I Don't Understand How This Is Helpful

About 24 hours ago, I received this e-mail from the DCCC:

Since then, I've received two more e-mails with the subject line "we keep e-mailing" and "we're. SO. desperate."

Does this really work?

Late Night Track -- The Sky Is a Neighborhood

Show Your Work

One of my complaints about the #ImpeachTrump crowd is their tendency to scream into a void (I'm talking to you, Keith Olbermann). Who are they scolding? Impeachment is not a passive process. Someone has to actually do it, and in this case, that's a serious chunk of Congressional Republicans.


Very few Republicans have shown any evidence of listening to those calls, and it would take a lot of them in both houses to remove the President.



In Newsweek, Ronald Feinman took a step in at least providing some theoretical framework of a plan to impeach and convict Trump:

The centrists and moderate conservatives who are uncomfortable with Donald Trump are known as the Republican Main Street Partnership, estimated at 67 members of the House (about one out of every four Republicans) and a minimum of 4 in the Senate.

The members of this group are often called RINOS (Republicans in Name Only), and are often challenged in Republican primaries by the Club For Growth, FreedomWorks, and The Tea Party Movement. They’re frequently the target of the Alt Right movement represented by Breitbart News.

A lot of these Republican House members come from the Northeast and Midwest, as well as California and the Pacific Northwest and even a few from South Florida, belying the idea that all Republicans come primarily from the South, the Great Plains, and the Mountain West.

It would seem reasonable that at least 24 and more, likely up to half of the 67 members of this GOP group, would be susceptible to being convinced to vote to bring Donald Trump up on impeachment charges.

No one can be certain which specific members would do so, but among those who would seem likely to do so, without any guarantee of course, would be, in alphabetical order, Barbara Comstock of Virginia; Carlos Curbelo of Florida; Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania; Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida; Lynn Jenkins of Kansas; Peter King of New York; Adam Kinzinger of Illinois; Darin LaHood of Illinois; Leonard Lance of New Jersey; David Reichert of Washington; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida; Elise Stefanik of New York; Fred Upton of Michigan; Greg Walden of Oregon; and Lee Zeldin of New York.

This totals 15 members, just a dozen or so shy of the needed number, leaving only about another dozen needed to join them.

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So who in the Senate would be likely to vote to convict Donald Trump of “high crimes and misdemeanors” in office?

Alphabetically, the list might include the following: Lamar Alexander of Tennessee; Richard Burr of North Carolina; Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia; Bill Cassidy of Louisiana; Susan Collins of Maine; Bob Corker of Tennessee; Joni Ernst of Iowa; Jeff Flake of Arizona; Cory Gardner of Colorado;   Lindsey Graham of South Carolina; Chuck Grassley of Iowa; Dean Heller of Nevada; Ron Johnson of Wisconsin; Mike Lee of Utah; John McCain of Arizona; Mitch McConnell of Kentucky (after the embarrassment his wife suffered sharing the stage with Trump last Tuesday, and Trump's constant attacks on McConnell himself);  Jerry Moran of Kansas;   Lisa Murkowski of Alaska; Rand Paul of Kentucky; Rob Portman of Ohio; Marco Rubio of Florida; Ben Sasse of Nebraska; Tim Scott of South Carolina; Dan Sullivan of Alaska; John Thune of South Dakota; Thom Tillis of North Carolina; Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania; and Todd Young of Indiana.

This is a list of 28 Republican Senators, of which just 19 are needed, and it seems like a legitimate list, when one studies these Senators and their records and utterances in the age of Trump.

He concludes:

So the idea that we cannot get rid of Donald Trump is clearly false. It is urgent that these members of the House of Representatives and Senate, of the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan begin the process.

It’s time for them to put country above party. 

I don't believe they will put country above party; they're Republicans. I continue to think that if Trump were to be removed from office be Congress, it would only be in the aftermath of a Democratic wave in the 2018 midterms (which isn't impossible). But I agree that if someone were to start a grassroots effort to tip the Republicans in that direction, these would be the targets.


When you want to discuss the feasibility of removing Trump, this Feinman piece should be the skeleton of your roadmap.

Earworm of the Afternoon -- Don't Go Away

Wednesday Morning Twitshit



The U.S. has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years. Talking is not the answer!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2017

Which is why he's gutting the State Department. I don't even know what extortion money he's talking about. Food aid?

After witnessing first hand the horror & devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey,my heart goes out even more so to the great people of Texas!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2017

It took 24 hours of public shaming (again!) to make him spend 140-ish characters to say something he doesn't mean. He couldn't possibly mean it, because he doesn't have a heart.

After reading the false reporting and even ferocious anger in some dying magazines, it makes me wonder, WHY? All I want to do is #MAGA!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2017

Is he crying? It's hard to tell on Twitter, but it sure sounds like it.

Will be leaving for Missouri soon for a speech on tax cuts and tax reform - so badly needed!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 201

Why does he have to go to Missouri to give that speech? Is he just trying to find another crowd that will emotionally fondle him?7

What the Fuck, America?

A new Pew poll finds that Trump not only is incredibly unpopular, but that he was last year, too. Per WaPo:

Polling Donald Trump is one of the most difficult and confusing exercises in modern politics. In Trump, we have a guy who won the presidency by surprisingly beating the polls in key Rust Belt states, of course. We also have a guy who maintains the loyalty of his base despite major flaws that this base readily acknowledges. As I wrote in June 2016, nearly half of Trump supporters — 46 percent — said one or more of the following: He had made a racist comment, was prejudiced and/or was unqualified to be president. Not half of all voters; half of his supporters.

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Pew asked American adults how they felt about Trump's conduct in office: Whether they “liked” it, had “mixed feelings” or “didn't like it.” It won't surprise you to see about 6 in 10 (58 percent) don't like it; that tracks with the number of Americans who disapprove of Trump overall.

The other two pieces of the pie are where things get interesting. According to Pew, another 25 percent of American adults say they have “mixed feelings,” and just 16 percent “like” it. Only about 1 in 6 voters say they like the way Trump has conducted himself as president.

So how did he get enough people to vote for him to make it over the top in the Electoral College? Look at this:

Straight-up hate for Hillary Clinton.


As I write this, I just received an e-mail from Hillary's mailing list:

Like many of you, I've been following the news coming out of Texas with a heavy heart this week. The damage and destruction left behind in the wake of Hurricane Harvey is devastating, and my thoughts are with everyone affected.

We've also seen some incredible acts of kindness. From the rescue workers and volunteers who have gone without sleep for days, to Texans of all ages setting out in boats and kayaks to rescue their neighbors, to elected officials on the ground working together to put community ahead of political party, the best of America has shown up in Texas.

The Houston Chronicle has been collecting ways to help -- it's easier than ever to click and donate (I just did!).

Our friends and neighbors in Texas are counting on us, and I know we won't let them down.

Thank you,

Hillary

She's never running for anything again, but she's using her resources to do good for people.


Meanwhile, the walking orange disaster is using the suffering of others to sell fucking hats:

Trump arrived in Corpus Christi wearing the white “45/USA” hat that’s available for $40 on his own website, shop.donaldjtrump.com. This marks the third time in four days that the president has worn on-sale campaign merchandise during events related to Harvey, including two previous meetings for which the White House released photographs.

How can nominating literally the most admired woman in this country in the last three decades end up electing the most loathsome person in America? Obviously, we know the answers at this point, but this is just sticking in my craw today. I've had some degree of optimism lately that we will start to turn things around in the next several months, but I keep wondering if Trump is an anomaly, or whether Obama might have been. Coincidentally, the talk of the liberal intellectual interwebs is about a post that Jack Balkin wrote about exactly that question today:

A week after Donald Trump was elected in November 2016, I predicted—using Stephen Skowronek’s model of cycles of regime politics—that Trump would turn out to be a disjunctive president. He would preside over the end of the Reagan regime, just as Jimmy Carter had ushered in the end of the New Deal/Civil Rights Regime and Herbert Hoover had presided over the end of the long period of Republican dominance following the Civil War. That was not because Trump was anything like Hoover or Carter—both honest, intelligent, sober, and serious-minded men. It was rather because the Reagan regime is in a slow-motion collapse, a point I made in a speech at B.U. Law School in the fall of 2013 (and published the following year). The Republican Party, I argued, was in the midst of either a civil war or a nervous breakdown.

As a political regime grinds to its conclusion, the dominant party turns to heterodox outsiders who promise to restore past greatness, but instead find themselves overmatched by circumstance. They unravel the regime and create an opening for a new regime led by another political party.

Like Hoover and Carter, Trump is overmatched by forces beyond his ability to control. He has not ended the processes of decay; if anything, he has accelerated them.

The Trump Administration is now in its eighth month. My analysis remains largely unchanged, and recent events have only confirmed its basic outlines.

Are we waiting out a storm, or are we postponing the inevitable? I still lean towards the former, but as I wrote back in December, American electoral history keeps repeating itself. Republicans can continue to cheat, like they always do. Ralph Nader happened in 2000 and some people were dumb enough to fall for charlatans like Jill Stein in 2016. Americans can get wrapped up in anti-(small and large)democratic/Democratic propaganda, and through tactics like voter suppression and gerrymandering might very well ensure Karl Rove's permanent conservative majority. Or John Judis and Ruy Teixeira could be correct and that the long arc of history is bending in the Democrats' direction. Will America ever learn? A year ago, it felt decidedly like the Bush years taught us a permanent lesson. But apparently 2001-2008 didn't kick us hard enough in the ass and America said, "Thank you, sir, may I please have another?"


This crap is making me bipolar.


In related news, fuck Jill Stein and anyone who ever supported her.

Late Night Track -- Wait for Her

Afternoon Open Thread -- Whatever Edition

Just reopened the comments for the first time in months. What's going on today?

Earworm of the Afternoon -- The Hero's Return

A Faint Whiff of Gunpowder



I was a bit too wrapped up in Westerosi politics last night to pay much attention to American ones, but boy, does this seem significant:

The Trump Organization was pursuing the plan in late 2015 and early 2016, according to several people familiar with the proposal and new records reviewed by the company's lawyers. As part of the discussions, a Russian-born real estate developer urged Donald Trump to come to Moscow to tout the proposal and suggested he could get President Vladimir Putin to say “great things” about Trump, according to several people who have been briefed on his correspondence.

And here it is in black and white (thanks, @Sativa888):



Isn't that basically everything in three sentences?

I still don't think the Republicans are going to do much about this until after the 2018 midterms, but I think at the very least, the Dems should hold mock televised Watergate-style hearings before 2017 is over.

Just damning.