Almalieque wrote:
Just because a bunch people choose not to indict a President out of fear of losing their political standing in their party, doesn't make the action of the President equivalent to "jaywalking".
You're totally mixing up terms here. What the heck is up with our education system? An
indictment is when you choose to go forward with charges. That's equivalent to what happened in the House, not the Senate. You are correct that the house members likely were motivated by fear of losing their political standing, but that's not the issue we were talking about.
In the Senate, they are voting to remove from office, or
convict. Additionally, you're mixing up analogy with equivalence. I'm not saying that Trump alleged crimes are equivalent to jaywalking, but that the relationship between jaywalking and the penalty of death is analogous to the relationship between Trumps alleged crimes and the penalty of removal from office. In both cases, I'm arguing (and the GOP Senators made this same argument) that the crime is not severe enough to justify the punishment.
And at the risk of pointing this out for the fourth or fifth time. In a normal trial, you apply the sentence that fits the crime committed. So you'd never sentence someone to death for jaywalking. You'd convict them and sentence them to a small fine or something, right? But that only works for normal criminal trials. In an impeachment there is only one sentence: removal from office. So if the crime is not severe enough to justify that penalty, then no matter how much effort is spent proving the defendant guilty, it will not change the result. There's no point in convicting and then determining the sentence as two separate steps. You're simultaneously determining whether you think the person did what they are accused of *and* whether you think that action requires removal from office. Hence why there was no need for witnesses.
The House brought a stupidly weak impeachment to the Senate. Everyone knew it. The Senate sent a huge message of 'don't play these games again' to the House. Maybe they'll listen next time?
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So you didn't answer the question. If the President weren't popular with the base, you think the outcome would be the same? This is all political.
Because I'm rejecting your premise that the Senate Republicans voted based on how popular Trump was. You do get that it's possible to do something that benefits you or your party politically while also being the right thing to do, right? This was one of those cases. The case against Trump was so flimsy, so weak, that it did not warrant more than the barest minimum treatment required by law. Which is exactly what it got.
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Better yet, if this were a Democrat President, you think both parties wold vote the same way? You think Democrats would impeach a President Biden and the GOP would argue that the evidence isn't severe enough to warrant an indictment?
You have either have very muddled thinking or writing. Not sure which. Asking if they would vote "the same way", suggests that Dems would support the Democrat president, and GOP would oppose (ie: want to remove). Comparing how votes went among party lines in this one, but speculating that they should swap places with the dems voting to remove a dem president and the gop voting to not do so is just silly (and doesn't tell us anything about the votes in Trump's impeachment).
Having said that. When the Clinton impeachment happened, 5 democrats in the house did vote to impeach him. Ironically, the same number (5) of republicans voted against impeachment. That's just in charge 1. 28, 12, and 81 republicans voted against impeachment of Clinton on charges 2-4. 5 democrats voted for impeachment on chargest 1, 2, and 3, and just one voted for charge 4. So yeah, when it's a Democrat, things seem to be less perfectly partison.
Even in the Senate, while the Dems voted against removal at 100% (all 45 dems voted against it for both charges that passed the house, 10 republicans voted against removal on charge 1, and 5 voted against on charge 2.
So the suggestion, if we can arrive at one, is that when a Democrat is up for impeachment, the GOP is much more willing to not impeach and not confict than the Dems are when the situation is reversed. Both parties seemed more partisan this time around when it came to both the decisions. We can speculate endlessly about why, but that's what the data supports.
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Gbaji wrote:
This is pure speculation on your part. I suspect, driven by the bizarre concept of the purpose of impeachment that you expressed in your previous statement. Your cart is well ahead of your horse.
That's literally how politics work. Read above
Again though, that's your assumption. I don't accept that as truth. As I said above, it's possible to act in the best interests of your party *and* do the right thing. In this case, anyone not firmly planted in the "Trump is evil and must be removed by any means necessary" saw the impeachment charges as a complete joke from day one, and saw any effort to lengthen the proceedings as a waste of time. It was obvious what was going on, and the obvious counter was exactly what the GOP senate did.
That this helped their party's and their leader does not mean that they acted out of purely partisan reasons. Again, sometimes those things align. Heck, in an ideal world, where our political parties are acting in the best interest of the people, this should happen most of the time, right? If you do something that is the right thing, people should recognize it as that, and think highly of you and your party for doing that right thing.
It is interesting that increasingly, the Democrats have aligned themselves in such a way that what is good for their party is often *not* good for the people, and is *not* the "right thing to do". I'll point out what I've been saying for a decade or two now (and which is very relevant to what's going on today), that the Dems need people to feel angry, scared, hurt, oppressed, etc, so that they will reach out and vote for the Dems who promise to be "on their side". Of course, this means that they have to make sure that a good percentage of the people are either in those categories or feel sorry for those who are in order to win elections.
Which puts all the actions by Dems going on right now in perfect perspective. They're actually doing the kinds of things I predicted they would have to do in order to maintain power. Scary thing is that they almost have enough control over all forms of media to pull it off. Almost. I think that a lot of people are seeing through what's going on and are rejecting it. Wont be sure until election day though. So all of this stuff you're talking about, how X or Y may have impacted the election, I guess we'll just find out, right? I'll still say that while the GOP actions may happen to align politically, the Dem actions have been directly and entirely about politics and nothing else. No one would have gone forward with that impeachment if they didn't think that it would benefit them politically. You can't say the same about the folks who opposed it.