South Korea shows us how it’s done, folks.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
19 Comments
Recent Posts
- Day 14: Louisiana Senator Approvingly Compares Trump to Stalin
- Day 13: Elon Musk Flexes His Muscles
- Day 12: While Elon Musk Takes Over, We Podcast With Driftglass and Blue Gal
- Day 11: Harm of Fascist Regime’s Foreign Aid Freeze Comes Into View
- Day 10: The Fascist Regime Blames a Plane Crash on Nonwhite People
Heh.
And removed????
In our case, then Pence. Then just run down the order of succession in the US government.
Let me ask you something. And it’s an honest question, I want to know what you and other people think. If Trump were removed, do you think Pence would operate as if he had a popular mandate? Because if Trump were removed, it would the effect would be a condemnation of the whole GOP.
That’s not always the case, but it would be under the circumstances. For example, it is still an open question whether Flynn really lied to Pence, or whether that is just a cover story and Pence himself knowingly lied to the American public.
http://www.vox.com/world/2017/2/10/14575456/michael-flynn-phone-call-russia-explained
http://www.newsweek.com/michael-dorf-why-flynn-was-fired-key-russia-plot-557519
Not to mention that most of the GOP has tied its fate to Trump.
He absolutely would. And if Trumpence were both removed, so would Ryan. They have no shame. Will to Power is all.
The DAY AFTER Dampnut is gone (FSM willing), we will need to be JUST as angry, JUST as vocal, JUST as active, to oppose his replacement. The difference is, we’ll know we won’t end up as bouncing rubble.
You have to understand that the GOP has been about total power ever since the alliance to defeat Jimmy Carter formed. The Viguerie-Weyrich-Falwell-Robertson alliance has always been about manipulation into being a one-party state with total control over government and culture and total anarchy for commercial life.
At that moment they ceased to be an ideological party; any ideas that would put them in power permanently sufficed so long as they protected the independence of their wealthy donors to concentrate and exploit cash.
Trump is not ideologically aligned with Putin even though Bannon is the one who might be the most ideologically aligned in the White House.
If Pence wins, you might see anti-commie Cold War rhetoric against KGB Putin, but very little else will change. Besides, this time the Congress itself would have to change dramatically in order to get an investigation rolling.
The GOP is betting there is little real opposition in 2020 because of the surprise of Trump’s victory and because the Democratic establishment is not changing. Too much Democratic hemming and hawing over what should be clear issues. Roy Cooper’s “negotiation” over Hate Bill 2 was not a strong argument for what would be a no-brainer if transgender people felt brave enough (or foolish enough) to Sergeant Swejk-style obedience of the law, bringing copies of their birth certificates with them. The danger from idiots is such that that won’t happen, but why don’t Democrats make the argument that the sponsors of these bills don’t really know what they are talking about when they are stirring up fears that are too often straight-forward projections of hidden wishes.
If the GOP has tied its fate to Trump, allowing Trump to fail miserably and visibly would be an option except for the likely large human cost.
Resistance is providing sanctuary, shelter, food, legal representation, and state legal protections more consistent with the Constitution to bring forward to the Supreme Court at the appropriate time. It requires building an opposition political movement with enough passion to win electoral contests across a lot of geography that Democrats find “burnt out”. It requires, in short, the ability to get below the GOP grass roots operatives and out-organize them.
Nope, it will be about donors and keeping Wall Street happy again.
Did Ford govern any different from Nixon?
Can’t wait for President Ryan, either. Looking forward to root canal without Novocain too.
Exactly. Korea gets to vote for a new parliament/PM. We get stuck with Pence, who would basically be Trump’s policies (which are mostly Republican orthodoxy) without being saddled by Trump’s personality. Besides, I think Trump is the easiest person to beat in 2020 if Ds nominate a quarter-way decent candidate, and he even has a slight chance of being beat in a booming economy due purely to his personality.
And she’s gone. Boom! That’s how it’s done, y’all. Even better from what I was reading, progressives in South Korea are poised to win the next election in a couple months. I’ll take good news where I can find it. Of course it took time to oust her, and the SK system is different from ours, but this is a reminder that corrupt and/or incompetent leaders can be removed peacefully if enough pressure is placed on a government to do so.
Sounds like a lot of parallels between their ousted leader and ours, what with the shady deals, corruption, and corporate ownership. But we don’t have a border country with missiles at the ready and Big Brother China staring us down.
Good luck as they get their government in order, and I hope we can do the same.
This will determine Trump’s political fate far more than these idiotic dreams of removal.
Wrong link.
Actually, a pretty good number.
If you look at recent polling perceptions of the economy are improving.
There are signs of real wage growth as well.
Goldman Sach attributes some of the wage growth to state minimum wage increases.
Had the election been held in November of 2017 I think people would actually have started to feel the recovery and Clinton would have won.
The recovery’s impact on medium wages happened a little too late for people’s perceptions to change.
Stock Market is undergoing “irrational exuberance”. I’m watching daily for the signs of turning.
Heed these words, Show me the money
I think the discussion of Trump’s ties with Russia has been interesting, in a perverse way, because it leads not only to an understanding of who the man is, but also of how our politics operate in the early decades of the 21st century and how degraded our political system has become.
Where I agree with you, strongly, is in the futility of the dream that further proof of these ties will somehow lead to Trump’s removal. If there were an organized political force inside the Republican Party that could have stood up a credible alternative to Trump, he never would have been nominated. If there were an organized political force inside the Democratic Party that could have stood up a credible alternative to Trump, he never would have been elected.
Lacking both of these, and now in much more difficult circumstances after the election, here we are. Expecting opposition to Trump to develop from within our political system, given the shape that it’s in, evades the important question: why, when it had the chance, did the system fail in doing this?
Tarheel makes the point above that
This is exactly right, and it also correctly grasps that there are two separate tasks we have to undertake simultaneously in order to have any hope of success.
Any effective resistance against Trump will have to be mounted from outside the system. The difficulty of this cannot be over-emphasized. Expecting the Democratic Party to come riding to the rescue is foolish, not only because the DP is fundamentally broken in so many states (Tarheel’s “burnt out” geography) but also because the DP has never, and never will, support the development of opposition forces whose agenda it does not completely control.
To the extent that it degrades his credibility, chews up his time in formulating responses, and limits his options, the discussion of Trump’s ties to Russia is useful — but there’s no reason to believe that it will put an end to Trump. In that sense it’s just more liberal grasping at straws.
There is this frequently placed argument that those finding the FBI and WikiLeaks propaganda partly responsible for the electoral result are Hillary/Dem Party apologists who are unwilling to deal with the failures of Clinton and Party leaders. That’s simply untrue as a rule, and it runs away from something which will prevent liberals from gaining power and influencing policy if it is allowed to go on without effective response: there is a growing amount of evidence that the President of the United States collaborated with a foreign government in a successful campaign to propagandize the American people and win his election.
Maybe observing and drawing attention to the growing amount of evidence that the President of the United States collaborated with a foreign government in a successful campaign to propagandize the American people and win his election is the right and necessary thing to do. That doesn’t strike me as straw-grabbing; it’s simply right to talk about the implications of this threat and to try to defeat this attempt to turn America against many of its essential values.
We don’t know if it will put an end to Trump; we didn’t know that that little story of a break-in at the DNC headquarters in 1972 would bring down President Nixon and many in his Administration. It’s important to talk about the threat Trump’s movement holds for our Republic for more reasons than just degrading their credibility, time and maneuverability. If the Washington Post had decided to abandon their reporting in 1973, and if Congress had not been compelled by public interest to begin digging in Nixon’s rotten soil, then our Republic would have suffered a degradement which would have been difficult to reverse.
The same holds true now. Why begrudge Democrats their ability to talk about this important issue which brings political benefit? It’s not like it’s stopped top Democrats and citizen liberals in and out of the Party from doing other things, like kicking GOP Congressmembers’ asses from here to gone about the ACA repeal plan and the massive corruption of Cheeto Benito and his Cabinet and Administration. We can defeat ACA repeal; it’s right there in our grasps if we do the right things right now.
Now that he has won election, Trump and his Party are preparing to hurt hundreds of millions of people and wish to destabilize the world order in ways liberals will hate. Electoral results could flip here, if we’re willing to work with anyone, anyone who wants to join us in defeating this fascistic movement.
When it comes to electoral campaigns and their voting decisions on Election Day, the parts of the conservative movement which spend time before and after elections hating each other come together, buckle down, and campaign and vote for candidates who run on a campaign of defeating liberalism and pluralism, often under Republican Party campaign operations. Our movement could benefit from that sort of perspective and discipline.
It’s not necessary to work within the Democratic Party to support progressive candidates and policies; it would just be the most effective way to see to it that the best candidates gain Party nominations and are placed in a position to win. Candidates outside the Republican and Democratic Parties have essentially zero chance of winning State and Federal elections, and their chances of winning local elections are slim as well.
I’m completely open-minded on the question of whether ” the President of the United States collaborated with a foreign government in a successful campaign to propagandize the American people and win his election.” I’m willing to stipulate it, and I’ll agree also that continued discussion has tactical value. Talk about it all you want, any way you want — we’re throwing spaghetti against the wall with pitchforks, trying to see what will stick; no reason why you guys should deny yourselves the same pleasure. Have at it, I say. I don’t begrudge anyone anything.
But I refuse to look for any hope or consolation in the idea that the formal political system is going to come to our rescue. We were fortunate that that’s what happened in 1974 but that ship has sailed; it sank in 1980 before it even made it out of the harbor. And that was 43 years ago: as someone in one of the other threads pointed out, there is no Sam Ervin any more; there is no Howard Baker.
To believe that the formal political system is still intact — in the face of all the evidence from the election to the contrary — does seem to be grasping at straws.
Liberals do not address this. It’s not your focus on Trump and the Russians per se that I object to, but rather the fact that you keep on assigning blame for Clinton’s defeat on endogenous factors — Russians/Wikileaks, Comey, Jill Stein, and so on. You refuse to even concede, much less confront, your own failures and the failure of the political system of which your liberal project still is very much a part. This is what will prevent you from gaining power and influencing policy if it is allowed to go on without effective response: your tendency to do the same thing over and over again, expecting different outcomes.
Right now, what I see here in WI is that all of the leadership and the organization to defend the ACA is coming from outside the Democratic Party. All of the leadership to defend immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ people, Jewish people, etc. is coming from these communities respectively and jointly, not from the Democratic Party. What is coming from the Democratic Party is Sheriff David Clarke who just filed papers with ICE yesterday to start picking people up under section 287(g) authority (think Joe Arpaio). You may have caught him in one of his many FOX News appearances. Also from the Democratic Party we have Chris Abele (think Rahm Emanuel — but at least Abele opposes Clarke though he has no power over him). In fact no Democrat has any power over Clarke, he just blithely goes ahead and keeps on doing what he is doing.
You see what we have to work with. What are the Democrats here doing at the moment? They’re fighting to defend the last constitutional elective office under their control in the state, the Supt. of Public Instruction. It’s a noble cause to be sure and I wish them well, but can you perhaps understand why we aren’t waiting around for the Democrats to show some leadership in “defeating this fascistic movement?”
We’re going to try to stand up a resistance. You guys want to pitch in and help? Great! We’d love to have your participation. But as far as supporting progressive candidates and policies is concerned, doing it through the Democratic Party is the kiss of death, it is the least effective way of making progress. If David Clarke can run as a Democrat, I or anyone else I know can run as a Democrat; it’s just an entry on a ballot line. But organizationally, the Democratic Party is a dead issue.