2020's gonna be a game of inches and Republicans are inching backward

[babylonsister]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/11/1910776/-2020-s-gonna-be-a-game-of-inches-and-Republicans-are-inching-backward#read-more

2020's gonna be a game of inches and Republicans are inching backward
Kerry Eleveld for Daily Kos
Daily Kos Staff
Saturday January 11, 2020 · 2:00 PM EST


After a week of punditry hailing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's strategic advantage in the impeachment article skirmish, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Friday that she would transmit the articles to the upper chamber as early as next week.

Pelosi has been holding on to them since Dec. 18, when the House voted to impeach Donald Trump over his extortion of Ukraine. While some on the left wanted her to hold on to them longer or even indefinitely, Pelosi largely achieved her goals of unearthing new evidence and shining a spotlight on McConnell's promise to rig the trial.

Holding the articles was a tactical move by Pelosi. It was a battle; the war is 2020. And with the emergence of new emails directly implicating Trump in the Ukraine aide freeze and Bolton's openness to testifying, Pelosi put McConnell's vulnerable senators in a much more painful position. Senate Republicans will almost surely vote to acquit Trump but now there's at least rumblings about witnesses at this point—a signal that the situation got too politically dicey for senators like Maine's Susan Collins to entirely ignore.

Witnesses or not in the Senate, Pelosi set herself up with cards left to play throughout the year. Let's start with the State of the Union address just three weeks from now on Feb. 4th. McConnell gets to grapple with how quickly to try to dispense with his Senate trial. But perhaps even more importantly there's question of Bolton's testimony. If McConnell stuffs it, then the House can subpoena him. It's a prospect that clearly terrifies Trump, who is already promising to muzzle Bolton through an executive privilege claim. But even a court battle could result in Bolton testifying sometime before November, potentially a worst-case scenario for both Trump and half a dozen Senate Republicans in tough reelections bids.

And then there was Trump, with his mission accomplished speech on Wednesday. Some pundits even fell into the trap of suggesting he would be able mark his reckless act of warmongering down as a "W" after it seemed Iran was deescalating the conflict. But early polling along with Trump's bumbling indicate exactly the opposite. Trump's impulsive assassination order has been followed by more than a week of his deputy's utter failure to explain why Trump greenlighted the Soleimani operation after two previous presidents spent decades intentionally taking a pass on it. Honestly, the overwhelming ineptitude and obvious lying of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and Trump has been mesmerizing. Trump has even invented the idea that Soleimani was planning attacks on four embassies—something that Esper, Pompeo and others mysteriously failed to mention while they were briefing Congress on the intelligence Wednesday.

Instead of a "win," Trump's military strike appears to have confirmed voters' worst fears about him even if many Americans are momentarily breathing a sigh of relief. Indeed, by a 2-1 margin, a 54% majority of Americans said Trump's actions have made America less safe in a USA Today/Ipsos poll.

Americans also overwhelmingly shared the view that the strike makes it more likely that Iran will attack U.S. interests in the Middle East (69%), that terrorists will wage attacks on U.S. soil (63%), and that the U.S. will go to war with Iran (62%). Americans also think the strike increases the likelihood that Iran will produce a nuclear weapon, 52%-8%.

Americans were ripe to reach these conclusions. As conservative David Frum wrote in The Atlantic this week, Trump is the "least trusted president in the history of polling," with two-thirds of Americans calling him dishonest and 61% saying he does not respect democracy. Beyond that, polling on Trump's handling of foreign policy has been routinely dismal with anywhere from 55% to 60% of the public disapproving of it.

It's difficult to know how any of this will play out months down the road, but the "wartime" presidential bump that some Republicans seemed to be counting on appears to be a dud. And given the fact that Trump and his national security team have spent more than a week lying to the nation about the rationale behind the Soleimani strike, that bump will likely never materialize. Perhaps even more importantly, reluctant Trump voters have been reminded once again that no 401(k) is worth another military engagement that costs trillions of dollars, thousands of American lives, and potentially spirals into a regional war or worse.

2020 is going to be a game of inches, and Trump spent the first full week of the year inching backward.

[empedocles]

1. 2020 is a game of inches . . . Its only about halftime now. It may be a brutal 3rd, or even

4th quarter.

However, the bad guys have been taking a beating for some time now, while holding a surprising amount of ground. They are losing inches, in various places, and are getting beaten up and weakening.

At any time, trump may get blown right off the field.

[abakan]

2. While I hope the backward trend is far enough

To out weigh the interference, poll rolls numbers expunged, and just plane cheating we know is coming