01-04-2020, 12:59 AM
(01-04-2020, 12:20 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(12-31-2019, 06:53 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I believe the Senate gets to vote on the rules of the trial, with 51% of the vote required. If they decide on a secret vote, Trump is schrod. The threat of retaliation is gone. As is, a Republican cannot win a primary if he opposes Tump, but will not be able to win a general election if he supports Trump. A secret vote would be one way to avoid that trap.Keep in mind. A couple of Democratic Senate seats where won by Democratic candidates in red states when the Democratic party still had the benefit of doubt working for it like it still 2018 which it no longer has today after the recent House impeachment debacle.
This is a no-win situation for Donald Trump. Even if he gets away without being impeached, the scandals that Senate Republicans let him get away with will stick. At best for him the disapproval numbers will revert to what they were before the scandal broke, and those numbers were hideous. Trump needs vindication. The House made a compelling case, and in the end the real impeachment process will be on November 3. The election, that is. Public perception will then matter far more than the balance of power in the US Senate at the time of the Senate trial. Trump has been drowning in horrid disapproval polls for about two years now.
I see no debacle. If there were nothing, then the House would have stopped it had the case unraveled. It just got worse... and worse... and worse.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.