Looks like the Senate trial is almost over and that there will be no witnesses called.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and other Republicans signaled that they were regaining confidence that they would be able to cobble together the 51 votes needed to block new witnesses and documents and bring the trial to an acquittal verdict as soon as Friday,
Only one thing matters: voting out as many of these clowns in the Senate as we can. Give here to the Balloon Juice Senate fund which is split between the eventual Democratic nominees in Maine, Iowa, NC, Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado. We’ve only got a few more days of trial so trying to raise as much as I can while the sun shines. I raised the goal to 25K.
Frankensteinbeck
McConnell has certainly been correct every time he says he has the votes for something.
(Disclaimer: I do think it should be extremely easy for McConnell to get an immediate ‘flush this trial and try to forget it’ acquittal vote, and if he can’t it’s proof he’s really not that good at his job.)
Betty Cracker
Kids are trying to talk me info driving us all to DC for the inevitable protests. I am tempted.
Zzyzx
Wow, it’s almost as though this were a very predictable outcome and not the drama that the media led us to believe.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I have enough faith in Nancy at this point that this is actually making me eager to see how it plays out. She’s already gamed out this outcome, you know she has, and she knows how to play it from her supposedly weaker position so that it blows up spectacularly in McConnell’s evil traitorous turtle face.
patrick II
I guess it would have made no difference in the end, but a big F.U. to Bolton who could have testified earlier in the house hearings but chose not to because…profit?
WaterGirl
I just read that article and I literally feel sick. Disgusting and appalling.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@patrick II: one thing I haven’t lost sight of about the lunatic Peter Baker tells me is my new hero: He’s a fucking lunatic
ETA: and I don’t think he or Parnas are done. Not that anything they say now will help the damage done, trump is completely unleashed and unhinged going into the election. But it’s gonna be ugly all around.
mrmoshpotato
@Zzyzx: Cleanup in aisle sarcasm!
WaterGirl
It’s sad that when looking at the current BJ posts right now, the least depressing one is about end of life spending.
our democracy is being murdered in plain sight, on national tv, and I am bereft.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: and it wasn’t a Lindbergh or a Patton or a Jack Welch or even a Father Coughlin. It was a third-rate racist game show host, a serial bankrupt trust-fund toddler whose daddy bribed a doctor to lie about bone spurs who told his cultists he was gonna read them a story from Two Corinthians, “that’s the one you like, right?”
One word in that run-on sentence more important than all the others.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: racist?
Kay
I don’t think it’s a good poll but send it out anyway. Trumpists will sweat if they think they’re down in Ohio. They’ll fall in line and vote for him, “undecided” are those bullshit fake “independents” who are really Republicans, but Trump probably should be more popular here. I don’t think Obama ever looked that bad in Ohio going into 2012. Obama.
A Ghost To Most
As much as I think the football game on Sunday may be a classic, if they vote to acquit, I REFUSE to watch it, given that it will be on Fox. It sounds like a good day to get outside here.
YMMV.
Kay
Trump can’t be close in Ohio. Democrats can, that’s a great thing for us, but Trump can’t. If he’s close in OH he loses MI and PA.
He should be popular here. Not widely disliked but sheepishly perhaps backed, eventually, if the choice is between a Demoncrat and him. That’s not good for him.
mrmoshpotato
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Bribed?
mrmoshpotato
@A Ghost To Most: I hope PBS has a documentary on about superb owls.
Alien Radio
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Cultists.
SWMBO
Does anyone know if there is an opponent to Tom Cotton in Arkansas?
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/470196-tom-cottons-only-democratic-rival-quits-race-in-arkansas
Butch
I try to be realistic and not indulge in fatalism or unrealistic optimism, yet some part of me hopes that it will be a “careful what you wish for” moment for the GOP.
Baud
Our job is not to persuade Republicans but to defeat them.
JPL
@WaterGirl: Same. Unless trump’s caught f..king a horse, he will be allowed to continue to cheat to win elections. This is so depressing and I don’t think we’ll ever get our democracy back.
Jamie
@patrick II: Yep. Christ, what an asshole.
H.E.Wolf
@WaterGirl:
Feeling bereft, yes – still in the fight, also yes.
Pete Seeger: Keep Your Hand on the Plow, Hold On
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyZVaH6YB10
Yours in solidarity…
Eunicecycle
I just read a comment on Twitter I thought was interesting. I apologize if someone else already made it here. We all know how Rump is always screaming that Obama spied on him, got Ukraine to interfere in the election, etc. Not true of course, but according to Dersh, wouldn’t this be perfectly fine? Obama thought electing Hillary was in the national interest, so he could do whatever he wanted, as President, right?
wenchacha
I do feel adrift. As I mentioned previously, my mom died in December, at the age of 94. A lifelong Republican, she voted for Hillary in 2016, and loathed the winner. One month later, dad died, at 93.
This is all the normal course of things, I know. But as I see the end of the era of my folks, it horrified me that we are watching the end of our nation’s experiment with democracy. I know it bothered my folks.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud:
Yup. Shoulders to the wheel, credit cards to the Act Blue, fingers to the phones, et cetera. It is just so fucking depressing
Chyron HR
I mean, good for them, but if you go around bragging about your cover-up, is it really a cover-up?
Frankensteinbeck
@JPL:
Always remember that if Republicans could have stopped Doug Jones from getting elected, they would have done anything within their power to accomplish it. Elections still very much matter.
Shalimar
@JPL: That’s not going to do it either. Carl Paladino informs me that horse-fucking is very popular with Republicans.
eddie blake
@Eunicecycle:
no. that only works if you’re republican and white.
zhena gogolia
Great piece by Tom Nichols, beautifully written.
zhena gogolia
@Eunicecycle:
Asha Rangappa has been beating this drum: if all this is okay, then anything that Joe Biden did is AOK as well.
Jamie
We always knew the fix was in, but this still feels dispiriting. However, more stuff is gonna leak, Bolton’s going to talk, dog knows what’s gonna come out from Parnas et. al., the House will continue to investigate, and I’m gonna guess that voters aren’t going to give a shit about whatever limpdick, convoluted rationales their Senators give for shutting this thing down–voters will see this for the naked, craven play it is.
That’s what I tell myself during my more positive moments, anyway.
JPL
@wenchacha: I’m so sorry about your folks and even though they were older it still hurts.
Barbara
@Jamie: And Limpdick is going to continue looking worse and worse and he tries to ramp up his schedule for another campaign.
I already made a generous Act Blue contribution for the winnable Senate seats, but I might start helping individual campaigns now, especially Mark Kelly’s.
Another Scott
Pelosi is having a press conference now about health care. I assume the trial will come up in the questions.
Cheers,
Scott.
dnfree
@H.E.Wolf:
Good one. Love Pete Seeger. Here’s another encouraging one. Great anecdotes in this version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0MH6zNFa0M
West of the Rockies
I’m not depressed. The bad material will come out. He was never going to be removed from office–we knew that. Kvetch and vent. Don’t give up. GOTV.
Parfigliano
Think Manchin will be vote 51
Jamie
@Barbara: True. His cognitive state is, uh, really something at this point, and not going to improve. My guess is that when he sees no poll bounce after the trial and more bad shit keeps coming out, and it becomes evident that, even post-impeachment this stuff is not going away, it’s gonna get a whole lot uglier.
Jamie
@West of the Rockies: Damn straight.
Another Scott
@zhena gogolia: “But, but, Uncle Joe did it first. Donnie is just playing catch-up….”
There is no argument that can be won using logic when logic isn’t part of the rules. It’s a category error to think otherwise.
I don’t know the solution for disingenuous statements like the ones the Teabaggers in the Senate and their hangers-on are using.
The ultimate solution is to vote them out of office. Everything else comes later.
Cheers,
Scott.
MisterForkbeard
@WaterGirl: This is what bugs me. We have the President’s former NSA saying Trump is lying about this.
The Republican Party is so insulated, so determined to protect Trump at all costs that they’re going to… declare that no one can use the NSA’s book as evidence, and then refuse to call him to testify.
And then you have jokers like Chris Cilliza carping about how both parties are just talking past each other and they’re just as bad.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Baud:
That’s it in a nutshell. Perfect.
TomatoQueen
@H.E.Wolf: Among the hymns that keep me going, this is the main one, altho’ Bob’s version is more of a kick up the backside as and when needed. Also, just to remind us that this long road is the one worth walking: https://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5PUuaSbtG0
Hand on the plow, eyes on the prize.
here on the gov’t laptop I can google yootoob links but I can’t test them as security will kick me out, so I hope that’s Sweet Honey in the Rock ripping the doors off Jacob’s Ladder. If not, slap me silly.
Bruce K
@Baud: I’ll go one farther. If the United States as a functional democracy and republic is to survive, the Republican Party as a political institution must be destroyed.
MisterForkbeard
I do think that barring witnesses and so on will rebound badly on the Republicans. But it’s kind of like having an addict in the family – the united states keeps offering these guys chances to clean up their act and do the right thing, applauds wildly for some kind of token reformation, and then sits in denial while they continue to rob you blind.
Eventually, you have to throw them out and let them realize they need to fix themselves. It can’t be Democrats trying to ‘help’ the Republicans into not ruining themselves or the country. It’s just not sustainable.
Kent
The Democrats are criminally stupid if they don’t ask this question during the Q&A today.
“Based on your theory of Presidential Power, it would have been perfectly acceptable for President Obama to use the FBI to spy on the Trump Campaign in 2016 and use the government to manufacture dirt on Trump if he believed it would have been in the national interest to elect Hillary Clinton?”
wenchacha
@JPL: thank you
Leto
@wenchacha: So sorry for your loss.
Kent
Manchin has no excuse. Next time he will be up for election is 2024. We will be in the middle of the NEXT presidential campaign at that point and Trump will not be on the ballot. This impeachment stuff will be old and forgotten history by then.
NotMax
@MisterForkbeard
The fly in the ointment is the record of what Rs predictably spout as having learned from defeat – ascribing it to not being assholish enough.
bemused senior
I have been waiting for twitter or someone here to remember this Kurt Eichenwald tweet debunking the Biden slime.
catclub
Bolton could go on 60Minutes anytime he wants and spill all the damaging info he has. But no.
Leto
@MisterForkbeard:
He needs to find a deep, deep well to find himself at the bottom of, with no Lassie around.
West of the Rockies
@wenchacha:
I remember feeling adrift, too, after my parents passed on (two days to the minute apart from each other). It takes a while to heal. Talking to siblings and good friends helps. If you will allow unsolicited advice, try to find happiness and live the life your parents would have wished for you. That is one way to honor them.
MisterForkbeard
@NotMax: Well, sort of. Lately they talk about how they learned they need to be more inclusive, or at least to emphasize how inclusive and awesome they actually are.
And then they turn right around and dial the asshole up to 11. I think it’s pretty clear their base just enjoys the fact that they’re telling off Democrats, regardless of what Democrats are actually doing.
Patricia Kayden
@Zzyzx: Inasmuch as Republicans are douches who have placed party firmly above country, this drama was going to play out with Trump’s acquittal. Impeachment is only for Democratic Presidents covering up affairs, apparently.
NotMax
@Leto
Why chance tainting the water supply? Plenty of abandoned coal mines ripe for repurposing.
;)
Betty Cracker
@wenchacha: That is hard. Condolences to you.
chopper
you know what other eagle flies on friday? brexit.
crazy. ugh.
Another Scott
In lighter (?) news, RollCall:
Cheers,
Scott.
MJS
@Kent: Too late. Dershowitz is already saying he didn’t say what he clearly said. That’s how this game is played. Republican side says/does something outrageous. Democratic side points it out, Republicans say, “Never happened”, media says, “Who’s to say?”
Leto
@MJS: I thought that that was just ingenious; gaslighting at it’s finest. Of course you didn’t hear what he clearly said. It’s just gibberish. Kay has been forever correct: we need better “elites”. They infect our entire system and they’re just subpar. Actually subpar would be an improvement, a higher bar than where they are now.
catclub
I don’t see that. Maybe he will be 54. Refuse to convict because there was not enough evidence presented!
Likewise, Romney can refuse to convict over lack of evidence. I think there is no benefit to Romney of voting to convict without ‘sufficient’ evidence.
AnonPhenom
@Bruce K:
It will be them or the Dems.
Bruce K
@AnonPhenom: Like I said, if the GOP lives, America dies. Maybe something will exist that claims to be America, but the nation born out of the American Revolution will be gone.
RedDirtGirl
@wenchacha: So sorry for the loss of your parents.
Ben Cisco
@wenchacha: My condolences on the loss of your parents.
Steeplejack
@wenchacha:
Sorry for your loss.
Sab
@wenchacha: I am so sorry for you.