabinet’s grifting, his own self-dealing, his nepotism, his wheeling and dealing to enrich himself and his kids, etc. etc.

America has actually never dealt with such breadth of corruption before. Yes, we have a history of shady politics and shady politicians that rivals the worst of the worst around the world. But Trump is sui generis when it comes to this, and no president, at least in the last 100 years, has been so brazen in enriching himself while in office. Others have at least had the decency to wait until they left.

;>)

Trump, if he stays out of jail, will do both, which will be a first in our history. Slashing his own taxes, using taxpayer dollars to cash in now, and then the usual book deals and speeches and media plans once he’s out, etc.

It’s time to take a stand against this, regardless of outcome.