Via the Commander Guy, Jonah Goldberg has challenged Jon Chait to a bet: Goldberg collects $500 if Republicans take back the House but don’t impeach Obama, Chait collects if Republicans take back the House and do impeach Obama. Chait won’t take that bet bas another idea:
I don’t have $500 to throw around on the legal defense fund for people charged with vandalizing Woodrow Wilson’s grave, or whatever his favorite charity is, but consider the challenge accepted. If Obama wins a second term, and a GOP-controlled House has not impeached him by 2017, I will let Goldberg write an item on my blog explaining why I was wrong. I’d hope he’ll let me do the same on his blog if I’m right.
Oh, I also predict that said impeachment will be endorsed by Goldberg.
(Goldberg has some theory about how Wilson was responsible for Hitler.)
There are those who think it is childish, masturbatory, even nihilist to root for impeachment if Republicans take the House. They are wrong.
If Republicans take the House, they will undoubtedly do all sorts of destructive things: they will probably shut down the government, if not officially then for all intents and purposes, they will try to muck around with health care legislation — they probably won’t repeal it but don’t be surprised if they manage to fuck around in a way that deprives lots of Americans of access to health care. Most of these actions will be cheerfully heh-indeeded, not only by the right but probably by most of the Village as well. Impeachment, on the other hand, may be a bridge too far for many observers.
It’s the same reason I was happy to see O’Donnell win rather than Castle. It’s not just that O’Donnell will lose whereas Castle probably would have won, it’s that O’Donnell is portrayed as a lunatic, whereas Castle is portrayed a principled, serious centrist…even though, as Senators, they would likely vote exactly the same way on everything. With O’Donnell, at least, what you see is what you get.
A Republican Congress will be a disaster. It should be a laughingstock too.
Update. This from Rude Pundit (via The Impolitic) gets at what I mean about the faux seriousness of Snowe, Castle, etc.:
Now, we get Republicans who are pretending to behave honorably. Olympia Snowe said yesterday, “Frankly we haven’t done our jobs well here in Washington and that disturbs me. There’s all this partisanship and polarization, and ultimately it yields two outcomes: either scorched-earth victory for one side or political stagnation.” No shit. And who was it that negotiated in bad faith over the health care bill? Oh, yeah. Olympia Snowe.
I hope that teatardism makes it increasingly hard for Republicans to keep up the pretense of behaving honorably.
gbear
I’m not laughing.
snabby
That is exactly so. Hadn’t thought about it in those terms before, but it’s true. With any vote with any controversy, you can count on every fucking repuke to vote with the party, along of course with Independent Democrat Holy Fucking Joe.
Yutsano
The fact that they blithely consider this a legitimate political tactic without regard to the real world implications for Americans means that I hope this scenario doesn’t come to pass. I think there may be some stunned folks come November 3rd, but the aftermath won’t be good for the country regardless.
kwAwk
Well, the next two years should be fun.
So I’m guessing you don’t share David Axelrod’s view that a Republican held congress will result in a Republican Party that is more willing to come to the table and negotiate?
Jewish Steel
The greater distance a popular president can put between himself and a thoroughly unpopular institution, the happier he will be come 2012 I think.
El Tiburon
No, this country is a laughingstock. We just barely survived eight years of disastrous republican rule and we may vote them back in power.
We are a joke, myself included. And most of you.
Sure, we come to this blog and note our disgust and frustration and dismay. And we give a little to this candidate or that candidate.
Yet we just lived through the invasion and occupation of two nations; the state-sponsored torture and murder of human lives; we face imminent destruction by global warming; the rich continue to get richer and the poor poorer. Most of our politicians are bought and paid for.
Our citizens die because they can’t afford medical care. Our govern ment targets US citizens for death without due process and have Terminator drones drop bombs from the sky that kill children.
Yet we do nothing. The streets should be filled day and night – every man woman and child should be out protesting the horrors done in our name.
Yet we cheer for a bullshit HCR. We cheer because a wise Latina is on the Court. We are the problem, not the Republicans. We The People. Where is our Boston Tea Party? Where is the fucking outrage?
History will not judge us kindly.
Everyone of us is failing our children and grandchildren.
calipygian
Agree about O’Donnell. Senator Castle just would have taken away the keys to the White House away from President Snowe.
WereBear (itouch)
I believe the Republicans turned the solemn tool of impeachment into a partisan party trick to deligitimize it.
They are slime.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t think I’ve seen even one liberal pundit (of the MSM Bigfoot variety) make this very simple observation.
Now that I think of it, has the O’Donnell/Angle/Buck insurgency produced even a quarter of the Deep Concern that wild-eyed Ned Lamont, of Greenwich-J.P. Morgan wing of the Trotskyiste Yippie Party, produced among the Sages of the Green Rooms?
bemused
I’m not laughing either. It might finally prove to the wishy washy erratic voting segment that the current R party is a disaster for them but the pain we will have to go through is too much for me to think about. The remaining 15% to 25% will always remain stubbornly delusional and hysterically blame liberals for anything and everything. Those with violent tendencies will feel like they are getting a green light to act on those tendencies when R legislators start to witch hunt in earnest.
I’ve got that glass is almost empty feeling today.
quaint irene
And they’ll still find a way to blame the Democrats for it all.
BR
DougJ – isn’t this a conditional statement? You’re pro-impeachment only if GOPers take over the house.
My hope is that Dems hang on to the house, Obama replaces Geithner with someone who’ll take it to the banks, puts Chu on TV to explain his braniacs-on-the-nerd-patrol plan for dealing with peak oil and its consequences, and turns this shit around on a dime.
As many wise folks have said, our greatest presidents weren’t all that great when they entered, or even right away, but once the crisis was apparent to them, they made the right choices.
Scott
Impeachment isn’t a good thing, but if the Repubs get a majority, it’s a stone-cold certainty. So as long as I can’t prevent it, I’m at least gonna make sure my Mockin’ Kazoo is tuned up and ready to play.
RSR
I guess the question is whether the time and energy spent on impeachment would be better spent otherwise? Letting today’s GOP run the house could certainly result in things more corrosive than an ultimately destined to fail impeachment charge.
The more time they waste on impeaching Obama is less time they have to screw ordinary citizens.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
On topic, I doubt they’ll go for impeachment. I think this crew, Boehner et al, are much more pragmatic and grounded than Gingrich, who probably thought he could impeach his way to the Oval Office, and the (I firmly believe) pathological Tom Delay. They’ll keep harping on tax cuts and reckless spending, and leave the nut-wing maintenance to Goehmert and Bachmann and the like. The leadership will keep everything at a simmer, where they have Broder and Gregory and the NYT ominously intoning about serious questions that lots of people are asking about this much smoke must mean there’s some fire somewhere.
BR
@RSR:
Never thought of it that way, but man is that sad and true.
Stooleo
Is this the new bug/feature of the GOP? Are they going to impeach every Democratic president from now on? And seriously, what the fuck has Obama done to warrant impeachment? It’s not like he started a war on false pretenses.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@BR:
Yes, I don’t want them to take the House, of course.
Charles
I half agree with El Tiburon. The Republican people are the problem.
Look: a quarter of the American electorate is too poor and therefore too consumed with the business of survival to pay much attention. For that matter, most of the middle class is working, not 9 to 5, but 7 to 7 with the commute, Saturdays included. Americans work more hours– when they can get work–than any industrialized nation.
Then there’s the information problem. Almost all of the American electorate gets most of its news from one of the six media conglomerates, their subsidiaries, or other poisoned wells, like UPI, Drudge, etc. All too many of the Congress do too. When there was a coup in Honduras, one in which American hands were evident, I could only find about half a dozen English-language sites–blogs, mostly, and a couple of non-profits– covering the issue on anything resembling a regular basis. The mainstream media were filled with blatant falsehoods. It fell to Forbes magazine (of all places) to quietly correct the record almost six months too late. Even on DKos, it was covered sporadically, with coup Astroturfers almost equaling those of us who support Honduran and international law.
Why should any American be expected to know that his/her government is involved in overthrowing a friendly leader if the media lie about it in the offchance they cover it at all?
And, while Honduras is not exactly a front-burner issue for most Americans, the same pattern of desultory coverage, laced with lies, characterizes media coverage of even major issues, like healthcare reform.
No, the first American Republic ended years ago; the 2000 election was its coup de grâce. Republicans wounded it, Republicans killed it. Blame Republicans, and blame Democratic leaders for not saying this out loud. But the weary American people?
MikeJ
@Stooleo:
PWB
Gus diZerega
Perhaps an impeachment will finally bring home to the fraud in the White House that he would have been better off being nice to the people who supported him rather than ignoring them, criticizing them, kicking them in the teeth, and then pontificating about bipartisanship.
I only wish the other stakes were not so high.
Davis X. Machina
A joke impeachment actually serves the GOP better than an effort in earnest, and we have already seen this play out. It’s inoculation, for The Next Time.
If you make impeachment a joke, instead of the ultimate constitutional sanction it is, then when it is actually needed, the Villagers will stroke their collective beards — I don’t think Mara Liasson has a beard — and tut-tut-pooh-pooh it all away.
When we needed the impeachment tool the most — Bush II — it had just recently been made a laughingstock.
If the GOP take the House, they will proceed with impeachment. It’ll get out of the House with 15-20 Democratic votes — and they won’t all be Blue Dogs, either — there will be a sprinkling of ‘principled-left’ votes in there, too. (See the preceding post, e.g.) But it will die in the Senate.
And come 2017, the Republican then-president can do damn near anything, knowing that any attempt to sanction him or her will be met with snickers, and eye-rolling.
If I were Boehner, I’d move to impeach immediately, not on birther shit, or the ACA, or campaign finance irregularities, but instead using Bagram, Gitmo, rendition, and other civil-liberties and war-crimes charges. It would take enormous gall, and hypocrisy almost beyond belief — we’re talking the GOP here, though.
But that would put a lot of Democrats in a cleft stick. (See the preceding post, e.g.) Either Obama’s a war criminal, or he isn’t.
BR
@Davis X. Machina:
Damn, that’s dark. I need to go do something else – this thread is too depressing for the true things it says about the state of our country.
Emerald
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Hope you’re right, but think you’re wrong.
The Rs will have no choice but to impeach. The Teatardists will insist, just as they nominated the crazies instead of the Leader-approved “centrists” like Castle. My congressman Crazy Issa will insist. (My apologies from my district.)
But I kinda agree with DougJ (and Bill Clinton, btw) that impeachment will be a joke, even though the M$M will push it as hard as they can. The first time is tragedy, the second is farce, etc.
The real problem is the government shut-down, even if not official. They will do everything they can to stop the recovery and throw more people out of their jobs (keep the economy bad, blame Obama, win in 2012–it’s been good politics so far).
Millions of people will be hurt, some will die without medical care.
Davis X. Machina
@BR: Chalk it up to a lifetime spent studying the last two generations of Republican Rome. And half-a-lifetime with the Jesuits.
I’ll take the inherent depravity of man, and lay the points, every time. Mankind may win in the end, but it never covers the spread.
geg6
One consequence of impeachment will be the radicalization of African Americans, I believe. They will be incensed if my discussion of this with friends is any indication. They felt that the prosecution of Clinton was a personal affront and I can’t imagine how they will take it if squeaky clean Obama is impeached. Hell, I’ll probably be right there beside them, screaming in the streets. I have a very bad feeling about this. I cannot be as sanguine as so many here seem to be. This could tear the country apart.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Emerald: I hope I’m wrong and you and DougJ are right. I think the scenario I laid out would advance their (non) agenda more. Something as dramatic as impeachment (or Katrina, or the three thousandth US casualty in Iraq while OBL continues to release video tapes) is the only thing that catapults the Village smoke machine and breaks through to the low-info voters who think gov’t spending somehow tanked the economy.
Did Bill Clinton speculate on a coming Impeachment? I missed that.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@geg6:
It’s already been torn apart. This would just make it more obvious.
Gus diZerega
The right wing has already torn the country apart.
El Tiburon
@Charles:
Yes, the poor, weary American people. Not the politicians. They are only doing what we allow them to do.
I don’t blame my stupid dog for chewing up my leather shoes. I left them out.
The people are not stupid .. They know what is happening.
We are just too fat and lazy to get involved. Don’t want to be THAT guy causing a scene. We don’t want to be caught on the TV news. We revolt and talk big game here – behind silly and nonsensical pseudonyms, but that is it.
We are not doing anything to change anything.
geg6
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
There’s something a bit too nihilistic in your pro-impeachment stance for me. Perhaps it’s my age or my soft liberal heart, but I don’t want to watch our cities burn again. I saw this play once back in 1968, I don’t know if I can watch it again. It’s all just too sad that the best we can hope for is that they impeach Obama. I just can’t buy into it.
asiangrrlMN
You know, I can’t laugh because the people who will suffer most for this is the people who can least afford it. This may play out well for 2012, but so many will be destroyed in the meantime.
And, I’m tired of the whiners saying it’s alllll Obama’s fault, anyway. Or ours. Or whatever. We can each only do so much. The system is broken, and the fucking Republicans are only all-too-willing to break it completely. Let’s put the blame where it mostly belongs.
@geg6: Yes. What you say. Too many people will not recover if the Republicans take over and get their way (including impeachment).
fasteddie9318
@Davis X. Machina:
That’s brilliant, too brilliant for Boehner to think up. If there’s going to be an impeachment, though, that’s the one I’d like to see. It would elevate those offenses back to the level they should have been at when the Democrats declined to impeach Bush, and it would serve the Democrats right for not pursuing Bush and then continuing his policies. The political backlash against the Republicans, coming from those against impeachment as well as teatards smart enough to figure out that he’s impeaching Obama for stuff they actually agree with instead of for PWB, will serve them right too.
Plus, as geg6 says, this would probably hasten the tearing apart of the country, which I don’t see as necessarily a bad thing they way he does. Is it better for this country to slowly circle the drain or to quickly hit rock bottom? Clearly we haven’t hit bottom yet.
Gus diZerega
It’s not all Obama’s fault. The party of right wing nihilism is more to blame. But he was put into a position to make a big difference based on his promises, and did not much try.
Scott
@El Tiburon:
We are just too fat and lazy to get involved. Don’t want to be THAT guy causing a scene. We don’t want to be caught on the TV news. We revolt and talk big game here – behind silly and nonsensical pseudonyms, but that is it.
Says the guy talking big game from behind a nonsensical pseudonym…
I blame the public for plenty, but not for everything. The fact is, they have no way to know what’s going on if they get their news from the networks or the newspapers — they’re spoonfed lies, and they don’t know that they’re lies.
Blaming the public for believing the scams put out by skillful liars is blaming the victim.
Silver
@Stooleo:
I’d argue that you could make a case for it on the grounds of civil liberties violations. Along with every other President in my lifetime, of course.
Since the GOP’s stance is that we don’t do enough violatin’ of civil liberties, I doubt they’ll try to make that case. You never know though, stupid surprises sometimes.
Sly
@bemused:
Won’t happen. Representative government, especially the way we have it set up, ensures two things:
1) The organic creation of a political class responsible for crafting and implementing government policy.
2) That the electorate will have too much shit to do to reasonably pay attention or understand what that political class is saying/doing. This is further exacerbated by a lack of understanding on the part of the electorate of how our political institutions function.
The result is widespread political fraud that, in my opinion, is impossible to combat. The reason why moderates throw up their hands and rely on false equivalences between the parties is because it is, quite literally, the least they can do. Everything else takes time or money.
Incidentally, this is why journalists don’t do policy either.
JPL
If the Republicans win back the house, they will just have more time to spout their lies. If they had the Senate, if they had the Presidency………blah, blah, blah.
Davis X. Machina
@Sly: Specialization of labor is inevitable as soon as your society is bigger than a small village — there have been politicians ever since.
Since there’s no way to have no one a politician, you have to keep dragging society, against its will, away from the couch and towards the opposite extreme — a place where everyone is a politician.
This, and not soul-sucking, to-the-bottom-racing, mad reduction of everything to jobs training, is where education should be aimed.
Would that all the Lord’s people were
prophetspoliticians.El Tiburon
@Scott:
Guilty as charged. I am a coward. I am too comfortable with my plasma screens and cushy job. I don’t want to be THAT guy.
Don’t know how to break this to you, but YOU are them public. YOU know about the wars and the torture and the murder. What are YOU doing about it?
This is the biggest bunch of bullshit I have ever read on this blog. Now being ignorant is the same as being a victim.
El Tiburon
@Scott:
Guilty as charged. I am a coward. I am too comfortable with my plasma screens and cushy job. I don’t want to be THAT guy.
Don’t know how to break this to you, but YOU are them public. YOU know about the wars and the torture and the murder. What are YOU doing about it?
This is the biggest bunch of bullshit I have ever read on this blog. Now being ignorant is the same as being a victim.
Emerald
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, Clinton said that if the Rs impeached Obama, it would help Obama with re-election.
Ouish
Meanwhile, an impeachment scenario has already bubbled to the surface of the fever swamp:
http://revolutionradio.org/?p=7140
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2010/3740lar_invoke_25amendment.html (and never mind the irony of Lyndon LaRouche callng Barack Obama mentally unstable.)
Free Republic is all over it.
Sly
@Davis X. Machina:
Agreed.
Thinking of ways to reliably get from A to B is where people have generally had trouble. Try telling someone with a mortgage to pay and three kids to provide for that they should become a local precinct captain if they don’t like the direction their local party has been heading, and you’ll see what I mean.
Even getting politically active people to learn more about their political institutions is exceptionally difficult, considering the general lack of knowledge involved.
JPL
@Ouish: Barack Obama mentally unstable.) Free Republic is all over it.
Is there a new definition for mentally unstable that I missed or this a new episode of the Twilight Zone?
Davis X. Machina
@Sly: This is why, or is supposed to be why, we have schools. Let the damned corporations train their own workforce….
R-Jud
@Davis X. Machina:
I don’t have quotes to hand– I’m busy waiting for something to print– but I seem to remember that one of the founders (Jefferson?) put this very thing forward as a rationale for public education: ensuring that citizens would have sufficient understanding to participate in the system, whether as representatives or voters.
MattF
I think it’ll be interesting to see how the Serious People react to impeachment. I honestly don’t know what, e.g., Broder would say. But there’s no doubt whatsoever that Chait is right about Goldberg supporting it.
Davis X. Machina
@R-Jud: It’s hard to justify the public expense otherwise….
Scott
@JPL: Free Republic’s definition of “mental stability” is quite a bit different from what everyone else’s is…
ksmiami
I just gave 100.00 to team blue. This election is too important to let the crazies win. Just cause I have been busy, does not mean I have been asleep. There really is only one choice at the present time unless you want the country to collapse.
Sly
@Davis X. Machina:
Corporate demands don’t necessarily drive the secondary (and increasingly the primary) school system. College admissions, however, do. Schools have become factories for producing college admissions resumes because thats what parents demand that they be. The absolute worst thing you can do as a teacher (that won’t get you arrested) is tell parents that sending their child to a four-year private college is a colossal waste of money.
pablo
I think someone has to say this…and it falls to me.
Olympia Snowe, you are a piece of pompous whale shit, and your verbally challenged friend Susan Collins are an embarrassment to those fine upstanding citizen of the state of Maine (wrongheaded as they may be).
I’ve got my Delta ticket to DC…Here is the sign I would hoist, if I would pay the extra $15 baggage charge.
eemom
ok, I’ve officially lost track. Is the “pro-impeachment” meme supposed to be gallows aka dark “humor” or serious political strategy at this point?
Because it seems to me that it’s morphed from sick joke to incoherence in the course of the increasingly bizarre insistence on justifying why people who ostensibly support justice and the rule of law are cheerleading something that would be an obscene perversion of both.
cathyx
Can you imagine Obama getting impeached but Bush/Cheney not? What a country.
parsimon
@Stooleo:
I’m pretty stuck on that question as well.
@Davis X. Machina:
Eh, I’m not seeing this. I’m not seeing any remotely viable case for impeachment.
Anya
DougJ, I am really concerned about this obsession with the hypothetical pending impeachment of the President by a Republican led House. I think these discussions normalize the act and desensitize the public to a serious matter. People should stop this. You should stop this.
Davis X. Machina
@Sly: The best schools, yes, in prosperous communities, yes. But I teach in a mill town — it’s jobs, jobs, jobs. And community college for all. Laudable goal, but it’s still training, not education. And our best students go private, because community college is not what they’re aiming at.
martha
I am now objectively suicidal. I just saw our future in WI and it scares the living hell out of me. Our rethug candidate for Gov is the complete package–cut taxes, eliminate all new industry in state that involves science (stem cells oh no!), cancel high speed rail to connect us with Chicago, etc. Until now, he’s kept arms length from the Lt. Gov candidate who is a poor woman’s Sarah Palin. Well, she was a TV newscaster. Her ads blasting “socialized medicine” fail to mention that the wonderful healthcare she recently received for her cancer (which she kept from the voters until after she won the primary) was paid for by we the taxpayers, since her husband is a assemblyman and is on the state dole. Anyway, just saw the first ad with the two of them together!!!! AAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH. Just kill me now.
I’ll be sending Tom Barrett, the Dem candidate for governor and truly an excellent choice, as much money as I can, right now. OMG. I think I’m going to hyperventilate.
Suffern ACE
@MattF: Broder would think it was a great thing that will force the President to work in a bi-partisan way. Or a suitable punishment for thinking that the Democrats should have different policies and interests from Republicans that aren’t resolved by doing whatever Republicans want.
Mnemosyne
@ksmiami:
As you can see in this very thread, there are people on the left who are cheerleading for exactly that. Of course, since they couldn’t be bothered to help prevent the collapse, they’re not going to get off their asses to help rebuild once the collapse happens, either. They’re just going to stand around saying, “See? I told you this would happen. Why are you picking up that rubble? There’s no point to rebuilding.”
MattF
@eemom
The proposition is that if Republicans take over the House, then there’s a good possibility of impeachment. Perversion of justice, law, etc,… sure, obviously. And I agree, fwiw, that ‘worse is better’ is always a bad, stupid, evil argument.
The question is, however, would it be a political mistake– and if so, how big a mistake. On this, I agree with what I think DougJ is saying, that it would be a huge mistake.
JPL
@Mnemosyne: If the republicans win, they will try to push through more tax cuts. The only way they can afford tax cuts for the millionaires and billionaires is to close down safety nets i.e. social security.
The time to fight is now.
parsimon
@Anya: I have to agree. This isn’t theater, after all.
fasteddie9318
@Mnemosyne:
I’m not saying we shouldn’t keep trying, but I’m starting to doubt that there’s much to be gained from rebuilding as long as the teahadists and their Republican dogs are around to turn it all back into rubble again.
bemused
@Sly:
That was cheering. I feel so much better now!
Really, it’s a wonder that we have any semblance of democracy left at all. I’m probably kidding myself about that too.
eemom
Are you also in favor of charging random innocent people with crimes as a “what the hell, it’s worth a shot” method at restoring sanity to this mess of a country?
I mean, making a mockery of the entire criminal justice process would have to sink in to the low-informed eventually too, right? Maybe even faster than some high-falutin noise about that black feller in the White House doin “high crimes and misdemeanors” or such.
Mnemosyne
@JPL:
Oh, I completely agree with you. I’m tired of the manic progressives who want to watch everything collapse without lifting a finger because that would totally prove they were right.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Impeachment is a political act. Anything that a majority in the House considers to be an impeachable act is an impeachable act. It may not be something you or I agree with but that simply does not matter.
Sly
@Davis X. Machina:
Which doesn’t really negate my point. What fundamentally drives primary and secondary schooling are the demands of parents. Whether those demands entail getting into a four-year college program, a two-year CC program, or a job after high school, it’s all pretty much the same. And success in a college program or career is not even important. If it was, then a high number of students would be graduating high school with the requisite skill sets and we’d see a much lower attrition rate in college and early careers.
The reason we don’t see this is because the process is geared toward getting them that spot in a college program or in a job. Help them get a foot in the door, and not really care what happens afterwards. The result is schools (at least in my state) that advertise far and wide their college acceptance rates, but don’t track college graduation rates. They don’t track that data because the process has made it unimportant.
You hate this fact, and I hate this fact: A robust civics education, beyond basic information (three branches of government, etc) will never be part of the secondary curriculum unless it is forced from the outside. And no outside agent has an incentive to force this. If they can’t even force change where they have an incentive to do so, how can anyone reasonably expect that they’ll force change where they don’t have an incentive?
eemom
@MattF:
Yes, and if there’s one thing recent history has taught us, it’s that republicans always end up paying the price for their political mistakes, right?
Enuff. There are some heads around here that have gotten so far up their asses they’ve forgotten what daylight looks like.
Anya
@parsimon: What bothers me is that the discussion does not centre on showing the republican’s lack of an agenda and their craven abdication of any moral duty, but its “look at my clever scenario!”
Davis X. Machina
@Anya: Not normalizing it, not at all. Getting the talk out there is a form of pre-emption.
They’ve already got the GOP, more money than God, most of the media, and an enraged — and engorged — segment of the electorate.
I don’t think conceding them in advance the element of surprise, which confers the political-theater virtue of novelty, makes them weaker.
ksmiami
Seriously – fight like hell against the weak-minded, the bigots, the paranoid and delusional and wake up to the amount of damage these morons do every time they are in office. Since the 80s they have two mantras: Break the US, kill the poor and help only the rich. They want us to look like Somalia and I say we send them there!
ksmiami
oh and did I mention that I.hate.the.Repukes.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
Are you fucking kidding me? The fact that a “majority” agrees that something is a “high crime or misdemeanor” makes it one? What is the trial for, then?
geg6
@Mnemosyne:
I agree also. I put the manic left in the very same category as the Teabaggers. Maybe even worse, because I don’t believe that they are nearly as stupid as Teabaggers, intellectually speaking. But they are just as selfish and venal and cruel. They don’t care about others, only about “winning” their issues. It’s disgusting. Myself, I’m an old school liberal, willing to be patient with incremental change that furthers the well being of the people. I don’t have to have everything at once to feel progress is being made. I do believe that over the course of history, real permanent chage has usualy come over time.
Citizen Alan
@BR:
My hope is that I gain the mutant superpower to shit gold bullion and use my sudden wealth to flee the country, which I think is a more realistic hope than yours. I find it fantastically unlikely that the Republicans would even allow Obama to replace Timmah with someone who would “take it to the banks” even in the incredibly unlikely even that Obama wished to nominate such a person. By all accounts, he is perfectly happy with Timmah’s performance and has no interest in going in a different direction. And not even in my wildest fantasies can I imagine Obama publicly talking about peak oil and his plans for dealing with it unless he’s talking about how it’s going to start next Thursday and he’s speaking from Air Force One as he flees the country.
He’s had more than two years to recognize that this country faces existential threats to its very future as a democracy. His primary response has been to seek bipartisan agreement with those threats which have only worsened the danger they pose.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Impeachment happens in the House. A trial in the Senate follows. In effect, if the House votes articles of impeachment, that’s all it takes. There are a shitload of law review articles discussing what properly constitutes “high crimes and misdemeanors” based on Anglo-American legal history, but they pretty much agree that their definitions don’t really matter.
Citizen Alan
@Stooleo:
Yes. SATSQ.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: Andrew Johnson called. He apparently has an opinion on this matter. The very first impeachment in fact was completely a political ploy by the Republicans because Johnson fought Reconstruction tooth and nail. But even with a Republican Senate he still wasn’t convicted.
Sly
@geg6:
Their heart is in the right place. Head? Eh.
The beginning of wisdom is the acknowledgement of ignorance. I’ve seen way too many people on the left issue proclamations in the vein of “Obama/Democrats should do X/Y/Z, and if they don’t do X/Y/Z they don’t care about what I care about” without even doing the minimal amount of research to determine whether X/Y/Z would either be legal or effective (or both), that it has caused me to doubt the intelligence of various leftists on a daily basis.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: That’s pretty much my point.
ETA: Thank you for the historical example
geg6
I must say how discouraging I find it to be that people on my own team are just as crazy as the enemy.
fasteddie9318
@geg6:
There’s nothing wrong with incremental change, but there’s an entire political movement out there dedicated to taking the country off a cliff and an electorate too uninformed/bamboozled/lazy/stupid (take your pick, they’ve all been suggested in this very thread) to stop them. I confess to starting to feel a little as though nothing is going to get better, incremental or not, until this country hits bottom and these fuckers are finally exposed for what they are. I’m not rooting for it, I’m working against it, but I am, just a little, starting to wonder if anything can really improve until it happens.
Davis X. Machina
@eemom:
@Omnes Omnibus:
Then-GOP House Minority Leader Gerald Ford, on the impeachment standard, 1970:
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: I was backing you up. I realized after I was done it could be interpreted the other way. The point I made is still valid, impeachment has been abused in the past by those who supposedly had more restraint. In the Oompa Loompa’s grimy paws it will be a constant screech fest.
Fwiffo
The Chamber of Commerce foreign money attack must be working – the Washington Post just published Democrats do it TOO! article.
parsimon
@eemom:
Right, there does actually have to be a case made for impeachment. We don’t really do a mere lack of confidence, “throw the bums out” deposing in this country. That’s not to say that you can’t muck things up quite a bit, tie the executive’s hands for a while, by making shit up initially, but you have to make a case for proceeding, and I’m not seeing where they’d get that from.
DougJ? Perhaps this has been covered by others elsewhere (I frankly ignore any dialogue involving Jonah Goldberg).
ETA: I hadn’t seen Omnes Omnibus’ comment before posting.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: I understood.
John Bird
Here’s my theory: without the revolution of public administration under Wilson, it’s possible that we would have lost World War II, as Germany was decades ahead of us in that element of statecraft.
The Manhattan Project is another program that simply wouldn’t have been possible without a robust public administration. Apollo is another. And so on.
Anya
@Davis X. Machina: In that case they should take on the Republicans who are promising impeachment and endless investigation. That might actually drive the base to the polls, and no I don’t mean the firebaggers.Instead, they’re perusing fantasy scenarios.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
36 years ago when I was 12, it was an agonizing thing for everyone involved to impeach a president, even where it was pretty fucking obvious that “high crimes and misdemeanors” had been committed in droves.
12 years ago when I was 36, there was a single, technical “crime” of perjury at issue — and even then, there was at least very, very hot debate of whether that rose to the level of “high crimes or misdemeanors,” with pretty much everyone who did not have a political agenda agreeing that it didn’t.
Now, in 2010, you are telling me that just because the phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” has never been solidly defined, that means anything fucking goes, and it has become perfectly acceptable to use “impeachment” — which, as noted above, was not so long ago universally understood to be a huge and horrible thing to have to do even if it was justified — as a political ploy by a corrupt majority? That it’s perfectly legitimate for that to happen, and there’s nothing we can do about it?
Fuck. That.
Martin
@BR: The problem with taking on the banks is the same problem we faced with healthcare. Had we tried to do HCR in the face of a health crisis – an epidemic, something like that, the result would have been wildly different. It would have massively favored doctors and hospitals, because we would desperately need doctors and hospitals in a crisis, at the expense of all other players.
The only way you get meaningful reform is when you do it not during a crisis. Of course, if it’s not a crisis then everyone is free to fight against it out of partisan interests. That’s why it was rather remarkable that ACA passed at all.
The mortgage situation will be an interesting test of the new finreg legislation. When the pension funds sue the everloving shit out of the lenders, and when the courts starve the banks of income by slowing the foreclosure rates to zero, will the government really follow through with paying off the creditors and letting the executives and investors twist in the wind? I think they actually will.
Citizen Alan
@El Tiburon:
Well why are people ignorant? Realistically, there are only two ways for an ignorant person to learn: formal education and self-education through the media. The right wing elites have made the destruction of our educational system a priority for the better part of a hundred years and at the same time, they’ve been buying up every media outlet and converting them into propaganda organs. Today, people who watch Jon Stewart are better informed on current events than people who read mainstream newspapers regularly, and people who just watch Faux News are less informed than people who don’t follow the news at all and just guess!
You mock the idea that being ignorant is the same as being a victim, but the truth is that ignorance has been deliberately foisted on the American people for generations with the express goal of victimizing them, and that effort has been so successful that most people in the lower classes now believe that any attempt by government to improve their lives represents an attempt by “evil soshulists” to enslave them.
Violet
@eemom:
What exactly could we do about it? The House and the Senate are the ones who get to decide and move forward on impeachment. What can an average citizen do? Sure, we can phone and protest, etc. But in the end, the House and the Senate make the decision on whether to vote on impeachment, or not. And if so, how to vote. We can only watch.
It’s not necessarily right and just, but that’s how it works legally. As I’m constantly reminded, the law and justice are two different things.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: The reason for the change in the standard is that the Republicans are amoral fucks. Nevertheless, I am correct about the legal standard.
Davis X. Machina
@eemom:
Your problem is with that passive voice — particular and specific people made it acceptable to use impeachment as a political ploy by a corrupt majority.
And far from ‘universally understood’. Many of the same people who did it are in the party which bids fair to take over the House. The man above all responsible for making it acceptable is running for President in 2012.
It didn’t just ‘become acceptable….’
Citizen Alan
@parsimon:
I didn’t see a remotely viable case for impeachment in 1998, either. Neither did the overwhelming majority of the nation. Didn’t stop the GOP.
JAHILL10
You know some us don’t consider this a spectator sport. All these consequences you look forward to with such nihilistic, masturbatory glee are really going to hurt a lot of people (not you, obviously). You know what the national backlash was of impeaching Clinton? George W. Bush. Okay? The whole notion that the country will snap out of its self destructive fascination with Fantasy Party of “You can have your medicare and SS without paying for them!” is wishful thinking. We have to stop this on the front end, not hope for a better outcome when the crazies take over the asylum.
Citizen Alan
@Anya:
Actually, I disagree completely with this. By preemptively mocking the idea that the Repukes will impeach Obama for some frivolous reason, you increase pressure on them to take impeachment off the table (just as Pelosi — foolishly, IMO — did back in 2006). Also, by putting the meme out there, you lay the groundwork for dismissing any pseudo-scandals generated by the Repukes — “Oh, here it is, this is the bullshit scandal the GOP made up for its frivolous impeachment.”
I don’t know if that will work, but it beats sitting around ignoring the issue and then acting surprised and outraged when the GOP does what everyone here expects them to do.
Davis X. Machina
People who are saying ‘It can’t happen…’ or ‘They wouldn’t do it…’ or ‘They don’t have a case…’ need to re-read their Krugman:
From the introduction to The Great Unravelling.
parsimon
@Citizen Alan:
Yes, I stand corrected by what Omnes Omnibus et al. have said about the legal standard for this. I should have looked it up myself in the first place. Sobering.
That said, it strikes me that the public can have a voice in these matters, though I don’t have a great deal of hope there at the moment.
pickledjazz
You know, I have come to the conclusion that the bloggers are the ones shitstirring, rambling their ravings and rumblings, their random thoughts every damn day, and that is why the public are so frazzled,dissatisfied,cynical and hateful. We are filled with their multitude of thoughts on paper and we commenters respond either hatefully or purposely. But, it is turning out to be demoralising all these random thoughts that are appear, dark, fearful and negative to the psyche.
What the hell is the purpose of the above dialogue. Whaat?
Why are we talking about this? It is so unproductive and pointless, …until such time that it actually happens. God dammit, the bloggers are turning out to be just as crazy as the crazies themselves, and the Catch 22 is that they are complaining about crazy!!
Stop with the foolishness. Enough is enough.
I scour blogs every day wishing for some uplifting inspirational dialogue and all it does is negatises my spirit and I get angry.
For the public’s sake, I beg of you all, UPlift,uplift!
Citizen Alan
@JAHILL10:
I thought that was all Nader’s fault!
Seriously, this is complete bullshit. Clinton left office with huge poll numbers, and it was widely accepted that he could have gotten reelected had he not been term limited. It was Gore and his team who made the stupid decision to act embarrassed about Clinton’s missteps, to the point of refusing to allow Clinton campaign for him and even selecting Clinton’s chief accuser among the Dems — Rat-fucker Joe Leieberman — as his running mate. If he’d picked a better running mate, run proudly on the administration’s many successes, and attacked the impeachment effort as what it was, an illegitimate attempt to remove a popular president for frivolous reasons, he’d have won the election by a comfortable margin. Instead, his inept campaign allowed Bush to get close enough to win 5-4.
fasteddie9318
@pickledjazz:
If you scour blogs every day to be cheered up and are constantly disappointed in the results, maybe you could, I don’t know, stop doing it?
If you’d like to pay me to be your own personal motivational speaker and blow sunshine up your ass, let me know and we can work out a contract. Otherwise, this really isn’t my problem.
Davis X. Machina
@Citizen Alan: Gore did just about as well as the best models predicted — perhaps a little better than could have been expected.
The ‘slam-dunk’ wasn’t.
eemom
@JAHILL10:
Thank you. I’ve been wondering when one of these crack political prognisticators was going to remember that pesky little fact.
And a resounding This to the rest of what you said, too.
pickledjazz
@fasteddie….Your comment is typical! This is exactly what I mean. Nonetheless,thanks for your over the top suggestion .
I shall certainly take note of it.
WaterGirl
@pickledjazz: I would recommend that you read Kay’s posts here at BJ, then. I find them to be well thought out and constructive.
Edit: she had an interesting post yesterday, I believe, if you want to check it out.
Davis X. Machina
All those horrified by such speculation should know it’s anything but recent, and by no means restricted to the fever swamps of the Left. Check out A Plain Blog About Politics, where the otherwise staid and respectable academic political scientist Jonathan Bernstein opened a pool on the date back in February.
Emerald
@Davis X. Machina: Wow. That absolutely nails it:
“it is a movement whose leaders do not accept the legitimacy of our current political system.”
Nor do it’s followers. They love the Constitution, it’s just all the different parts of the Constitution that they hate. Glenn Beck has to rewrite history for them and turn everything on its head.
And as Dengre wrote a few weeks ago, they are neo-Confederates, with the same agenda and the same tactics they used 150 years ago.
Your impeachment scenario really is chilling. As somebody commented on DKos, the media propaganda machine already is in place. The corporate power to control Congress and now elections already is legal.
Give ’em a leader with no restraints because impeachment has been delegitimized, pick an enemy to take all blame for everything, and you’ve got the textbook definition of fascism, right there, if the Rs want to take it that far.
And I think they do.
Zuzu's Petals
I just don’t see this happening.
Anything they pass will have to get through a (nominally) Dem-controlled Senate. Even then, Obama has the veto power and I’m pretty sure he’s not gonna allow said fuck-around.
John Bird
Look, man, I caught your tongue in your cheek, but, let’s just remember
1) The rise of the xenophobic, nationalist, anti-state Tea Party is dangerous for America.
2) Willy-nilly impeachment trials are VERY dangerous for America, as they effectively mean that each midterm election can become a binding referendum on the executive. Which might work if it was the law of the land, but it isn’t – meaning this sort of referendum will occur by show trial.
3) The last two years have shown us that the establishment Republicans, the ones concerned about their existing power base, have NO control over the destroy-to-build radicals.
All of these are (or would be, in the case of impeachment) seriously, genuinely frightening developments in America. We’ve survived the equivalent and worse, but every time these nothing-to-lose interests gather power – especially in the archaic Senate where single members can shut down government business – American democracy itself is at risk.
Citizen Alan
@Davis X. Machina:
Nevertheless, at the end of the day (that day being Nov 7, 2000), Gore lost Florida by 537 votes. I am of the personal conviction that with a stronger VP candidate (i.e. one that was not utterly horrible by every metric) and with Clinton doing some GOTV rallies in Miami, Jacksonville and St. Pete, we could have gotten ten times that many extra Gore voters to come out on election day.
And yes, I know that’s all idle speculation (absent the perfection of my time travel machine). However, you seem to imply that if Clinton had not been impeached but everything else had stayed the same, that 537 votes would have magically swung to Gore without him losing any voters who came out to support him out of anger over the impeachment. Frankly, I find my scenario a lot more plausible. YMMV.
NR
@Stooleo:
He ordered the assassination of an American citizen without due process of law.
Of course, that’s not what the Republicans will use. They’ll come up with some trumped-up bullshit, just like they did with Clinton. But that doesn’t change the fact that Obama has violated the fifth amendment to the U.S. Constitution. If that’s not an impeachable offense, I don’t know what is.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@John Bird:
It’s always been there. They were just as dangerous when they called themselves “conservative Republicans”.
Martin
@Citizen Alan:
But that could be said of absolutely anything that happened over the preceding 8 years. Those 537 votes could just as easily be attributed to DOMA or the failure to pass HCR or Bosnia or anything, really. Hell, I think you could make a stronger case that more votes were lost to a sigh than were lost to impeachment.
You’re asserting a fairly weak post hoc, ergo propter hoc argument.
chopper
@El Tiburon:
the old ‘bitch, you knew i was a snake’ bit doesn’t apply here. politicians aren’t dogs or snakes or whatever, no matter how many jokes you want to make to that end. they bear responsibility for their actions just like everyone else.
besides which, when my dog chews my shoes i sure as shit get on her case. she knows she’s not supposed to chew my shoes.
NR
@Mnemosyne: Really, this is pathetic.
Trying to blame the problems of the last 18 months on the left is utterly pathetic. The simple fact is, if Obama had listened to the left instead of taking every opportunity to ignore, insult, and marginalize us, the Democratic party – and the country – would not be in the mess they are in today.
Obama has spent the last 18 months proving that he does not have the stomach to fight for the structural reforms that we need to actually fix our economy, or even for more stimulus funds. He was elected promising major change, and through his appointments and his economic policy, he has shown that the status quo is A-OK with him. The coming disaster in the midterms is a direct result of the approach that Obama has taken to governing. The buck stops with him.
And no, I’m not looking forward to it. I’m dreading it with every fiber of my being. But the left is not responsible for Obama’s failures. Obama is responsible for Obama’s failures.
Omnes Omnibus
@NR: Actually, what you are talking about (assuming that presidential authority under AUMF did not make the conduct facially legal and assuming a variety of other things that have come up in the discussions of this issue in the past don’t matter either) would probably not reach to the level necessary to constitute a “high crime or misdemeanor” under the traditional legal standard.
ruemara
@NR:
I truly wish you knew wtf you are talking about, because this was no order of assassination, this was a capture or kill allowance, accent on capture.
John Bird
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
I disagree. They are notably more dangerous now. The discourse has shifted and with it, the balance of power.
Are they the same people with the same tendencies and sympathies? Yes.
However, what we see with the rise of the Tea Party is the dominance of national right-radical campaigns over elections in localities and states. And we’ve seen establishment Republicans follow them rather than lose the new national machine.
The difference between Castle and O’Donnell (and between Strom Thurmond and O’Donnell, or Jesse Helms and O’Donnell) is that while these right-wingers owed their rise to a local establishment that demanded some level of stability in their behavior, O’Donnell, like Miller, like many other candidates, owes her rise to a national machine of radical right-wingers, funded by opportunists who see dollar signs and who are given nonstop free advertisement by Fox News and other ratings-hungry outlets that have more say over Republican policy than the Republican party.
This new national machine does not view local interests as important (note the Tea Party candidates’ disdain for realistic plans to help their states in lieu of fantasies like eliminating popular election of Senators) and it does not have anything to lose by advancing pure lunacy. I do not mean impeachment, either; I mean that Rand Paul has all but stated that an honest man would effectively shut down the government completely, and Senator Rand Paul would have the ability to effectively shut down the government completely. Not budget, Gingrich-vs-Clinton shutdown, but ideological, you-shall-not-pass shutdown.
In an America with a Senatorial Tea Party, the only thing really stopping the government from seizing up is the ability of the Republican Party leadership to beat out Fox News and convince Tea Party senators that it’s in their best interest to stick with the establishment.
It’s quite different from the takeover of the Party leadership in 1994, and the ability of the current party to control its members is not something I’d be willing to put money on, given the last two years, and so:
Yes, the situation has changed, and yes, it’s scary. It’s not just a big joke or some Green Party situation where we force the Republicans to show their “true colors” and win big later. It’s a really bad thing to happen to America.
And I hate to be the guy to point this out, but it’s something that resembles certain arcs of world history that we do not want to repeat.
Bob Loblaw
This has gotten rather pathetic in its transparency.
If you’re all that worried that this administration is floundering right now, how about you simply try to compel them to enact better policies rather than wishing the whole game gets blown to hell to bail them out?
The Republicans aren’t going to impeach anybody. It’s dumb and unproductive, and ultimately damaging to corporate interests. There’s way more percentage in just maintaining the obstruction game. If you’re that nervous about the political future of this country that you need the battle lines to be drawn so big and flashy they could be seen from space, you need to settle down.
This country isn’t that fragile. It’s just really stagnant.
Martin
@NR:
Congress granted him the power to do that with AUMF:
Al-Awlaki is believed to have contacted and helped divert funds to the 9/11 hijackers. He harbors Al Qaeda members in Yemen. There’s no question he’s a member of Al Qaeda. There’s little question he’s helped plan attacks (poorly planned as they may be) against the US.
Obama needed approval from the NSC, and he got it. He’s clearly within the power granted him by Congress. You may not like it, but then you don’t seem to like anything Obama does.
NR
@ruemara: The ACLU disagrees.
But I guess they’re just a bunch of firebaggers now, too?
Martin
@NR:
And we’d have passed no legislation whatsoever over the last 18 months. Might have been politically a better strategy (you’re proposing the exact same governmental strategy that the GOP has been following, BTW) but having legislative control and then doing fuckall with it is a pretty hollow victory.
Martin
@NR: No, it means they disagree. Doesn’t mean they’re right.
Omnes Omnibus
@NR: The ACLU takes a lot of positions. Many of them are not winners in a courtroom. This is not a criticism of the ACLU; they are staking out strong positions and doing what they are supposed to do. The thing is, the existence of the AUMF language coupled with the presumption of Constitutionality given to US statutes means that you can’t say that Obama was knowingly violating the law when he okayed the capture of kill order.
NobodySpecial
@NR: Yes. SATSQ.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
According to what you said above, it does if a majority of the House says it does.
Make up your mind. Does “high crimes and misdemeanors” mean anything, or doesn’t it?
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: NR was saying that the capture or kill order for which Obama might actually deserve impeachment. Pretty clearly, he was referring to the traditional legal standard, the one that existed up until 1998. I answered with reference to that. Since the GOP is now run by nihilists whose only interests are winning and power, those traditional standards do not apply. It is the same situation that exists WRT filibusters.
ETA: Basically, there were two different discussions.
Citizen Alan
@Martin:
No, I’m agreeing with you. The margin in Florida was so small that nearly anything could have typed the balance, including the Worker’s of the World Party not having a candidate on the ballot. It’s Davis who thinks that the impeachment was responsible for Gore losing. I was merely responding to his argument.
Martin
@eemom: I think here he’s saying that legal scholars would say that it doesn’t. Up above he said that it didn’t matter what legal scholars say, the House will impeach who it wants for whatever reason it wants. And he’s right.
In case you haven’t observed the last 18 months, Republicans have zero interest in governance and 100% interests in politics. That’ll shape how they view impeachment – through a purely political lens.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Yes, that is exactly it. There is an academic discussion about what should and should not be a “high crime and misdemeanor.” There also is a political reality of what reason a majority in Congress can use to impeach. There is not necessarily a huge overlap between the two.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Yes, that is exactly it. There is an academic discussion about what should and should not be a “high crime and misdemeanor.” There also is a political reality of what reason a majority in Congress can use to impeach. There is not necessarily a huge overlap between the two.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
No, actually, you started the whole discussion with this
Then you said
Then you said, in response to my discussion of how “impeachment” has devolved since Nixon and then Clinton
If there was someplace in there that you articulated a “traditional legal standard [for impeachment]” other than whatever the fuck the House majority says is the standard, I missed it.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@El Tiburon: I’ve been phone-banking for Organizing for America for a few weeks now and I’m a lot more optimistic after talking to real live people in California (the blogs had me going crazy). Sure, I did get one older guy who said vehemently, “I’m not voting for Obama.” I had to explain to him that Obama is not up for re-election in the midterms. He was willing to vote for Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown. Still not sure what his issue is with Obama and really don’t care. I got several people who told me “Thank you for calling, I hate [Carly Fiorina/Meg Witman/fill in Republican here]. I reached one 26 year old who was willing to vote for Boxer because she’d heard her on NPR but not willing to vote for Jerry Brown because she just hadn’t seen enough of him (hopefully that changes). The most clueless was the guy who went – “I haven’t been paying attention and I’ll probably look at the candidates a day or two before the election, but don’t worry, I generally vote liberal.” More importantly, I got a whole bunch of people who were ready and willing to go canvassing and had just been waiting for someone to call and ask them. That stunned me – that they wanted to do something but wouldn’t have if an OFA volunteer hadn’t called. The most touching was the homebound older woman who would like to go canvassing but can’t walk. We finally linked her up with call.barackobama.com and she was happy. The OFA office has been overflowing with volunteers, which tells me that: 1) many people are worried about the Republicans taking over congress, 2) there are enough of them willing to do something about it to make a difference at least in California. Go talk to the people canvassing, etc. You might be pleasantly surprised. This election is not over. Not by a long shot.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: It is actually the standard that you were talking about …. Basically, it needs to be something big, like Nixon. I have never said, nor meant to imply, that you were incorrect about that. Nevertheless, there is nothing to prevent a majority from doing whatever the fuck it wants.
Yutsano
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people): There is only one poll that matters. It happens November 2nd. The rest is background noise. It’s why I had zero doubt Patty Murray would win. She has a solid record, plus Seattle, despite the outer burbs, is solidly liberal. I’m in ignore the polls mode and just go vote folks.
eemom
Also
So now you’re saying that there’s both a “traditional legal standard, the one that existed up until 1998,” AND a corrupt political reality that pays no heed to what that standard is.
But you’ve never stated what the so-called “traditional legal standard is,” and you started with the premise that “impeachment is a political act” that is defined as whatever the House majority says it is, such that even legal scholars agree that the “standard” doesn’t matter.
Basically what you’ve done is move the goalposts so you can now claim you’ve been arguing coherently all along, when in fact you haven’t.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Read Martin’s comment @ 139. He sums it up pretty well.
Martin
@eemom: No, he’s been consistent. Maybe you aren’t reading this from O-O properly:
There’s a standard in the law reviews. He hasn’t summarized it, and I’m not qualified to, but what legal scholars say is completely orthogonal to what the House does.
My sense of the standard is an intentional breach of the responsibilities of office, unauthorized by Congress. If the Constitution doesn’t grant him the authority and Congress doesn’t, and it’s clearly an intentional act to subvert both, then it qualifies. Watergate qualified. Iran Contra should have qualified. Iraq wouldn’t because Congress signed off. It might have been a bad decision, but Congress made the decision.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: Martin’s comment is @ 134. Sorry.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: eemom is broadly correct in her conception of what the traditional standard is. That was actually one of the reasons I did not bother to go into it. This is a link to a short article on the standards.
Cacti
@Stooleo:
Presidentin’ while not Republican.
Everything else is just details.
ksmiami
hmm. Interesting – Bloomberg has a recent article on why business does NOT trust the Tea party. Business likes stability and views these people as a threat (and boy are they ever). Just vote sane and we’ll surprise them
parsimon
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thanks for the link.
If we’re going to be talking seriously about this as a society, we might as well have some notion about it.
Omnes Omnibus
@parsimon: No problem.
Martin
@ksmiami: Bullshit. They’re dumping money into these candidates. They can’t say ‘we don’t trust them’ at the same time they’re dropping millions of dollars on them.
ksmiami
@Martin:
But the they is more diverse than you think… The Republican teatards are friggin nuts and starting to scare people not named Murdoch
Martin
@ksmiami: Ok, then where is their corresponding support against the Tea Party? Where is their activism against them? Words are cheap.
John Bird
@ksmiami:
By which they mean “business interests depend on the current level of Mexican immigration”.
Business interests have been very happy to let the Republicans say whatever the hell they want since Reagan got into office, as long as they are guaranteed (as they have been recently) that the overriding principle of the Republicans is that rich people should be allowed to get away with anything (illegal hires, tax dodging, abortions on demand, dastardly homosexual partnerships, etc.)
El Tiburon
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people):
New boss same as the old boss.
Until the system changes, nothing will really change. Maybe I expect too much too soon and I will gladly eat my words, but our elected leaders care more about their corporate masters than they do for the good of the country.
The debate should be if taxes on the top 1% is raised to 50 or 60 % for the next ten years. The debate should be how much we are going to increase social security benefits and lower the age by five years.
The debate should be how big the prisons to build for the banksters and a commission to being the torturers to justice.
Nothing has changed. Wall Street is giving out record bonuses again. Obama is escalating war in Pakistan and assassination on US citizens. Gitmo is still going.
So what will it matter except to some of your narrow interests?
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@El Tiburon: It matters a heck of a lot to me. I moved to the US from a country that had a military dictatorship. I’d say the fact that you can try to rally people to challenge Obama on the use of drones, on Guantanamo, on Wall street bonuses is pretty great. The fact that you don’t have to think about a knock on your door after you make your blog comment is even greater. If the Tea Party has its way, I know where the US is headed in a hurry. I’ve lived there. We are heading in the wrong direction already but at least there are people fighting it. What do your words do but discourage people and spread hopelessness? How useful is that?
Emma
Violet: Not quite nothing. We could take to the streets every day, we could scream bloody murder, we could force the story out into the media, even if by roundabout ways.
I had a ridiculous shock the other day. My father the right winger was watching some news show about unemployment and the fact that Congress couldn’t get laws passed to deal with the fallout and he turned to me and said if this were happening in any other democratic country there would be massive demonstrations in the streets and the people would be shutting down the government, not the other way around.
He was right. We are conditioned to bitch and moan and let things happen. We see ourselves as “helpless.” But… you know how we’re always fund raising for this politician or that? I wonder what would happen if we fund raised to buy billboard space in places where the facts are desperately needed, and we would try to get the truth across to people? Doing things that would make the difference in the real world for those who do not live their lives as we do, plugged into the Web and feeling every wind blast…
JAHILL10
I have an idea. Why don’t we do a reverse Pat Sayjak? Instead of not allowing people with an interest in government action to vote, we don’t allow people without a stake in the outcome of having different policies enacted (or undone) have their own columns/blogs? That would get rid of all the Village idiots and half of the wankers on line who think politics is some macho game of brinksmanship. And I for one think the political process, not to mention the nation as a whole would be better off for it.
/only partial snark
El Tiburon
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people):
What? Maybe I don’t, I am white. Ask a Muslim how they feel. Also, they are trying to make it easier to collect Internet communications.
Exactly. With democrats in charge nothing has really changed.
I remember feeling complete and utter euphoria when Obama was elected. That is gone. I don’t blame him per se, but this system. And it ain’t gonna change without some serious fucking upheaval.
Otherwise we are all just pissing in the wind.
Brachiator
Any Tea Party People who win in the midterm elections will push the GOP further to the nativist, anti-intellectual extreme. And even if many of the Tea Party People lose, the oligarchs and corporations will continue to fund them in 2012 and beyond.
By the way, easy Democratic Party generic campaign commercial:
CaseyL
@El Tiburon:
How long did it take us to get to this point? How long has the RW been working to get us to this point?
I’ll tell you: as a deliberate and organized strategy, since 1964. 1964 is the year the Goldwaterites captured the GOP; the year the Right Wing decided to wage a long-term war of subversion on the US.
Nixon finished the first stage of the job with his Southern Strategy: getting the Dixiecrats to join the GOP, getting enough racist conservatives onto the SCOTUS to end the Warren Court era and begin pushing back on civil rights and social justice.
Regan began the second stage: establishing corporatism as the economic model. It was during the Reagan Administration that the economy as we know it was formed, from union busting to making it easier for corporations to buy other corporations, even corporations that didn’t want to be bought up (“hostile takeover”). It was during the Reagan Administration that the biggest bank scandal in US history hit, a scandal that ended with the bank industry getting to rewrite the rules for itself.
The sh*t that came down during Bush II was just the culmination of 50 years of careful planning, persistence, and dedication to goals. The Right didn’t get everything it wanted under Nixon; it didn’t get everything it wanted under Reagan; it did finally get most of what it wanted under Bush II.
I do totally agree with you that the system itself is f*cked and will stay that way barring some enormous pressure from the public to change. Problem is, the public has been conditioned for decades to think government is the problem and private enterprise is the solution – there’s nothing in school curricula or in what passes for news analysis in the news media to tell ’em otherwise.
It’s possible we’ve created a perfect sh*tstorm: public ignorance about such things as civic duty and common good, combined with the GOP becoming a party financed by foreign money for the benefit of multinational corporations, combined with a news media that doesn’t even deserve to be called one, combined with an economy and infrastructure so degraded there’s no longer any resilience in the system. If the RIght Wing wins on November 3, then our future will, ironically, look a lot like Russia’s present: a plutarchy under a Potemkin “democracy.”
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@El Tiburon: So, what are you going to do about it off balloon-juice?
AxelFoley
@Gus diZerega:
Lol, STFU, child.
AxelFoley
@geg6:
Oh, please believe black people ain’t gonna put up with that shit. I guarantee you. Plenty of folks here and on other blogs have said that the GOP would try it if they take over Congress, but trust, black folk will kick any and all asses in Congress who try to pull this stunt.
I promise you that.
AxelFoley
@Anya:
Thank you. And not just here. Pretty pathetic to see many left-leaning blogs run with this shit.
AxelFoley
@Emerald:
They already did. See the United States of America, circa 2001-2009.
AxelFoley
@ruemara:
Thank you for correcting that idiot.
Donut
@DougJ – It’s already been torn apart. This would just make it more obvious.
Herein is truth, people. As soon as Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the current state of affairs was set, for all intents and purposes. There’s a long arc that leads up to ’64, of course, and plenty that’s gone down since, but the culture wars have been DFHs vs. Real ‘Murkins vs. the Radical Centrists, ever since. That the DFH crowd keeps sending up center-left-compromiser-type dudes to the presidency, like Clinton and Obama, matters not. They still come from the Democrat (sic) party. Obama’s crime, PWB, was truly made possible by Johnson’s pen stroke in ’64. That’s just fuel on a fire that was already raging.
tomvox1
Um…no. Get off this particular jag willya, Doug. It’s a total bummer and makes you seem like a callous fool.
I'm Thinkng
It’s not good either way for the November elections. If the republicans win it’s 2 years of them patting themselves on the back and finding out who will pay the most for their votes in congress. Also 2 more years of beans and taters for me. If the Democrats win is 2 more years of war between the liberals and the conservatives and 2 years more of Obama’s lies. Maybe this is way out but by 2012 there maybe won’t be an election as Obama will make a crisis to cause a big enough revolution that he will make himself a Dictator for life.
Graham
“There’s all this partisanship and polarization, and ultimately it yields two outcomes: either scorched-earth victory for one side or political stagnation.”
Someone had it right about historical parallels. Civil War still being fought. For the same reasons too. “We can’t do business if we can’t saddle our employees and exploit the ever living shit out of them, and then sell them for glue.”
1964? Try 1864.
What new Sherman, and what new scorched earth will we be seeing? Or does Robert E Lee triumph this time?
...now I try to be amused
@WereBear (itouch):
They managed to discredit the office of special prosecutor at the same time.
I believe it was part strategy and part desire to get even for Nixon’s impending impeachment.