Not if he is watching Fox...

Because representatives have to be transparent to those they are representing.

Prosecution is crushing it. If they can get just a few more R's to commit (behind closed doors ofc) to conviction, seems like they might have a small chance to get the snowball rolling on the 10+ total needed to flip.

A little disturbing as an onlooker to hear how much they talk about how great Congress/etc is, but that seems like a good play with their audience.

Biden's AG better set up a Mueller like Special Counsel to track and trace the Origins of this March and who was involved and instigated.

If it turns out they strategized to gather but say they were not marching, in an attempt to not signal that to Capital police and then the 'march' order came from Trump, I think that prosecutable, especially if anyone in Trumps orbit (Roger Stone, etc) was the one letting them know not to say they were marching.

I don't know, I've thought many times over the last four years that something would be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel back, but it has never really happened. At this point I have simply stopped believing that such a point exists. I would be very happy to be proved wrong.

They seem to have tied their own political noose. Gerrymandering, closed primaries and a toxic ecosystem in media and social media that repels fact without blinking. From there it is simply a prisoner's dilemma. If they break rank en masse it could work, but if the other's don't, then you are left hanging out to dry. This is why the "it is unconstitutional" vote is so appealing to the GOP senators. Pretty much anyone can see that it is just a weak excuse not do anything, but it's the corner they have painted themselves into. Not that I think this is an excuse, it is just my observation of the politics involved on a practical level.

I don't envy those few GOP congressmen and women who have decided to weather the storm and vote by conviction over convenience. The amount of vitriol, political backstabbing and threats to them and their families are likely enormous.

Of course, after 4 years of nonsense after nonsense and a political discourse that belongs more in an asylum than on frontpages, people have gotten numb. It is absurd that it is necessary to to remind oneself how serious the 6th of January it was. A political movement has become so detached from reality that it revolted against lawfully elected government over absolutely nothing but a completely normal democratic process, but still thinks it is fighting for law and order. I suspect this is one of those historical incidents where the gravity of what occurred will become more prevalent as time passes by, rather than the opposite.

Based on today’s reporting it seems like it’s another lock for Trump. The GOP would destroy this country if it meant keeping power. It should’ve been over with Ukraine, but these fkers are so greedy.

Ya i don't think that is hyperbole at all. I also don't think it is hyperbole to say todays GOP would be fine going full Putin, for Trump and rationalizing why it was ok, as long as they won and could hold power. The only thing that makes them hesitate is them fearing they show their full despicable hand in a loss, such as Trump just did.

They see no real path to power in the future as it is simply becoming more and more impossible for them to overcome such popular vote losses even with massive Gerrymandering and rigging of all the elements of the elections (USPS, gerrymandering, actual fraud, etc) that they have been using to try and tilt the field back to them. That does not mean they are not still trying, as they are amping up those efforts to the max, but deep down they know that is not enough. And the only other option of trying to appeal to the dirty POC voters with actual policy is simply not tolerable medicine they can choke down, despite the fact many of their conservative policies being a natural fit.

This was the same argument used before the 2016 election. Before Trump was the candidate.

The 2020 election was extremely close. The difference was 3 states (WI, GA, AZ) and the 2nd CD in NE. The total votes in those 3 states and the CD in NE was under 50,000 (I believe). That is arguably closer than Trump's win in 2016 (in which he won by 3 states and 78,000 total votes).

If Biden dies or decides not to run again, the Democrats will be once again hampered by not having a clearly dominant candidate. Kamala Harris would be the likely choice and she could win. But given the racist sentiments that helped catapult Trump to the Presidency, the next Republican candidate would be able to capitalize on a similar racist swing coming off of Harris's VP role for 4 years.

And yes there would be a huge outpouring of black voters but there will also be renewed voter suppression in some swing states now controlled by Republicans, including AZ, FL, GA, IA (sort of), OH, TX (if you can consider it purple yet)..

The current voter suppression laws in states like PA, NC, MI, WI will remain as the state legislatures are majority Republican. But if the Governorship changes hands voter suppression could get worse.

If a truly charismatic candidate on the Republican side gets nominated then the Democrats could be in trouble in 2024, if Biden doesn't run again.

edit: If you are talking about State elections for either state legislatures or Congressional House seats, the problem is that the Gerrymandering worked for the past ten years and in many of the critical states (like AZ, GA, FL, TX, IA, OH, IN, MO) the Republicans hold the keys to drawing the electoral map for the next ten years. Even in states like NC, MI, and WI the current electoral maps are hugely favorable to Republicans and it is unclear if just a Governor can reverse the unfair edge.

It's not really fair to lump NE 2 in with states when talking about voting flipping. Sure Biden only won it by 20k votes. But that was by over 7% and NE-2 was bluer than the nation as a whole, which wasn't particularly close.

If you want to try to make the case that 2020 was closer than 2016, you should ignore NE-2 and say Trump wins a tie, which it would be if he flipped WI, GA, AZ. I still don't think it is a very good case though. Biden got over 49% in all the tipping point states, while Trump did that in none of the 2016 tipping points. Also, Trump's wins in PA, MI and WI in 2016 were 3 highly correlated states, while Trump would need to flip WI,GA and AZ which are in completely different parts of the country and aren't all that similar. Realistically winning them would basically require Trump to win a ton more votes nationally unlike Clinton 2016.

Ya I am not saying it was still close. And I saw a bunch of models pre 2020 that said if the Dems won the Popular vote by more than 5MM it was almost mathematically impossible for Trump and the GOP to win. Obviously they were wrong.

But it is getting more and more difficult. More like chasing a One Outer at the river over and over again. They simply cannot lose 7MM and 10MM and 12MM in the future and still expect a good enough distribution in the States to win the EC.

But the GOP are gamers. They are busy trying every single cheat they think of to try and make that wrong.

Love the optimism, and there's nothing I'd like more than for you to be right, but...no. No chance.

The problem is, it's not simply "10+" - it's 17. That's a lot more than 10, especially when you consider they're only at 6 right now. Actually, we don't even know if they're at 6 - they're only at 6 who voted that the process wasn't unconstitutional. Some of them may be voting against conviction.

It never mattered how good a case was made; the impeachment process has been entirely political the last few times it has been used, and it's showing now.

This.

Does this mean the system is broken?

It's interesting to step back and ask why impeachment is even needed in the first place. I assumed it was a rare thing in the world, and so was quite surprised to read on Wiki that "From 1990 to 2020 there have been at least 272 impeachment charges against 132 different heads of state in 63 countries."

I think to my own country and what our equivalent is. I guess if something were to happen that was egregious enough for the party in power to agree there was a problem, they could simply side with the opposition in a vote of non-confidence and bring down the government. Also, the Prime Minister is not exempt from being charged with crimes while in power, AFAIK. I wonder if that would be a better alternative to impeachment - if the President could be tried for a crime while in power, it removes the process from the politicians. But then again, when so many of those high up in the judicial system are also aligned with political parties, perhaps that doesn't work any better.

That's, on average, 1 impeachment per month.

I find that shocking.

Maybe the system is fine...

It's the humans that are broken?

I think there was a belief that many offices needed to be freed from the pressures of running for office and dealing with elections, which can lead to pandering and partisanship. Thus why many judges are appointed for life to free them of that influence of biasing forces.

So if you give someone a Job for Life then you must have a way to remove them, if they break faith with their responsibilities.

And while Elected office is not 'for life' the fact that you have a 'term' that is guaranteed (6 years in Senate) and you could face judgement at the end, in not being re-elected, there still needs to be a method of removal if you break faith in your first year.

I agree that he should be charged with some form of homicide. Reckless endangerment, possibly.

Further I think the efforts by him and his team to foment the riots were part of a criminal conspiracy to cause so much disruption at the Capitol that the certification of the votes, while not stopped, was at least delayed so that it didn't finish on January 6. Then Trump and his legal team would try to go to court and argue that because it wasn't done by Jan 6, as the constitution requires, Biden couldn't legally be sworn in as POTUS.

Crazy for sure, but it's worth remembering that the bulk of the Trump team is not very bright, so they may well have thought they had a path to success there (or for sure a bunch of billable hours to try). Regardless, of the possible motives for why Trump wanted the riot to happen, having it as a way to delay the certification of the votes is the thing that makes the most sense.

That was absolutely the Trump plan. IT was Roger Stone, Mike Flynn, and Rudy, Kraken lady and a few others who wanted to go the Constitutional Crisis path.

Plan A was for Pence to refuse to accept the Electoral Votes of certain States and say he had accepted an alternate slate as presented to him by various State legislators.

Plan B, failing Plan A was to try and stop the procedure and have the Legislators flee and unable to reconvene on the day.

In either event Trump when then proclaim the Constitutional process was not completed and there was no enumerated path for them to reconvene to do so.


They would declare a Constitutional emergency and that Trump was going to stay in power until it could be settled in the courts.

I think they would be counting on violence from both sides as protestors and Trump defenders hit the streets and with violence Trump would declare martial law. He would then lay out his plan to peace which is 'to rerun the election" or put "certain people in place to find the votes (err recount the votes)".

All the while hoping his SC would have his back.


And as crazy as all that seems and as much as it would not have worked anyway, that is the path they were intent in going down.

They got knocked off it when the legislators went back to work and finalized the acceptance of the Electoral College vote before the day ended. Something I think they are shocked they went back to do.

Trump Impeachment Lawyer = New Trump Campaign Manager?

The defence have started very well. Very well.

Not sure arguing about edited footage is very clever when you immediately follow it with a montage of your own edited footage though.

lol these bird lawyers are terrible

James Wilson did not support the Bill of Rights

I'm not sure the 'But MOM, they incited violence too!' defense is really that effective once you're no longer a toddler, though.

Know your audience.

Imagine being a Marco Rubio voter

Ya imagine that being the "precedent" one worries about.

Not the precedent that a POTUS in his last month can do almost anything to try and stop an election being certified and to coerce and threaten local officials to over turn it and cannot be prosecuted by the Senate because 'the POTUS is now out of office'.

What that means is any POTUS at any time can do the most impeachable things, check with the House and Senate if they have the votes to impeach him and if the clock does not run out before the Impeachment concludes thus freeing him under the 'you cannot remove someone already out of office' precedent, r he simply then resign to avoid it.

No harm in trying if you believe you will lose anyway. Either you get away with it and win and stay in office and thus no consequences, or you find out you will lose the vote and get the Senate to run out the clock or you resign and thus no consequences.

An interesting 'what if' that comes from a "January Exception' precedent is how quickly and easily it would get manipulated into a Dec and Nov precedent.

You can imagine a future Mitch like Senate head simply saying 'we in the Senate have determined that to hear out these charges against the POTUS will require a robust investigation including calling numerous witnesses that will take X months conclude. As the POTUS will be out of office before we conclude and thus we will not be able to remove him then under this precedent we cannot hold the Senate trial'.