Don't Impeach Trump!

While there is an ever-increasing clamor to Impeach Trump, I think its much better to beat him in 2020! Winning in 2020 has two big advantages:

• Reduced Republican backlash through legitimacy of an election
• Destruction of the Republican Party!

Impeaching Trump, by a vote in the House of Representatives would be nearly a slam dunk at this point and getting more likely each day. However, convicting and removal from office would require 20 Republican senators to vote against Trump. We are nowhere near that! Maybe after the Mueller Report comes out it will be more plausible. But even still, it would be better to wait for the 2020 election. Here's why:

Trump is going to run in 2020 and is very likely to get the nomination despite his dumpster fire of a presidency. The RNC is being incorporated into Trump's campaign. While Trump is growing more unpopular with the electorate as a whole, he still has an iron grip on the Republican base and especially Republican primary voters. Not only will they support Trump in the primaries, there will be a strong pull toward all Trumpian candidates up and down the Republican primary ticket.

So with Trump being unpopular and with the whole Republican party aligned with him, the whole party can be removed from offices across the country in one fell swoop, not just Trump! It will be a major repudiation of Trumpian politics that may finally break the tea-party fever that has infected the Republican party for a decade now. And we need a large scale take-over in 2020 to repair the damage to Democracy (gerrymandering and Supreme Court) and the planet!

Here's a New York Times article that makes some of the same points.

https://graphics8.nytimes.com/images...logo152x23.gif
What’s the Best Way to Dump Trump?
Impeachment is tempting. But there’s a stronger case for waiting for the 2020 election.

By Michael Tomasky - Contributing Opinion Writer
Jan. 13, 2019

Last weekend, a smart friend of mine raised an interesting question: Would political opponents of Donald Trump rather see him removed from office via impeachment and conviction, or would we rather see him voted out of office in 2020?

The question has the makings of a parlor game that could occupy the passions of anti-Trump Americans for months. Strong cases can be made for both sides of the argument. I come down on the side of the ballot box, and firmly so, because it has more historical authority and legitimacy — and for one other reason that I’ll reveal in a bit.

The impeachment side of the argument, though, isn’t to be dismissed out of hand...

Continues here

I can see the validity of your reasoning, Barry, but I can't shake the idea that the election could be tampered with again and the results skewed in favor of Trump. How much of the gerrymandering will be remedied before 2020? How secure will the voting machines be in every state?
I suppose if Trump gets re-elected, he can be impeached during his second term (god forbid).

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Posted in reply to the post by Barry:

While there is an ever-increasing clamor to Impeach Trump, I think its much better to beat him in 2020! Winning in 2020 has two big advantages:

• Reduced Republican backlash through legitimacy of an election
• Destruction of the Republican Party!

Impeaching Trump, by a vote in the House of Representatives would be nearly a slam dunk at this point and getting more likely each day. However, convicting and removal from office would require 20 Republican senators to vote against Trump. We are nowhere near that! Maybe after the Mueller Report comes out it will be more plausible. But even still, it would be better to wait for the 2020 election. Here's why:

Trump is going to run in 2020 and is very likely to get the nomination despite his dumpster fire of a presidency. The RNC is being incorporated into Trump's campaign. While Trump is growing more unpopular with the electorate as a whole, he still has an iron grip on the Republican base and especially Republican primary voters. Not only will they support Trump in the primaries, there will be a strong pull toward all Trumpian candidates up and down the Republican primary ticket.

So with Trump being unpopular and with the whole Republican party aligned with him, the whole party can be removed from offices across the country in one fell swoop, not just Trump! It will be a major repudiation of Trumpian politics that may finally break the tea-party fever that has infected the Republican party for a decade now. And we need a large scale take-over in 2020 to repair the damage to Democracy (gerrymandering and Supreme Court) and the planet!

Here's a New York Times article that makes some of the same points.

https://graphics8.nytimes.com/images...logo152x23.gif
What’s the Best Way to Dump Trump?
Impeachment is tempting. But there’s a stronger case for waiting for the 2020 election.

By Michael Tomasky - Contributing Opinion Writer
Jan. 13, 2019

Last weekend, a smart friend of mine raised an interesting question: Would political opponents of Donald Trump rather see him removed from office via impeachment and conviction, or would we rather see him voted out of office in 2020?

The question has the makings of a parlor game that could occupy the passions of anti-Trump Americans for months. Strong cases can be made for both sides of the argument. I come down on the side of the ballot box, and firmly so, because it has more historical authority and legitimacy — and for one other reason that I’ll reveal in a bit.

The impeachment side of the argument, though, isn’t to be dismissed out of hand...

Continues here

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How Voting-Machine Lobbyists Undermine the Democratic Process

By Sue Halpern
January 22, 2019

In the past decade, Election Systems & Software (E.S. & S.), the largest manufacturer of voting machines in the country, has routinely wined and dined a select group of state-election brass, which the company called an “advisory board,” offering them airfare on trips to places like Las Vegas and New York, upscale-hotel accommodations, and tickets to live events. Among the recipients of this largesse, according to an investigation by McClatchy published last year, was David Dove, the chief of staff to Georgia’s then secretary of state, Brian Kemp. Kemp, the new governor of Georgia, made news in the midterm elections for his efforts to keep people of colorfrom voting and for overseeing his own election. In March of 2017, when Dove attended an E.S. & S. junket in Las Vegas, Kemp’s office was in the market to replace the state’s entire inventory of voting machines. “It’s highly inappropriate for any election official to be accepting anything of value from a primary contractor,” Virginia Canter, the chief ethics officer at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told McClatchy. “It shocks the conscience.” (Kathy Rogers, E.S. & S.’s senior vice-president for governmental affairs, told McClatchy that there was nothing untoward about the advisory board, which she said has been “immensely valuable in providing customer feedback.”)

Earlier this month, Georgia’s Secure, Accessible & Fair Elections Commission voted to recommend that the state replace its touch-screen voting machines with newer, similarly vulnerable machines, which could be produced by E.S. & S. at an estimated cost of a hundred million dollars. In doing so, the panel rejected the advice of computer scientists and election-integrity advocates, who consider hand-marked ballots to be the “most reliable record of voter intent,” and also the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which recommended that all states adopt paper ballots and conduct post-election audits. The practice of democracy begins with casting votes; its integrity depends on the inclusivity of the franchise and the accurate recording of its will. Georgia turns out to be a prime example of how voting-system venders, in partnership with elected officials, can jeopardize the democratic process by influencing municipalities to buy proprietary, inscrutable voting devices that are infinitely less secure than paper-ballot systems that cost three times less.

continues here

Here is an argument for impeachment from The Atlantic (a good video made by the article's author)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=cv_39LBMsYg

Here's the full article:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...-trump/580468/

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Posted in reply to the post by wisewomn:

Here is an argument for impeachment from The Atlantic (a good video made by the article's author)

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Among the points the author makes is that it is worthy to impeach the president even if he is not convicted in the senate. I enthusiasticly disagree with this!

Would you please elaborate a bit on this, Barry? Thanks.

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Posted in reply to the post by Barry:

Among the points the author makes is that it is worthy to impeach the president even if he is not convicted in the senate. I enthusiasticly disagree with this!

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Posted in reply to the post by wisewomn:

Would you please elaborate a bit on this, Barry? Thanks.

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If Trump were impeached by the House but the Senate failed to convict him, it would be a catastrophe on many levels

• would tear country apart
• Trump supporters would feel vindicated
• and Trump would still be President!

Clinton's approval rating actually increased during the impeachment process

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Posted in reply to the post by Barry:

...Clinton's approval rating actually increased during the impeachment process

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Trump's no Clinton. It's also possible that the evidence presented will hurt Trump with many of his supporters, like the shutdown is now doing. Of course, the more rabid ones will stick with him and maybe get even more rabid -- that'll be an issue no matter how Trump leaves the scene.

But so much of what Trump is doing really is the Reagan platform on steroids. He's so incompetent that he's laying the seeds of its own destruction. I'm afraid that a more Machiavellian group would have avoided the public outrage and pushed much of the same agenda (or, in the case of impeachment, get a chance to engrain it deeper). If he's gone and the outrage is dampened, someone like Kasich (who's nowhere near as centrist as he presents himself) may take over in 2020 and put in more Supreme Court and other justices, etc. If they stop the egregious insults ("Mexicans are rapists") and visible things like locking up kids without any fig-leaf to cover it (which other administrations have gotten away with) they may well win again.

Sadly, to me the safer play is to let him stew and thrash around. If he does nuke North Korea, my theory goes to hell, though...

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Robert Redford: We must defend our democracy — and not by impeachment
By Robert Redford

January 24 at 4:35 PM

... But how do we, as citizens, fix this? Our most powerful tool is still the electoral process. We must not be distracted from the opportunity we have in 2020 to reject hatred and division and choose civility and progress. Let’s not talk about impeachment or put all our hopes on the special counsel: The former is mired in Washington politics, and the latter will be once the report is released. Let’s stay focused on taking back our country with the power of our votes. ...

Full article here