PoliGAF 2016 |OT16| Unpresidented

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mo60 said:
Either he gets impeached sometime in the next four years, decides to leave the presidency or gets crushed in the next presidential election if the democrats can get someone decent to run.
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I wish I had enough faith in our future/country/DNC to believe in either of these outcomes :c
 
Makai said:
2008?
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You're doing that thing again.

Constitutions are composed of constitutional laws -- explicit but never complete -- and constitutional norms, implicit agreements in order to make government run smoothly. (The United Kingdom is a good study here, since a much larger percentage of its constitution is norms.)

Constitutional crises mostly don't involve violation of constitutional laws (although if Trump takes office we'll have that, via the Emoluments Clause). They mostly involve violations of constitutional norms, and are resolved by the creation of some new law and agreement of new norms.

A good example of a relatively minor constitutional crisis is FDR's third and fourth terms. Not against the law, but a violation of extremely longstanding constitutional norms (Grant wanted to run for a third term and was told it would make him look like a dictator). Obviously it went on for a while due to FDR's popularity, but once FDR was gone they passed an amendment to prevent any president from serving more than two terms again. Crisis solved.

In the last eight years we've been dealing with a serious violation of constitutional norms in the form of a GOP congress simply unwilling to do the basic job of governance. We've been compensating for that by moving more power to the executive branch -- note that bills passed during Obama's tenure tend to give the executive much more latitude to control the implementation of the laws than prior bills, because everybody knows Congress won't be doing the work of fixing details later. DACA is another example of Obama using executive power to carry out a generally popular policy that prior presidents would have looked to Congress to implement. But the executive branch isn't really supposed to be that powerful -- it is supposed to depend on the legislative branch to set high-level policy, then take responsibility for the details. Ths shift of power is not healthy.
 
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This is madness.
 
Only scenario I see the Republicans impeaching Trump in is if he decides to stop listening to them at some point or causes them trouble which I don't see happening with Pence and his Cabinet keeping him in-line. All the GOP needs to do his stroke his ego and he'll sign whatever hits his desk. Worst case scenario they can threaten impeachment to force him to play ball.
 
LostMyNarbles said:
Only scenario I see the Republicans impeaching Trump in is if he decides to stop listening to them at some point or causes them trouble which I don't see happening with Pence and his Cabinet keeping him in-line. All the GOP needs to do his stroke his ego and he'll sign whatever hits his desk. Worst case scenario they can threaten impeachment to force him to play ball.
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What cabinet? It's full of a bunch of Trump yesmen and yeswomen.

And looking at the social security stuff, yeah, it's just like I predicted. The current people on Social security will be fine. It's as soon as you start getting to 2023 that things turn to shit. Which, God willing, will be right in the middle of a Democratic president cycle, so they will be blamed for it.
 
royalan said:
It's too fucking late.

I'm sorry, and I respect President Obama, but if this is true, and the CIA had proof that Russia was hacking our election, that's pretty close to unforgivable.

There's believing in the American people, there's not wanting to interfere with an election, there's maintaining your integrity...and then there's this. There's letting a foreign enemy fiddle with our election, poison our democracy, and deligitimize longstanding pillars of our government.

This will be a blight on Obama's legacy. And you know what? It deserves to be.

When history looks back at the time fascism took over America, for all his good, Obama will be known as the President who sat back and watched.
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MAtches the rest of Obamas foreign policy







:(
 
royalan said:
I was politically active before Obama became president, and I will continue to be after.

But Obama does not escape this. He let this happen. He should be ashamed.
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All of his missteps as President can be traced to his naivete. Obama has always thought (probably still does) that the GOP might someday work in good faith with Dems.

Honestly, this issue is probably the best quality about Hillary and the quality where she has the edge on all other Democrats. She fucking knows how awful the GOP is. She wouldn't help that rotting corpse of a political party under any circumstance.

The left needs to give up on the right. They're in their bubble, and they'll die there until their rural regions fade into nothing as their kids flee to the cities. Fuck 'em. Only people talking in good faith should be allowed at the table.

sphagnum said:
We need to treat Trump as illegitimate.
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I agree strongly. I want him reminded weekly that he is hated. I want him to dip below Dubya and Hoover for hated Presidents. This fucker better leave office in the same place Hitler's in now.
 
This country is teetering on the edge of being a complete and utter joke. This is an emperor's new clothes moment.

Chumley said:
This is important.

hrXp0bE.jpg
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He repeatedly dismissed the conclusions of the intelligence community during the campaign. No surprises here. This is what a large percentage of the country wanted: a moron who dismisses advice from experts.
 
Well Trump is hardly going to come out and say "I totally only won because of Russian interference" now is he?


Anyway, the only ones who can save America now are the public servants.
 
i_am_ben said:
Well Trump is hardly going to come out and say "I totally only won because of Russian interference" now is he?


Anyway, the only ones who can save America now are the public servants.
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Instead he did the total opposite.
 
Aaron Strife said:
On the plus side the fact that ENDA sailed through the Senate pretty easily suggests there's more than enough Republican senators to smack this down.

Next time we have full Dem trifecta I suspect the Equality Act passes with little drama.
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That's a good point. Hope they stick to it, but i'm still pretty worried.
 
If we want to delegitimize the Trump administration we need to stop saying half of america voted for him. He won 46.2% of the votes, but that's still only 28% of the eligible voting population.
 
royalan said:
It's too fucking late.

I'm sorry, and I respect President Obama, but if this is true, and the CIA had proof that Russia was hacking our election, that's pretty close to unforgivable.

There's believing in the American people, there's not wanting to interfere with an election, there's maintaining your integrity...and then there's this. There's letting a foreign enemy fiddle with our election, poison our democracy, and deligitimize longstanding pillars of our government.

This will be a blight on Obama's legacy. And you know what? It deserves to be.

When history looks back at the time fascism took over America, for all his good, Obama will be known as the President who sat back and watched.
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Lol the Obama administration is already known for sitting, watching, and looking the other way when folks are up to no good. Torture, fraud....you name it...the pragmatic approach according to Pres. Obama and his supporters is to pretend it didn't happen and not pursue. Pres. Obama and his team are a joke.
 
TheLaughingStock said:
Lol the Obama administration is already known for sitting, watching, and looking the other way when folks are up to no good. Torture, fraud....you name it...the pragmatic approach according to Pres. Obama and his supporters is to pretend it didn't happen and not pursue. Pres. Obama and his team are a joke.
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Way to bury the lead there,
It's so buried it's not even there!
 
Consider this, on Obama: It's his duty to preserve the smooth, peaceful transfer of power between administrations. That's a pretty sacred thing that this country has always managed to hang on to. Let's say he's known something happened on election day (hypothetical). What does he do with that info? The Constitution doesn't account for these sorts of situations. We have an election day, period. There could be footage of Putin personally manipulating a spreadsheet of vote totals and there's not actually any thing you can do with that on the national level. Vote certification is on the state level and up to states to investigate what they feel is appropriate. Hell, Bush v Gore backs up the idea of getting certified vote totals in ASAP to prevent any nastiness because we have so many different voting and tallying systems.

A post here asked if this was a constitutional crisis. Obama stubbornly pushing forward regardless of background noise is preventing it from being one. I would not be shocked if some revelations come out on or after inauguration day and that Obama was deliberately holding off on the details. By letting Trump come in first, it's entirely on Republicans' shoulders to sort out public anger. You can always try to fix things later via constitutional means, but there's no going back in our nation's history if he tried to suspend the process of peaceful transition of power right now. That would be an actual constitutional crisis.

... I would still be legit furious at Obama, lol, if he had some smoking gun this whole time. Cannot lie. But as a constitutional lawyer he's thinking big picture. I truly hope none of this ever happens.
 
There should be calls to get NYT's public editor Liz Spayd replaced. She's a corporate manager thirsting for revenue first and a journalist second.

When Fox News asked her about these tweets from NYT reporters, instead of defending them she called it outrageous and said they should be disciplined. Fuck her.

@EricLiptonNYT
White House as QVC. It has started.
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@peterbakernyt
For a new president from reality television, a cabinet selection that resembles a pageant.
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@liamstack
The Electoral College was meant to stop men like Trump from taking office
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http://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-times-public-editor-reporters-trump-tweets-2016-12

When Spayd’s idiot musings touched off an entirely predictable social-media furor, she tried a semi-walkback of her comments. “In retrospect, I should have held back more, not knowing what the context was for the tweets” she told Politico media reporter Joe Pompeo. “But I stand by my view that journalists should be careful, sometimes more careful than they are, with what they say on social media. That includes how it can be interpreted.”
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http://thebaffler.com/blog/neutering-the-news-lehmann

Fuck interpretation.
 
So uh....anyone seen that OT thread where Trump says he's not bothered by Hitler comparisons and then gives a pseudo-defense of internment camps?
 
sphagnum said:
So uh....anyone seen that OT thread where Trump says he's not bothered by Hitler comparisons and then gives a pseudo-defense of internment camps?
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Yeah I remember when it happened last year and it got brushed off because lol Trump. We were still at the point of Nate Silver vehemently arguing against him having a shot at the nomination.

Also fuck protocol. The FBI didn't mind getting invloves at the tail end of an election with no evidence whatsoever. This why democrats will continue to lose. They want to play a fair game with a bunch of monsters.
 
aspiegamer said:
Consider this, on Obama: It's his duty to preserve the smooth, peaceful transfer of power between administrations. That's a pretty sacred thing that this country has always managed to hang on to. Let's say he's known something happened on election day (hypothetical). What does he do with that info? The Constitution doesn't account for these sorts of situations. We have an election day, period. There could be footage of Putin personally manipulating a spreadsheet of vote totals and there's not actually any thing you can do with that on the national level. Vote certification is on the state level and up to states to investigate what they feel is appropriate. Hell, Bush v Gore backs up the idea of getting certified vote totals in ASAP to prevent any nastiness because we have so many different voting and tallying systems.

A post here asked if this was a constitutional crisis. Obama stubbornly pushing forward regardless of background noise is preventing it from being one. I would not be shocked if some revelations come out on or after inauguration day and that Obama was deliberately holding off on the details. By letting Trump come in first, it's entirely on Republicans' shoulders to sort out public anger. You can always try to fix things later via constitutional means, but there's no going back in our nation's history if he tried to suspend the process of peaceful transition of power right now. That would be an actual constitutional crisis.

... I would still be legit furious at Obama, lol, if he had some smoking gun this whole time. Cannot lie. But as a constitutional lawyer he's thinking big picture. I truly hope none of this ever happens.
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There's already no going back.

This whole theory really just assumes that Trump will be a normal bad Republican president. But there is no particular reason to assume that. Obama even said specifically that he didn't believe that, as did our entire political class. Trump is a fascist and a white nationalist. Allowing WWIII to start or atrocities to happen because you're worried about constitutional legitimacy would be a sad joke.
 
So the announcement today that Obama was ordering an investigation into Russia's meddling was because WaPo contacted them for a quote for this CIA story, right? I was surprised when I read that this morning, because he had been acting almost blasé about Russian interference thus far (and frankly, it felt like an empty gesture). It makes more sense to me that the administration would try to preempt criticism.
 
^^
That linked NYT article that was published after the WaPo article (corroborating their account*) is definitely worth reading. It adds a newer twist but also provides a decent summary of what is known so far.

*It's not clear to me if the NYT "senior administration official" is the same as the WaPo "senior US official". I doubt it though.
 
thepotatoman said:
That's a good point. Hope they stick to it, but i'm still pretty worried.
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I think there are more than a few moderate Rs (Collins, Murkowski etc) who are generally more supportive of LGBTQ rights and a few more establishment-minded Rs further who know not to kick that hornet's nest.

To the extent that there are policies made over the next 2-4 years that hurt the LGBTQ community it'll be more devious and underhanded than them passing a blatant anti-sodomy bill with Pence laughing maniacally and twirling his cartoon mustache.
 
Dan said:
This is infuriating. Top elected officials actively turned a blind eye to foreign interference in our elections for personal gain.


Huh?
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it almost makes "dark money" in politics seem benign. at least there's that homegrown counterbalance. Maybe Citizens United will become the stealth savior of the republic.
 
Question: so with the majority in House and Senate, are Republicans simply free to pass whatever they want? Like an omnibus bill etc.

So what can the Dems do then? Do they have any power whatsoever in Congress or are they simply relegated to just sitting there and watching things happen without any say in the matter (like they can complain but that's all that'll happen - no ability to stop a bill or anything).
 
hydragonwarrior said:
Question: so with the majority in House and Senate, are Republicans simply free to pass whatever they want? Like an omnibus bill etc.

So what can the Dems do then? Do they have any power whatsoever in Congress or are they simply relegated to just sitting there and watching things happen without any say in the matter (like they can complain but that's all that'll happen - no ability to stop a bill or anything).
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Senate will have the filibuster still. Enough Senate R's probably worried about Turmp cratering the party during his administration to keep it from being nuked.
 
The Dems should treat Trump as illegitimate and just stonewall for the next two years. If the Repubs want to do anything they must either nuke the filibuster or use reconciliation.
 
Balphon said:
The implication of the tweet he's replying to is that classified information exists that refutes the premise of the NYT article (stating that there is no connection between Trump and Russia).

It's a bit of a reach, though.
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I think this is maybe too much. The tweet just says that they asked Reid, he said "yeah no it was linked to Trump," and then the NYT didn't print it. It doesn't actually say that Reid had evidence that he provided to the reporter.
 
Wilsongt said:
So with Trump as President and Russia pulling his strings, what does Russia get out of this? Slow encroach on ukraine to take back land? Able to do a lot of shit without the world saying anything because they are tight with the US?

What does Putin get out of this? Because as I am looking at it, there are four sociopaths ruling right now, and 3 have nukes.
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Here's something else I don't get: Putin acknowledges the dangers of climate change, and Russia is in on the Paris Agreement. Meanwhile, Trump vehemently denies climate change and wants to back out of the Paris Agreement. Unless they're absolutely confident they can sway Trump on the issue somehow, I don't understand how Russia can be comfortable with him in power.
 
SpaceCadetKeon said:
Here's something else I don't get: Putin acknowledges the dangers of climate change, and Russia is in on the Paris Agreement. Meanwhile, Trump vehemently denies climate change and wants to back out of the Paris Agreement. Unless they're absolutely confident they can sway Trump on the issue somehow, I don't understand how Russia can be comfortable with him in power.
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It's all about priorities.

Russia getting to exert control over neighboring countries > Delaying or reducing Climate Change.
 
wutwutwut said:
The Dems should treat Trump as illegitimate and just stonewall for the next two years. If the Repubs want to do anything they must either nuke the filibuster or use reconciliation.
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I mean I'd say kos put it best: if Trump wants to say, restore the Voting Rights Act, or renominate Merrick Garland (who the fuck would Trump nominate who could break 60 votes assuming they keep the filibuster?) that's something I think the Democrats can work with him on. Stuff that I would expect out of say a hypothetical third Obama term.

But if you're talking about Trump carving up NAFTA to replace it invariably with something much worse, or working with him on some pissant infrastructure bill that does nothing and is essentially a big tax handout to companies that don't need it then just fuck it.
 
StopMakingSense said:
Senate will have the filibuster still. Enough Senate R's probably worried about Turmp cratering the party during his administration to keep it from being nuked.
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I actually don't think it's Trump that is making McConnell retain the filibuster. I think it's Ryan. Ryan's plans around social security and the welfare safety net are batshit insane, and electoral suicide, and McConnell know it. The senate wants nothing to do with a 'a better way' because they don't have gerrymandered districts and running on privatising medicare is not a winning platform in a lot of red states.
 
SpaceCadetKeon said:
Here's something else I don't get: Putin acknowledges the dangers of climate change, and Russia is in on the Paris Agreement. Meanwhile, Trump vehemently denies climate change and wants to back out of the Paris Agreement. Unless they're absolutely confident they can sway Trump on the issue somehow, I don't understand how Russia can be comfortable with him in power.
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This is equally true for every single person who has empowered Trump, though, just with different issues.

Fundamentally, Trump is dumb. Intelligent but soulless people project onto him their personal agendas, and assume they'll be able to talk him out of the stuff they don't like.

The problem is that there are a lot of these people and they have contradictory agendas, and also that Trump is too dumb to stay convinced of anything except racism.
 
pigeon said:
I think this is maybe too much. The tweet just says that they asked Reid, he said "yeah no it was linked to Trump," and then the NYT didn't print it. It doesn't actually say that Reid had evidence that he provided to the reporter.
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Right, but then whoever @StewSays is (apparently someone in McConnell's office?) says this was tantamount to Reid giving classified info to the NYT, which implies classified info confirming Reid's accusation exists.

Still, though, it seems like a reach.
 
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