Robert Reich "The Monstrous Predicament Trump Left Behind"

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-reich/95202/the-monstrous-predicament-trump-left-behind

This week’s Senate trial is unlikely to convict Donald Trump of inciting sedition against the United States. At least 17 Republican senators are needed for conviction, but only five have signaled they’ll go along.

Why won’t Republican senators convict him? After all, it’s an open and shut case. As summarized in the brief submitted by House impeachment managers, Trump spent months before the election telling his followers that the only way he could lose was through “a dangerous, wide-ranging conspiracy against them that threatened America itself.”

Immediately after the election, he lied that he had won by a “landslide,” and later urged his followers to stop the counting of electoral ballots by making plans to “fight like hell” and “fight to the death” against this “act of war” perpetrated by “Radical Left Democrats” and the “weak and ineffective RINO section of the Republican Party.”

If this isn’t an impeachable offense, it’s hard to imagine what is. But Republican senators won’t convict him because they’re answerable to Republican voters, and Republican voters continue to believe Trump’s big lie.

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Reich lays out four things that must be done (snips in between)

First, prevent Trump from running for president in 2024. The mere possibility energizes his followers.

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Second, give Republicans and independents every incentive to abandon the Trump cult.

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Third, disempower the giant media empires that amplified Trump’s lies for four years – Facebook, Twitter, and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and its imitators. The goal is not to “cancel” the political right but to refocus public deliberation on facts, truth, and logic. Democracy cannot thrive where big lies are systematically and repeatedly exploited for commercial gain.

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Fourth, safeguard the democratic form of government. This requires barring corporations and the very wealthy from buying off politicians, ending so-called “dark money” political groups that don’t disclose their donors, defending the right to vote, and ensuring more citizens are heard, not fewer.

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[Arazi]

1. Good article but the vast majority of Rs are 100% Trumpers

These suggestions are only possible with Republicans who want change.

Right now, too many do not

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. agreed. I think there is still lots of naivety on our side.

or living in the past.

[Talitha]

3. "won't convict him because they're answerable to Republican voters"

And - the Q senators don't want to lose their re-electon chances.
And - the Q senators don't want to get harassed (or worse) whenever they go home.

I get that part, I do.

BUT...

Those spineless weaklings swore an oath to The Constitution - NOT to their constituants!