So… It’s started. Should be decent theater. Any chance he’ll be convicted?
No
Unfortunately, no
I’ll be content to have 5 Rs vote to convict. Can’t really hope for much more than that.
But which 5? I think this might have some implications as well.
Yeah - it would. I’m guessing it will be the 5 (well, I guess 6 now) that have already said that they should even be discussing it. It would be sad to lose some of those, and really unexpected to gain any others.
Predictit has depressingly low odds on him actually getting convicted. < 10% when I checked.
Last I saw it was a 25 to 1 payoff which translates to <4%. Not sure how much of a margin is built into the payoff but for long odds it must be substantial so lets say they are assuming a 2% chance. Even that seems high. .
If they change the vote to be secret - and it’s the Senate, so it can decide on its own rules for how impeachment goes and those rules can vary from impeachment to impeachment and could conceivably even be changed after impeachment starts - then the chances of Trump getting convicted and disqualified are 100% and we’re discussing how many Rs vote for it.
Public vote, though? I’d say ~30 of them are too chickenshit to confess what they’ll admit in private.
What would be required to make the vote secret? If just a simple majority, with Harris breaking a tie, there’s a chance it could happen. Not likely, IMO. If a 2/3 majority in a public vote on that rule change, impossible.
No chance of conviction. I think the Ds would like to convince some voters that he incited it long before Jan 6, and proved he wanted violence by his behavior after the mob was breaking through barriers. They haven’t started on that.
They definitely want to force elected Rs to divide along pro-Trump, non-Trump lines.
Will they be successful with either of those?
what’s the over/under on R votes to convict? 2.5?
This was a mistake imo. dems thought they could get some division within the GOP, but in the end it just solidified a future of more BS revenge politics.
Trump should be exiled like Napoleon, but this impeachment political BS does nothing.
I think at some point the solution to DJT is to stop trying to play political calculus and just call a spade a spade. In 100 years impeaching DJT will have been the correct decision to at least attempt to hold an executive accountable, imo.
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there is no solution for trump; once we let him in he poisoned the well forever. Now we are attacking the man, but really we need to fix the culture he created. Impeachment just furthers the culture of blame and hate. If the senate was a real chamber of respectable people, this could be a trial about accountability. But the senate is a chamber of old grumpy vengeful politicians that will use everything to scheme against the next thing. Turns out Trump wasnt the only problem.
The well is still poisoned. stop drinking the water.
…so move to Canada? Impeachment of a corrupt official is iodine, even if it’s an insufficient amount
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there is some sense in that logic. I agree.
My solution was to stop following the news. Which should be the goal for a lot of people that are over invested in all of this. Another political event to get everyone back into the game seems terribly unnecessary.
He isn’t going to be convicted. This is political theater.
I’m not at all convinced that the alternative of not impeaching him would have been a better path, though.
I estimate a pretty good chance they will get the votes for conviction. If not the GQP has positioned itself as supporting sedition when they don’t get their way and are telegraphing their future attempt to install autocratic rule in America.
Thank god a bipartisan vote killed the January window they tried to open.
I find the argument that going after the Trump administration crimes as setting a precedent for future retaliation as admitting you have no principles or faith in the constitution or the government. It reveals a party first thinking process.
I’ll be shocked if even 6 Republicans vote for conviction.
It won’t happen. Pretend every Republican wanted the vote to be secret so they could possibly claim plausible deniability - it wasn’t me who voted to convict, blame all the others in the party - and maybe avoid a deluge of mean phone calls, letters and e-mails. Democrats want Republicans to go on record with their vote so they can presumably run campaigns against R incumbents in 2022. (Read: they’ll run shitty campaigns against R incumbents and then scratch their heads about how the 16 running again - including 3 of the 16 who got 52.0% or less last time around - all won again, while also losing all 4 of the seats where the R incumbent is retiring.)
There will never be the votes there to make the vote secret, unless perhaps Republicans strike some kind of quid pro quo for each side to save their vulnerable seats from serious challenges. (Which, it’s the Democrats, so I could see them being better than 50/50 to agree to and then being shocked it backfires against them.)