Due to my OCD, I get annoyed that the main thread gets more posts than the rest of the forum combined. Let's put scandal stuff here and policy stuff elsewhere. Yes, policy is still a thing, Muslim bans and deporting people are policies.

Trump May Not Get Impeached, But ...

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...ping-democrats

The one thing House and Senate Republicans care more about than Donald Trump and his political viability is Donald Trump's effect on their own political viability. If the author of this piece is on to something, (I don't fully understand or necessarily agree that the Cook Report's "PVI Index" is an accurate predictor), Trump's continuing shakiness and irrationality could translate into big problems for the GOP in the 2018 mid-term elections.

It may not lead to his impeachment - Trump will have to screw up big time for that to happen - but if the GOP loses the House and/or the Senate in the 2018 mid-terms, I can see top Republicans like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell tearing their hair out. This is a Democratic wet dream, but if Trump is perceived (and blamed) for causing the GOP to lose the House, his own party will turn on him in a New York minute.

Trump could easily face a challenge from his own party in the 2020 election. Just ask the late President Gerald Ford who was challenged by Ronald Reagan in 1976. Jimmy Carter was challenged by Teddy Kennedy in 1980. These are but two examples of how an unpopular President can drag down his own party. (Ford and Carter both lost their bids for re-election after facing challenges from within their own parties.)

Me and my friends discussed this the other day. If Trump does something impeachable and the republicans choose not to impeach and keep their power in tact. Is their a higher power that can rule over them? Say maybe, the supreme court?

What if Trump commits treason for example, but Ryan and Mcconel enjoy his swift EO moves and decide not to impeach. Can the supreme court be like "nah he's out".

Swag:

I'm not a constitutional scholar, but I don't believe the Supreme Court justices can remove a President from office. That power, (i.e. the power to impeach), is reserved exclusively for Congress. Members of the House would vote articles of impeachment - which is the equivalent of formally indicting the President - and he is then tried in the Senate. A majority vote in the Senate (for conviction) would remove the President from office. (If a majority of senators vote not to convict - as was the case with Bill Clinton back in 1998 - then the President remains in office.) The Supreme Court, as far as I know, is not constitutionally empowered to remove a President from office.

There is one area where Trump might be - and I emphasize "might be" - in danger of impeachment. That's this "Russia" business. Trump is insisting that there's nothing improper in his dealings with Russia, the news is fake, and everybody - including the press and Congress - should forget about it and move on. This is reminiscent of what Nixon's press secretary initially said about Watergate - that it was a "third rate burglary" that the White House "had absolutely nothing to do with." Nixon (and Bill Clinton) proved that a President is capable of looking the American people right in the eye and lying through his teeth.

I'm not saying Trump is Nixon or Trump is lying, but if he's totally clean about Russia then he should have no problem with Congress - our elected representatives - taking a close look at the situation and letting the chips fall where they may.

I mean literally, if the courts sentenced him to die for treason, he could keep signing executive orders until they strapped him to the gurney unless he was also impeached.

It's written right there in the Constitution.
http://constitutionus.com/

Only the House can impeach. Only the Senate can convict. Thus, only the Congress can remove the President.

By the way, removing Trump doesn't relinquish the GOP's power. Pence would be President. If Pence is removed, Ryan becomes President. If Ryan is removed, Orrin Hatch becomes President. If Hatch is removed Tillerson becomes President.

I dont think thats the only option. Doesn't the 25th amendment allow the majority of a cabinet to remove a President for incapacity to carry out his duties.

Yes, but it requires 2/3 of congress to be permanent, if POTUS fights it.

...

Four presidents have been removed from office; none by Congress unless maybe they were in on it one time with the CIA.

Democrats and other opposed to Trump should not be focusing on impeachment. Even if he does get impeached, you're still getting President Pence. In some ways, Trump is better because he won't be able to promote and execute the republicans' agenda as effectively. The more Trump does Trump, the less support he gets (his cultish fanbase aside). Remember how for 8 years the GOP had Obama and then Hillary to point at as the great boogeyman? Well the dems now have Trump as their great boogeyman.

Focus on obstructing as much of his agenda as possible and then win elections in 2018 and 2020.

I think Pence is an awful reactionary but at least he doesn't seem to be an unpredictable narcissistic moron with strong fascistic tendencies.

Given the choice today, I'd take Pence. Not willing to trade some possible slight EV improvement for a lot higher variance (with distribution skewed negative).

Fewer people will die in the world with Bannon out of the White House.

So now apparently, Trump's corporate staff is doing high level diplomacy. The lawyer works for Trump Corp.

^^ nytimes reporting that as well

I think getting rid of Trump means getting rid of many of his nutjob cabinet appointments, or at least shortening their tenures. It also means getting rid of Bannon. So I believe there's a decent upside to successfully impeaching Trump.

If constituents in GOP areas turn against the Republicans, expect impeachment to happen.

The last thing anybody wants to do is attempt to impeach and fail. I mean (no pun intended) that is the trump card Congress has as a last resort.

I don't see enough Republicans flipping against Trump for impeachment to occur. He also almost never leaves the WH, so assassination is unlikely. We gotta hope he eats one too many Big Macs and keels over or else he'll go 4 years (or more).

the easiest route out of this we have is for "the media" to continue to be critical of "the donald", and to keep winding him up until he has a heart attack/stroke. he is a man obsessed with how he is portrayed in the press (he clipped newspaper articles at least up to the point the election started, and he promised himself he would paste all the true ones in his scrapbook), but now he's globally reviled, and his biggest secrets are being revealed by this tremendous spotlight. pressure and stress level are x100 for any president, i can't imagine the diamonds trump is ****ting rn

Floyd:

I think you've pinpointed the correct [Democratic] strategy. Obstructionism worked for Mitch McConnell and the GOP, so now that the shoe's on the other foot, it will probably work for Democrats as well.

You think Pence loses Bannon? Not a chance.

Also, a McConnell/Paul/Ryan Senate won't even hear the impeachment case.

I think this is a pretty serious mistake. The presidency is kind of an important job, and having someone who is profoundly unable to do it and may have been compromised by a hostile power is really, really bad for everyone. The nation has survived lots of different levels of taxation on the rich, varying degrees of toleration towards LGBTQ folks, and more or less generous approaches to social benefits. There's no historical evidence to support the idea that we will survive four years of someone like Trump without catastrophic harm.

There is no political will for impeachment right now. You'd have to have the smokiest of all smokey guns for him to get impeached and the GOP is lockstep behind him and will oppose investigations as much as they can.

The Dems, press, the public and the bureaucracy have been doing a good job so far of limiting his power. They should then focus on the next realistic step: elections in 2018 and eventually 2020.

Not seeing why we would have to focus on one at a time.