Tom Rinaldo
Tom Rinaldo's JournalTrump's ONE reference to "peaceful demonstration" was to provide him with plausible deniability
It was an emotionless scripted comment that he knew would not register with that crowd, especially after he followed that later with a dozen heated references urging them to "fight to save our country." Trump knew there would be violence and he knew that he would be blamed for it, hence that one comment was inserted into his speech. Republicans will attempt to use it exactly as Trump intended it, to shield him from culpability. I hope someone on the House manager's team points out the likelihood that his single listless call for peaceful behavior was always intended for post riot consumption, knowing that the overwhelming bulk of his more passionate remarks would literally incite a riot.
I think the crazies, and the racists, have hit their high water mark.
That doesn't that mean the flooding will significantly recede anytime soon, but the crest hit January 6, 2021. I know that danger continues, but I think the highest risks diminish from here. Most likely there will be further violence, but it will be more akin to previous right wing domestic terrorism, launched in the shadows with fewer full frontal assaults on our Democratic institutions.
The far right finally got their president, and now he has come and gone. They had their man on high who could amplify a call to hatred to the maximum degree possible. Trump could, and did, manipulate the Department of Justice to shield them from adverse legal consequences. Trump was the demagogue they needed, the man who literally embraced their violence and the physical intimidation of any and all opponents. He waved the bloody flag of tribalism like a red flag before a bull, and did so while standing before a podium bearing the presidential seal.
With demographics shifting inexorably toward a more multi-cultural America, Trump represented their last best chance to impose their intolerance on America, with all of its fascistic underpinnings, and they knew it. That's why the a mob assembled on January 6th willing to storm Congress to impose their will upon it. They fell short, the Republic survived, and now comes the turning of the tide.
I believe that the Republican Party, as it currently stands, is in for a world of hurt. Bigots will consolidate their hold in places, but the brass ring of national leadership has slipped out of their hands.
Soldiers risk their lives, and sometimes they lose them, defending the U.S. Constitution
And they earn a hell of a lot less money in their paychecks each month than do U.S. Senators, who have the legal authority to subject our military to grave threats on their lives. With extremely rare exceptions, no Ex United States Senator will ever face food insecurity, or possible homelessness, after they leave office, nor suffer from any severe disabilitie as a direct consequence of their service to our nation in Congress.
Soldiers swear an oath of loyalty to America, and should they be asked to, they will charge up a hill under fire to uphold it. Fear of maiming or death does not relieve them of their obligation, and should they refuse to uphold their mission they can face imprisonment as a consequence.
United States Senators swear an oath to uphold our Constitution. In so doing they face the possible risk of losing reelection, should honoring that oath prove unpopular with their constituents. Unlike most Americans who lose their jobs, Ex U.S. Senators qualify for good pensions.
How the hell did our society devolve to the point where we fully expect typical Americans serving in the military to risk their very lives in order to defend our democracy, but take if for granted that privileged members of our political class will violate their oath of office if upholding it might put their reelection at risk?
I gotta say, overall I'm pretty impressed by how unified Democrats have remained
People who go into politics generally have strong egos, they don't always easily "fall in line", and every elected official has their own specific set of constituents to please in order to remain in office. It's a big country and the Democratic Party tent is pretty damn large, and yet when push comes to shove Democrats have found a way to work together, with scarcely a defection of any consequence when the chips are really down. Our unity toward impeaching Trump is only the latest example
It's Republicans, not Democrats, who are showing major fissures. From Sanders to Manchin the Democratic caucus in the Senate has essentially held together. Sure, sometimes something has to give and not everyone walks away entirely happy, but if you look at Senate Democrats now, ruling with just the slimmest of majorities, I think they are functioning as a unit better than the larger Democratic majority did during Obama's first term.The potential for Democratic intramural conflict is at least as large in the House as in the Senate, but our slim majority there has similarly remained solid, even after some simmering tensions boiled up after Democrats unexpectedly lost House seats in the last election.
What Biden is working hard to accomplish is a hell of a lot more bold than just some reforms at the margins. If Biden gets 90% of what he wants Democrats to support in Congress, that's a big fucking deal. He and his team are owed high praise for his leadership so far, as are Schumer and Pelosi. But members of both the right and left flanks of the Democratic coalition deserve some credit as well. All no doubt have items they feel are worth fighting over, but it's been done to date with minimum actual fracturing. It bodes well for all of us, no matter how much we may wish for some things to be different. I think our elected Democrats in Washington, each and every one of them, know how close our nation is to the brink, and are determined not to blow this chance to pull it back from that brink due to unrestrained infighting.
Tear away their fig leaf. Do the Republican House members who claim to have "concerns"
about the process used to remove MTG from House committees, because it is supposedly such a bad precedent for members of a majority party to oust a member of a minority party from House committees, believe that it was wrong for Minority Leader McCarthy to not remove MTG himself? Each and every Republican who attempts to use a "process argument" to defend their vote to not strip MTG of committee assignments needs to answer that question directly. It is only because McCarthy failed to act himself that MTG's committee assignments reached the full House for a vote.
There are only two basic positions that Republican members of the House can take regarding any vote to allow MTG to serve on House Committees. They are 1) Nothing that she has done or said justifies her being removed from committees or 2) Having the whole House strip her assignments was a dangerous precedent that had to be opposed.
Without commenting on the merit of the latter position (Hint: there is none) it begs the followup question from anyone who asserts that view. Yes or No, should your own Party leadership have stripped MTG of her committee assignments, like Steve King was handled previously, before it ever came before the full House?
If Democrats had won either the Maine or NC Senate race, Manchin wouldn't be on our minds now
If Democrats had beaten both Collins and Tillis, we wouldn't so much be looking over our shoulder at Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona now either. Hard as it may be for so many here to accept, Joe Manchin isn't the problem. The problem is that we have not yet elected enough Democratic Senators from States where it is actually possible to elect Democratic Senators, let alone progressive Democratic Senators.
If someone like Joe Manchin wins a Senate seat now from a state like Missouri or Indianan, he or she would be pushing a much more conservative Republican Senator out of office. The fact that Manchin is able to hold onto a Senate seat from West Virginia as a Democrat is about as implausible as it would be for a Democrat to become a Senator from Idaho nowadays, and if one somehow did, what are the odds s/he would be more liberal than Manchin?
Without Joe Manchin, McConnell would control the Senate. The minimum wage wouldn't go up to $11, it wouldn't go up at all. $1,400 relief checks wouldn't be less stringently means tested, they wouldn't exist. And we would have another two years, at least, of Republicans packing the Courts with far right judges, among many other horrors.
REPEAT: The Senate considering the constitutionality of Trump's impeachment trial...
is worse than a diversion from Trump's actual crime, it is constitutionally inappropriate for Senators to weigh their vote based on that "concern". A Senate trial of a federal official who was impeached while still in office, who no longer is in office, is clearly NOT unconstitutional on its face as nothing in the constitution prevents it. Not only are there compelling legal arguments to affirm it's constitutionality (the potential remedy of barring said official from running again for office) but there is clear legal precedent for such Senate trials occurring.
It can be argued that the ultimate constitutionality of such a Senate Trial has not yet been firmly established, but that is an argument that needs to be made in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, if at all. Senators are overstepping their constitutional role if they seek to overlook Trump's "high crimes and misdemeanors" based on their personal interpretation of the U.S. Constitution . That is not within the purview of the legislative branch to determine. The Senate's task is to weigh the actual merits of the charges that the House impeachment managers present them with. Should Trump be found guilty based on actions he undertook while in office, that conviction can later be appealed to the Judicial branch to rule on the constitutionality of the actual proceedings. The Supreme Court could then vacate that conviction if such an appeal succeeded.
THAT is how our constitution is designed to work. Democrats need to stay on message during the Senate trial; Senators do your own job and stop pretending that you sit on the Supreme Court also.
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