Someone asked me this evening what I think of the news. What news? I’m extremely happy that Mitt Romney had the courage to be the first senator to vote to impeach a president of his own party. He makes me proud to be an American.
Adam Schiff likewise, chose today to focus on the courageous statements and votes of Senators Joe Manchin, Doug Jones, and Kirsten Sinema rather than on the moral cowards in the Senate who acknowledged publicly that the ‘president’ was guilty but were voting no anyway, like Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Marco Rubio.
The sham acquittal is not news.
An acquittal with no witnesses is not an acquittal. We are learning how cowardly the modern Republican Party really is. They are literally guilty of encouraging a madman.
(Please check out the video the madman just released talking about staying in power until 2054.) In this video, he ridicules limits on his terms in office.
But many average Americans are STILL saying a pox on both houses. They still don’t get it. They don’t get what he’s doing.
Only one candidate has consistently emphasized the broad foreign policy context providing answers as to why election interference is being pursued by Russia, not just here, but around the world.
And in hard political reality, only one candidate has the ability to bring together both centrist Democrats and the black community into a strong coalition that has the likeliest chance of victory.
That candidate is Joe Biden.
doubleman says
I want a candidate who won’t continue the status quo that allowed for AND STILL EMPOWERS Trump. 2/3ds of Democratic senators (including Amy Klobuchar) are still voting yes on the majority of Trump judicial nominees. You cannot win while being a collaborator.
If we want to defeat Trump and Trumpism, we aren’t going to do it with the status quo. And a campaign built around the promise of taking us back to the time immediately preceding the Trump presidency has no plans for changing the conditions that empower Trump.
As we saw in Iowa, Biden does not have any kind of campaign infrastructure and team that one can rely on to wage a winning campaign. It’s almost disturbing how inept their campaign was there. They fell below viability in so many places. They almost finished fifth despite consistently polling a strong 1st and 2nd.
His support among black voters has been evaporating, and it has always been weak among the Latinx community.
With polling showing that ~90% of Dems will vote for any Dem, there is little evidence that regular Dem voters will abandon a leftist candidate. The idea that only a “unity” candidate who can bring Dems together can win is overstated from the evidence – regular Dems are all in against Trump. It’s the less regular voters who are more of an issue.
I’m skeptical that Bernie can bring in a large enough number of non-voters to achieve a commanding win, but his campaign, more than any other, shows some capacity to bring in new and excited voters (the share of young voters in Iowa was 24% this year compared to 22% in the record turnout year of 2008).
What it all comes down to is giving people something to vote FOR. That is not Joe Biden’s pitch.
Trickle up says
Terry is still in thrall to his own “electability” argument.
You can’t reason with that, it’s a religion.
terrymcginty says
Silly.
doubleman says
I like the callout of the story about some GOP operatives encouraging Republicans to vote for Sanders in the SC primary.
I’m old enough to remember many Democrats pushing Dems to do that in open primary states in 2016, but for Trump. Afterall, we all know that the greatest threat to Clinton in an election was Rubio . . . Cruz . . . Jeb!
terrymcginty says
“Collaboror”? I think you just made my point. Biden is a “collaborator” with Trump? Ok. (Far-fetched.)
SomervilleTom says
@terry & collaborator:
NO NO NO NO NO NO, a THOUSAND TIMES NO!
Terry, PLEASE slow down, read and THINK ABOUT comments before you respond.
Nobody called Joe Biden a Collaborator.
For your convenience, here’s the comment again. PLEASE re-read it slowly and carefully.
The alleged “collaborators” are the two thirds of Democratic senators — including candidate Amy Klobuchar — who are voting “yes” on Donald Trump’s judicial nominees.
That group doesn’t include Joe Biden. Mr. Biden is no longer in the Senate. He doesn’t have a vote on these nominations, he can’t possibly be a collaborator and doubleman didn’t say he was.
I don’t know how the comment can be disputed. Is there any data at all to suggest that these nominees are any more qualified and any less partisan that the long list of corrupt hacks that Mr. Trump has already offered up and that Senate democrats have already approved?
Mitch McConnell put up a brick wall against essentially ALL of Barack Obama’s nominees — creating the vacuum that the GOP is now filling. That happened while Joe Biden was Vice President. Will somebody please roll the clips of Joe Biden appearing on every news show that would have him demanding that the nominations be approved? Can somebody show me the relentless and courageous battles that Mr. Biden fought to put a stop to partisan nonsense? I ask because I don’t remember them.
I think “Collaborator” is exactly the right word. I started using that word in 2016 to describe the GOP elected officials who were enabling Donald Trump and his tyranny. That choice met with some opposition even here at BMG. I stand by my choice then.
I might choose a different word to describe these Democrats who continue to enable the Trumpist abuses (“spineless” and “clueless” come to mind), but I think “collaborator” is perfectly defensible.
And the comment is NOT about Joe Biden.
doubleman says
Yes. The Democrats in power voting for his judges, giving him his budgets, they are collaborators. They are not standing in firm opposition to him – they are literally giving him what he wants.
Joe Biden is giving every indication that he does plan to stand in true opposition to the forces that have given us Trump. He believes, naively, that beating Trump is the solution to the problems, and doesn’t understand that Trump is but a symptom of forces that need to be defeated.
Christopher says
Biden knows that better than anyone.
doubleman says
Obviously not if he keeps saying McConnell and the GOP are going to be normal and reasonable partners once Trump is gone.
doubleman says
correction: he does NOT plan to stand in true opposition.
Christopher says
If even 2/3 of Dems are voting to confirm judges I have to question if they are THAT bad. I’m also a bit cautious about “collaborator” since that for me evokes Vichy France thus possibly triggering Godwin.
SomervilleTom says
The judges are indeed “that bad”. The Democrats have said, in numerous places, why they are going along — the stated purpose is to defend against the criticism that Democrats are being “obstructionist”. That’s baloney.
“Godwin” is not a book of the bible. “Godwin’s law” is not part of any religious faith tradition.
The word “Collaborator” is explicitly intended to evoke Vichy France, in the same way that “Denier” is explicitly intended to invoke “Holocaust Denier”.
A mob of somethings yesterday voted to ignore overwhelming evidence of Donald Trump’s guilt and to strip the congress of ALL power to constrain the executive branch. One of the president’s defenders explicitly made that case, saying quite literally that if a President believes that his or her re-election is vital to national security then nothing that president does to advance his or her re-election is impeachable. The GOP Trumpists either supported or ignored that assertion.
In my view, “collaborators” is the best choice to replace “somethings” in the above paragraph. I can think of no other instance where an allegedly democratic government betrayed truth, reason, and morality for their own selfish gain.
Mr. Trump literally mimics Benito Mussolini in his speeches and public manner — his facial expressions, his habit of gripping the rostrum with one arm while turning sideways. His eagerness to lie as a matter of policy was first articulated by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf.
The point of “Godwin’s law” is avoid FALSE comparisons to Hitler and Nazi Germany.
Mike Godwin HIMSELF has written that he AGREES with comparisons between Trumpists and Nazis (emphasis mine):
That piece was from 2015, BEFORE Mr. Trump was elected president. Before the big lie, the propaganda, the concentration camps at the border and the war crimes against immigrants. Before the brown-shirts in Charlottesville. Before the mugging of reporters.
America is following a path blazed by Nazi Germany of the 1930s and by Adolf Hitler. The GOP Senate is betraying the founding principles of our republic for personal political gain just as the Reichstag betrayed the founding principles of the Weimar Republic for their own personal political gain in 1933.
This is history. Surely a vital purpose of history to help a society avoiding making the same mistakes similar societies have made in the past.
When you refuse to allow comparisons between what is happening in America today and what happened in Germany of the 1930s, I think you defeat the very purpose of history.
“Godwin’s law” is irrelevant to informed discussions of Donald Trump, Trumpists, and Donald Trump’s Senate Collaborators.