If I were one of those House Democrats in a Trump-friendly district who had been talked into voting against my better judgment for Trump’s impeachment…
…I’d be hopping mad right about now.
To Pelosi and the leftist wing of the party: You made me put my seat at grave risk for this? And then you shelve the whole thing for an indeterminate time and a foggy reason?
I’m not at all sure how many members of Congress match my description. Originally there were said to be 31 such Democrats in the House who come from districts that voted for Trump and yet elected a Democrat – usually one who promised to be moderate and relatively independent – in 2018. One of them, Jeff Van Drew, voted against impeachment and has become a Republican since the brouhaha. Another, Collin Peterson, voted against impeachment as well.
The 29 others voted for impeachment. Of course, some of them may have felt that impeachment was justified and needed no pressure to vote that way. But I would bet (without knowing) that most of the 29 felt they were signing their own political death warrants, and did so reluctantly.
Or maybe not so reluctantly. Maybe they are already sick of Washington. Maybe they were promised good jobs from other Democrats if they get turned out of the House in 2020 as a result of their vote. But I bet a lot of them are spitting mad right now and feeling as though they walked into a trap.
Of course, I don’t know what Pelosi has planned at this point, if anything. She’s a politician who often has something up her sleeve. But I can’t imagine exactly what it could be at the moment. More Steele dossiers? More “whistleblowing” moles with reports of horrible things the president supposedly said?
Or is she at a loss herself about what to do next?
I know a lot of people will say that what the Democrats actually have planned is a lot of cheating in the 2020 elections. I assume, however, that’s rather difficult to accomplish in Trump-friendly districts. It would be much easier to do successfully in large blue cities, but the districts we’re talking about don’t tend to conform to that description.
What I would really like to know is what Pelosi and the DNC offered or threatened the 31. I know Dems tend to be lemmings, but the 31’s behavior reeks of coercion.
As far as Pelosi’s motivations, I saw this morning rumors that she wants more articles brought forth, but that just seems insane to me.
I think that Nancy lost control of the house; she may be speaker but she is not setting the Democrat agenda. Instead, people like Schiff, Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, and others with the revolutionary zeal are driving the Democrat party and, by extension, the house. All Pelosi is trying to do now is trying to stay in front of the movement and hope that it looks like she’s leading it, when she is actually trying to avoid getting run over.
I started thinking this last year after the house tried to pass the resolution denoucing Ilhan Omar’s anti-semetic comments and ended up with something so watered down that even Omar voted for the resolution; that and Pelosi’s inability to “spank” the freshman from New York for her behavior.
KRB
So Trump gets a Scarlet “I” attached to his name. If I remember the Hawthorne novel correctly, Hester Prynne was a sympathetic character against the judgemental townsfolk. She lived her own life in spite of the shame others attached to her.
Trump will probably do the same as he should.
Today’s morality does not offer shame upon adultery or an unmarried mother. Now the “progressives” are the Puritans, demanding total obedience to their agenda, goals and beliefs. If anyone fails this, punishment and shunning results (JK Rowling).
I hope those responsible for this are held to account, especially the politicians who are at the forefront of this mess. The one in my district will not get my vote.
They apparently really thought that the hearings with all the assumptions and suppositions offered instead of evidence would sway public opinion. Now that it hasn’t, it seems they don’t really know what to do.
The Dems actually flipped 41 seats in 2018. The 31 are just districts that Trump won. In addition to the 41, there have to be seats that are purple and remained blue in 2018 but could go either way in 2020. I’m sure there could be a handful of solid blue districts that can swing if there is a landslide for Trump. What everyone seems to agree on is that the red districts will remain red.
.
What scares me are those districts that Republicans won handily on election night but swung after the final counts thanks to door to door efforts to stuff the ballots. I think the Dems are going to roll that out nationwide next year.
Up her sleeve?\
How about 5 more impeachment votes making a total of 6 bills and then she can just launch them into the senate one after the other like mortar shells until the senate just CRUMBLES and says OKOK we’ll convict him!
As for the Demothings who voted for impeachment in non-safe seats, anything that undermines them and moves them closer to the composter is fine with me. That way we don’t have to do it if things get sparky.
In 1985 the MN State House went Republican. Democrat’ back then were moderate. The Republicans were not compassionate and were preachy, resembling the Democrats today. In 1987 the Republicans lost a lot of House members and lost their leadership.
Democrats today will lose their their leadership. The Republicans only need 18 seats. The Democrats have played their hand very badly. Nancy is almost 80 and does not have control of her party. The squad should not have the power they have within the walls of Congress. They are nothing. It is suggesting that click bait is real news.
Nancy’s trick up her sleeve is trying to impeach Trump a second time. It will not work, because nobody is listening anymore. It is so pathetic, it is no even funny, and I am too bored to be angry.
They’re going to keep on the attack all the way to election day.
They’re in the fight of their lives – and they know it.
“They’re in the fight of their lives – and they know it.”
Not.
Quite.
Yet.
But if it comes they will really know it.
And, I think they will lose. The mask is coming off, and the face of evil is showing.
As the God Father says “Don’t get cocky”. The Dems rolled Rep in CA, that were thought to be “safe” but turned out not to be. Still a long way to Nov.
Physicsguy,
Well, we know how the DNC threatened Jeff Van Drew. They told him to vote for the impeachment, or his career was finished. I would imagine that the same pressure was applied to all of the Democrats in the House.
“The Republicans only need 18 seats.”
Wellllll, not exactly. For example, there are currently 7 Republican congressmen in NY and NJ…… where all the illegal aliens have been issued drivers licenses…. and also registered to vote.
After that, tricks like this one will be easy:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/voter-fraud-california-man-finds-dozens-of-ballots-stacked-outside-home
“The 83 ballots, each unused, were addressed to different people, all supposedly living in his elderly neighbor’s two-bedroom apartment.
“I think this is spooky,” Mosna said. “All the different names, none we recognize, all at one address.”
His wife, Madalena Mosna, noted their 89-year-old neighbor lives by herself, and, “Eighty people can’t fit in that apartment.””
See Jonathan Turley. Pelosi’s pose – that she can at her discretion stop a trial in the Senate by refusing to ‘deliver’ some document – is humbug. The impeachment resolution has been passed and the Senate can now dispose of it according to that body’s preferred procedure.
Do not be ethical or moral in fighting Democrats. They are evil.
Cicero:
I disagree.
Although I suppose it depends what you mean by “ethical and moral.” If you mean “polite and gentlemanly” then of course that’s not going to cut it. But you can be smart, tough, aggressive, and effective without surrendering all ethics and morality. Sometimes that means choosing the lesser of two evils, however.
All tyrannies believe they have to toss ethics and morality out the window in order to win and make the world a better place. All they usually succeed in doing is becoming the new tyranny.
Kae Arby on December 26, 2019 at 4:17 pm said:
…All Pelosi is trying to do now is trying to stay in front of the movement and hope that it looks like she’s leading it, when she is actually trying to avoid getting run over.
* * *
Leading from behind.
It’s the Democrat way.
Stealing elections is a specially of the left. At least 20 of the supportly vulunerable 31 dems will win. Ballots in the back of a Buick eight months ofter a contested election always wins. Just ask Norman.
“The ethical man knows it is wrong to cheat on his wife, where as the moral man actually wouldn’t.”
Neo & Artfldgr:
Nice synergy in your comments.
PS – looked up the quote to save it, and it supposedly comes from one of my favorite characters on one of my favorite shows!
Doctor Mallard of NCIS (no episode number in any of the references, but is sounds like something he would say).
I imagine those Dem HoRs are not too put out.
Dems run in a pack. If you object you’re gone.
Repubs are more chaotic. If you buck leadership, they reward you.
@Michigan CPA: “What scares me are those districts that Republicans won handily on election night but swung after the final counts thanks to door to door efforts to stuff the ballots. I think the Dems are going to roll that out nationwide next year.”
Yep.
I am in New Mexico’s 2nd congressional district, which went for Trump in 2016. On election night 2018, the Republican congressional candidate was projected to win, having maintained a lead of 3 to 4 points all evening, and declared victory.
But the Democrat refused to concede.
And the next day, lo and behold, some 8,000 absentee ballots were discovered in a single blue county.
The counting of provisional and other ballots continued for more than a week. The Republican candidate successfully sued to impound those ballots, but ultimately to no avail, and the Democrat swept to victory with a margin of one-tenth of 1 percent.
On December 14, our new Democratic congressperson was undecided about impeachment but was all in just a few days later.
As for election night 2020, in the words of Donald Trump, “we’ll see what happens.”
A Trump-friendly district is a district blanketed by volunteer Trump-friendly precinct walkers.
By that criteria, there are no Trump-friendly districts anywhere.
Parker is an example of someone making pre-emptive pre-election season excuses for not asking Parker’s neighbors for their vote. Sad.
#LazyTrumpists
It’s an old saying that it isn’t the votes that matter, it’s who counts the votes. And as everyone likely to read this knows, the left works very hard to ensure they’re doing the counting.
It isn’t only by the sudden discovery of trunkloads of absentee ballots. In my state, 2018 brought a successful ballot initiative to allow same-day registration, even though the date of the 2020 election has been known since the present Constitution was adopted. If I recall, the 2016 result in Minnesota was determined by an avalanche of same-day registered votes.
And since George Soros has been funding candidates for the state officials responsible to count ballots, I’m quite sure complaints about the legitimacy of all this are ignored, at least where his candidates succeeded.
Not only, but my state also has a major city run by you-know who were caught red-handed stuffing ballot boxes, thanks to Jill Stein.
But wait, there’s more. We also had a ballot initiative taking away the legislature’s power to draw congressional districts, handing it to a committee of somehow non-partisan people. I forget the details, but as I know the actual intent is to give cover to the left’s endless deception and fraud I see no reason to care about them.
The GOP is, of course, nowhere to be seen. Trump made an issue about vote fraud early on, but as far as I know he’s dropped the matter, after typically receiving nothing but hostility from the GOP establishment.
Alas. Vote fraud has been a frequent topic of conversation on the right for years- and I would venture a guess that the continual numb acquiescence to it by the Republican establishment was one factor in their candidates’ defeat by the Bad Orange Man.
Anyway, I will note that as a result of the democrat takeover of Virginia, suddenly, without warning, most counties suddenly declared themselves Second Amendment Sanctuaries. The left responded with threats, of course. But the point is that no one saw it coming, of course including the typically worthless state GOP.
Thus, I will posit that one scenario for Civil War II will be an election stolen by the left in 2020, in which rank-and-file Trump-supporting non-leftists stop react badly to this endless vote fraud.
But, yes, we’ll see what happens.
“A Trump-friendly district is a district blanketed by volunteer Trump-friendly precinct walkers.
By that criteria, there are no Trump-friendly districts anywhere.
Parker is an example of someone making pre-emptive pre-election season excuses for not asking Parker’s neighbors for their vote. Sad.
#LazyTrumpists”
Sometimes I regret that the folks paid to troll non-leftist sites aren’t required to make sense.
Then I recall that leftists can’t make sense, and have to resort to fraud and violence to win- well, anything.
#VileLeftists
I’ll put this out there for your consumption. I live in deep blue CT. A couple of weeks ago, my friends and I participated in Wreaths Across America at the state veterans cemetery. Afterwards we went out to lunch. Friend 1 is an electrical contractor. Never outwardly political, but now a Trump supporter and not afraid to say it. No 2 is a retired state worker and a teamster decades ago. Lifelong Democrat but a more vocal Trump supporter would be difficult to find. No 3 was always apathetic about politics and never voted. He works for a large general contractor. About half of his workers are illegals; he loves them and prefers them over natives whom he calls lazy. He told us about one guy who has been here for 20 years from Mexico. Just got his drivers license and bought a house. He LOVES Trump. The Democrats told us 30 years ago”it’s the economy, stupid” and they were right. All time low unemployment, especially for Blacks and Hispanics, strong wage growth, record highs in the stock markets are what people are paying attention to, not the impeachment circus or “the squad.” They do know that the leading Democratic presidential candidates want to undo all that. Granted, this is a small sample, but it is telling.
I’ll give you a different theory…
The conventional wisdom is that “The Squad” forced Nancy to push impeachment. I think it’s far more plausible that the Intelligence Community, which has been spying on Congress for years, came to Speaker Pelosi and said “you’ve got to discredit the coming indictments or your dirty deals go public”. The IC wants to create the narrative that the indictments are just tit-for-tat for the Impeachment. And, of course, the Democrats and Criminally Complicit Media will eagerly cooperate.
Why would Speaker Pelosi suddenly yield to the lunatic blathering of The Squad? Aren’t 3 of the 4 implicated in “inappropriate behavior”? What power could they possibly have? Why are the Democrats so desperate and so afraid? Most couldn’t lose an election even if they tried so the fear is personal. And those 29 of the 31… let’s leave it at “ethically dubious behavior”.
Dances,
I’m also in deep blue CT. Where do you live? Rural CT is more “sensible” than the cities. But the cities ( Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport, New London, Norwich ) generally determine the state elections.
I live in a rural town, and in our recent local election, the Dems swept the first selectman and the rest of the town government. There’s really no hope for CT.
The IC wants to create the narrative that the indictments are just tit-for-tat for the Impeachment. And, of course, the Democrats and Criminally Complicit Media will eagerly cooperate.
They went through quite a bit of rigamarole to spy on people proximate to Trump. It’s conceivable that they did that time and time over to collect dirt on a critical mass of those in Congress, but I tend to doubt it. See, for example, the Republican caucus, which has been nearly unanimous in supporting the President and see how maladroit characters like Alexander Vindman have been. If the IC had dirt on a critical mass of those in Congress, you wouldn’t be seeing that.
Conspiracy: The Stalinists and Maoists using the “Impeachment” to purify the Democratic party. No “centrists” allowed. Only true believers.
Pelosi is riding the tiger. She can neither hang on nor safely get off.
Voter fraud is being planned, big time, by the Dems.
The Reps will lose many seats because of it.
I wish Trump, and other Rep Nat Committee folk were more active, tho I did read about some voter roll clean up.
“Same day Registration” is to support voter fraud. Most Dems would deny supporting fraud, but they actually do support “the idea” of supporting voters.
Neo,
The world has had its good tyrants (e.g. Solomon) and its bad tyrants (e.g. Nero, many of the Caesars), and tyranny (autocracy) is the world’s basic way of governing. We are headed toward tyranny by Democrats (i.e., immoral, unethical…evil) as the last three years have proved. The alternative is a benign tyrant. Because the uniqueness that was America is dying and will not be resuscitated by any means. Ever.
Read this in the current Claremont Review about the nature of the enemy: https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-empire-strikes-back/
Cicero:
“Good” tyrannies do not throw out all ethics and morality for their fight against “bad” tyrannies.
And “bad” tyrannies justify their own jettisoning of ethics and morality in exactly the way you are now suggesting that we should do.