Dems should bring up articles of impeachment yet again. It will fail in the house and if it doesn't the senate won't convict. But that's really not the point right now. The dems need to get off their asses and actually message that "hey, this isn't right or normal" and make the republicans defend the behavior.

Waste of time and really achieves nothing other than theatrics. I don't doubt they'll do it though. Theatrics is really all the Dems ever do these days.

> Theatrics is really all the Dems ever do these days.

They have no power. They can't set the agenda; they can't get legislation to the floor; they can't call investigations. They certainly can't arrest lawbreakers. All they can do is make a case against the ruling party. And if they do it quietly and politely, no one will hear it. So really, it is political malfeasance for them not to be theatrical.

All they can do is make Republicans pay some price for the destruction they are bringing to the country and the world. And this requires theatrics. They have no other levers they can pull.

Why? To what end? How will any of that have any effect in the next two years, at least? Nobody elected Elon or any of the DOGE people.

Yeah. Frankly driving a wedge between Trump and Elon would be the more effective political strategy, since it wouldn't exactly be uncharacteristic of them to spectacularly fall out, and Trump couldn't care less if DOGE exists or not as long as he's getting praise from the right quarters

It's inevitable that the two will break up, but it'll be after trump has used him to do all the deeply unpopular hacking apart of social safety nets that he wants to do. He's a useful idiot. A very rich useful idiot.

Once Elon has all the passwords, it won't matter what Trump says about him.. He's in forever.

What a convenient scapegoat to have when we eventually feel the ruinous effects of these decisions. "I trusted ELLEN and he couldn't get the job done, THATS why I FIRED him"

Dollars to donuts this goes the other way. Trump isn't known for playing the long game, and Elon (for all his craziness) is incredibly Machiavellian.

E.g. 'Trump was coopted by the deep state, and that's why I couldn't get it done.'

Also convenient once Trump is (a) term limited and more importantly (b) too old to be politically useful anymore.

Also a very valid theory!

Elon is clearly bankrolling Trump, hes his boss. Trump is CEO and the techno oligarchs are his board.

> Nobody elected Elon or any of the DOGE people

Nobody ever votes for the President's cabinet or anyone else they bring in.

The Senate actually does vote on a chunk of the President's cabinet.

The voters on election day don't, which is obviously what the comment was referring to.

I'm not convinced that the democrats (most of them anyway) are actually apposed to what is happening. Both parties seem to have largely the same goals just preferring to use different tactics in order to achieve them.

I love how "both sides are the same" continues to persist, even though Biden did absolutely none of what Trump has done these last two weeks, either in terms of method or outcome. They truly could not be more different and yet people like you are like theyrethesamepicture.jpg.

You really are deluded if you think these moves are for draining the swamp and to make the nation great again... that's the thinly veiled bullshit they're feeding you, and geez, people like you think they're clever and have got it figured out?!?

It's to consolidate power for the foreseeable future for a bunch of elites, so they can even more freely exploit people like you and make tons more money.

But hey, seems like people like to bend over and get MAGAed harder...

I’m speaking for what others think. This isn’t how you drain the swamp.

> If it costs lives, well so be it.

Remember you said this if/when it's your life on the line.

I have a feeling that, when that time comes, a lot of people will be changing their tune. "I always knew he'd fuck people over, I just didn't think I'd be one of them!"

In case it wasn’t clear, this is me explaining what voters think. Not what I think.

In case anyone needed even more reasons to despise "people in SV".

Nah, heh, nobody needed any additional reasons.

How exactly are Democrats going to do that considering they don't control the House or the Senate? All that's required to block impeachment is a simple majority to kill the resolution. The Republicans control a House majority and can schedule those kill votes whenever they want. They don't need to defend anything, they can just vote to kill the measure.

Not only that, but the impeachment first needs to make it past the House Judiciary Committee, which is controlled by Republicans and chaired by Jim Jordan. Democrats have no tools to impeach. Their best bet is to focus on the midterms.

Elections have consequences.

Too simplistic.

Democrats can’t force an impeachment, but they can try to find a handful of Republicans who still care about the rule of law. They can continue to make the case all day, every day.

Assuming that a policy can only be achieved if you can ram it down opponents throats is a sad commentary on just how authoritarian the US has become.

America is a democracy, and the Trump won the election, and the Republicans won the majority of elections in the House and the Senate, and by virtue of those elections they also control the Judiciary Committee by a wide margin which can block attempts at impeachment. Trump is not going to be impeached less than a month into his term for doing exactly the kind of things he said he was going to do during his campaign. The best bet for Democrats is to focus on winning the midterms. Impeachment is not a serious option.

A lot of politics is purely performative. I’d wager over 50% of presidential candidates in any given election know full well they have no chance of securing the nomination but run anyway to build up their profile for a cabinet position or a future run.

Making a noise today about impeachment would be similar. It would play into a strategy for winning the midterms. It’d generate more headlines about the blatant illegality occurring under our noses, it’d be a stick to beat rivals with come election season. No, there would be no hope of it actually resulting in an impeachment, but that would be beside the point.

Not the point. The point is to signal (to stand against, to protest) that what the current wankers in charge are doing, shredding up what little decency was left in Washington, is not normal, is wrong, and moving the needle one more small notch towards fascism.

From afar, it's grotesque seeing what's happening over there. Perhaps you're too close to see it.

He's following the Project 2025 playbook and during his campaign he specifically claimed he would not be implementing Project 2025.

Democrats were warning that he was lying about his intentions, and that he would in fact implement Project 2025, but that is not equivalent to him campaigning on Project 2025. I think this is an important distinction.

Project 2025 didn't call for closing down USAID, so I don't think that's a relevant concern for this issue.

> they can try to find a handful of Republicans who still care about the rule of law

there simply are none

>The dems need to get off their asses and actually message that "hey, this isn't right or normal"

They have been doing that. The issue is that people just look at it all and think "its all political theater"

The only way anything will change is if the ~200m americans who didn't vote actually start to realize that voting matters. Texas could turn blue if all the people in the liberal areas actually voted, which would basically win the election for Democrats.

Okay, another nitpick, but it's not because the majority is _conservative_, is it? If they truly voted from conservative principles, _some_ possible actions of the administration could offend them enough to impeach. It's probably more correct to say that it definitely isn't happening with a loyalist (MAGA) majority?

In the US, "conservative" is synonymous with "Republican" and "Republican" is (so far, at least) synonymous with "MAGA loyalist", so it's really splitting hairs to call out the alleged difference.

I thought one of those synonyms was going to be "spineless". It's amazing how many lines on the sand the fascist has crossed, but despite some Republican noise, in they end they vote to protect their job and its perks (like info about stock movements before they become public, amongst the many other forms of corruption) rather than to defend their principles. But then again, the Vichy Democrats are quiet too, they're too chickenshit to escalate and call out this enemy of the constitution.

I grew up in a "democracy" with rigged elections and decades of one president. From TV we thought "Oh, America is such a better place, the politicians are clean, the cops are honest and can't be bought...". Hah, fucking Hollywood fairytales.

Yep, you're right. When I was a kid during the Obama years, I was even proud of our country. Now I realize that it and the conservatives in it are basically no different to Putin and his followers in Russia, and the liberal opposition party is spineless and feckless at best, complicit at worst. We may well have an autocoup soon, if we haven't already. I hope to be able to leave this country before that point, but until then I can only attend protests, even though they seem ineffective at effecting change. I hate everything.

Republicanism used to mean something. Now it means whatever Trump wants.

Martin Bormann's son: "What is National Socialism?"

Bormann: National Socialism is whatever the Fuhrer says it is.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archi...

Republicans in the US have made being culturally regressive and staying on top as a demographic (white straight christian men) a cornerstone of their politics since the civil rights era. That’s what it has meant to be a Republican for generations.

"Capture" is the basic theme of current US government. MAGA capture of the Republican party, for instance. Regulatory capture by by various industrial sectors.

No true Scotsman?

I don’t think so. The Republican Party had some pretty consistent positions for the better part of the last century, until those got in the way during the Obama era. It’s not like it was perfect before but when it came to questions like “is the President above the law?” or “is Canada an ally?” you could predict how most of the party would side. Stuff like granting unappointed people control over multiple agencies, running roughshod over the national security process, trying to impound huge chunks of the budget, etc. wouldn’t have flown even in Trump’s first term before they finished purging non-loyalists from the party.

This is what US Conservatism looks like. You get with Trump's program or you get primaried out. Simple as that.