As we indicated, we're turning the page again on this story and are now on to Part 3, the events described at the end of Part 2 seemingly having brought the country into a new state of the general election of 2020.
And there's still over a year to go until the election.
There are a couple of interesting items of news, however, and this time they're local.
The first one is that a Democrat has announced for the House . . . and of course that person ends up being an out of state of the happy cheerful sort that basically kicks the local party in the teeth by making it look out of touch and foolish.
Indeed, earlier this year, tired of this sort of thing, the local party passed a resolution that it wasn't giving any funds to out of state campaigners. This apparently wasn't sufficient to keep one from registering, however, even though under Wyoming's law it is extremely unlikely that the candidate can legally run. A person must be a Wyoming resident to run for state office, but as Congress sets its own rules there are those who suppose, although I believe them to be legally incorrect, that an out of stater can run, as long a they bother to obtain state residence prior to being seated in the office should they win, which they won't.
The candidate in this case is Carol Hafner, who is completely delusional in her run. Hafner describes herself, according to the Tribune, as a "Democratic socialist, feminist, and environmentalist" and has no ties to the state whatsoever. Indeed, it's not even clear if New Jersey or South Dakota is her home.
Hafner is quoted in the Trib as trying to contact the state Democrats and receiving no response, to which they have replied "It likely wasn't a topic that needed to be addressed."
The local Democrats are right.
She's for Medicare for all, legalization of marijuana at the Federal level and free education for all.
Her chances for election to the office are less than nonexistence. All her campaign will serve to do is to damage Democrats locally. The local party would be well advised not only to not support her, but to actively work against her campaign. That would require, however, some respected local Democrat to announce for the office. No matter who that may be, the chances of unseating Cheney are slight, which accordingly makes for a stout deterrent to anyone actually announcing. If the Democrats don't want to be defined by people like Hafner, however, they're going to have to find somebody, and soon.
Meanwhile, the state's GOP remains in turmoil.
The Natrona County GOP had a meeting this past week in which the rifts in the party were once again evident. Earlier at the statewide level there had been efforts to try to rank party members based upon their adherence to the state's platform, with that being tabled. This was at topic at the county level which passed a resolution against it. Another resolution, which supported free speech, only barely passed.
This evidences a real divide in the party which goes back nearly a decade now. Traditionally the party has been moderate and local, but starting a decade or so ago a strong tea party element developed in the party which has been divided since. The rift is very deep in some quarters and the tea party elements, which have felt cheated by general Republican results at the polls, made an effort to basically require party members to adhere to the platform, which they've strongly influenced.
The debate has been raging recently with the Laramie County party being openly hostile to these efforts and the Natrona County party against them, while also trying not to appear to be in open breach. The Natrona County party was only somewhat successful in that appearance last week.
An interesting aspect of this it the rejection in some quarters of the "big tent" approach that Republicans adopted back in the 1980s when the party became more and more a minority party in the U.S. While the party has been the majority party in Wyoming for a long time, as the Democratic Party died in the state it also embraced that approach and some high ranking Republicans in the state today had been conservative Democrats. Now the tea party element, which has not been successful in electing candidates to higher office, save for Cindy Hill, and which has not been successful in its core legislative proposals, is discontented and has made sounds of wanting strict adherence to the platform.
Indeed, during the Natrona County meeting, one member who holds that view compared belonging to the party to belonging to a church, making the point that a member of a faith is not free to question its doctrines. That does evidence a real, and for Americans fairly rare, understanding of one of the central features of being a member of a religion, if a person approaches that honestly, but that's not at all the way most members of political parties view their membership. And of course a political party isn't a religion.
All of this points out that there's real room for a second viable political party in Wyoming and that the GOP is in fact being hurt by the fact that there isn't one. With only one party, the party is starting to internally behave as it itself is two parties, and the lack of outside competition keeps it from acting in reaction to the electorate in this fashion.
Added to all of this, and something that the party should take note of, for the first time a group of younger Republicans appeared at a county meeting complaining that the party doesn't bother to address topics that matter to them. This is an interesting and new development, but it likely is the beginning of something that the local party is going to have to contend with. Based upon its veiled statements, this new element reflects a return to moderation but with a focus on Millennial issues, which may mean that much of the debate that has erupted in the party since the 1970s on various matters may be coming to an end, long term.
The Democratic party in the state, if it were viable, would cause that to accelerate massively. But as it hasn't been viable, and because people like Hafner, who ride in on their battery operated unicorns with the delusional belief that they'll draw any sort of serious support, keep that from occurring.
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October 3, 2019
I listen to the weekend news shows, if at all, late as I listen to them by podcast. Every now and then I'll listen to them on a Sunday, but more often than not I catch up with them later.
As of this post, I'm still listening to This Week, but I did listen to Meet The Press. To my surprise, it seems to be the nearly universal belief among the pundits that the Ukrainian call scandal will hurt Trump and Biden.
I actually predicted the call hurting Biden in a recent post, but not for the same reason the pundits are citing. I did it as with this scandal the chances of the Democrats in the Fall, which weren't bad to start with, are now seemingly elevated. I took note of a poll which now had Warren ahead of Biden and theorized that there's been a change in poll positions as the Democrats are now in a position of no longer simply choosing their favorite to run in 2020, but now are actually at the point of running against Trump directly and Warren, in part due to not being quite as old as Biden (she isn't young) looks like the better choice to many.
The pundits, however, take the view that while Trump was acting improperly in his call to the Ukrainian president, there really may be something icky about Hunter Biden's business dealings. Nobody knows that, but to my surprise they seemed pretty willing to speculate on that perhaps being the case and felt that attention to the Biden's wouldn't help Joe Biden's campaign. Apparently one of them has published an op-ed to that effect.
On other campaign news I note that recently we've been dealing with Woodrow Wilson's 1919 stroke. That came after, of course, his collapse during a speech in Pueblo Colorado that had occurred a couple of days earlier.
I note this as we now have the news that Bernie Sanders had heart surgery for a blocked artery this week and had to temporarily suspend his campaign.
Sanders is 78 years old. Elizabeth Warren is 70. Joe Biden is 76. Donald Trump is 73.
Wilson was 63 years old when he suffered his stroke.
I'm not saying that a President in his 70s is ill by default or that one younger than 60 is vigorous. Theodore Roosevelt was 60 years old when he died. Kennedy was young, by American political standards, when he was President and his health was a horrible mess. But as noted in another post, the American Presidential process has come to be dominated by elderly candidates and there are real risks associated with that, whether people care to admit it or not.
Sanders has no anticipated date for return to the campaign trail. Most candidates in his position would now bow out and close out their Presidential efforts for good. Sanders, however, has been really hard to predict and he may feel that he's doing a service to the nation just by running. So we'll see.
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October 6, 2019
Affable Fremont County insider and political columnist Bill Sniffin commented in a column in the Tribune that runs today that Republican insiders are certain that Liz Cheney will run for the Senate against Cynthia Lummis, but are hoping that she won't.
I'll bet they are hoping that.
Cheney has risen remarkably quickly in the House minority party and is frequently interviewed by the national press. But its still the case that she achieved her office as the race became a three way marathon in the primary where the other two candidates out polled her, if their combined tallies are considered. I still see "Liz Cheney for Virginia" bumper stickers around from time to time. The long and the short of it is that Lummis isn't forgotten by the Wyoming electorate and is admired, including the admirable reason for her stepping down from office when she did (to take are of her dying husband). Likewise, Cheney's strained connections with the state haven't been forgotten by many either. In a race against Lummis, she'll lose.
That would however open up the House race for renewed competition, which is what Sniffin was writing on. I have a pretty strong feeling that I know who would would run to some degree, and it would include at least one of the two candidates who nearly beat her last time. My guess is that in addition to that, we'd see interest in the seat from at least three of the candidates who vied for Governor last election. But there would be others as well. It might turn into a repeat of the last Governor's race which pitted candidates who were basically from the tea party element of the party against the Wyoming traditional moderates, which is basically where Cheney fits in.
Republicans have good reason to hope that doesn't occur.
It would theoretically open the door to the Democrats, but not with the candidate they have now who is not going to go anywhere against the Republicans. About the only hope for the Democrats would be if the GOP primary resulted in a tea party type candidate, which many in the rank and file do not approve of, and the Democrats picked a moderate like they did for the Governor's race. Indeed, if the race, as a hypothetical, ended up being between Foster Friess (whose name has been mentioned as a potential candidate) and Mary Throne, who was the Democratic candidate for Governor in 2018, and who polled 27% of the vote, there's a chance that Wyoming Democrats could capture that office for the first time since Teno Roncalio vacated it in 1978.
In the meantime, with there being a strong chance that the Democrats may gain in the House in 2020 and perhaps take the Senate, my guess is that Republicans are urging Cheney to stay put. While its almost certain that a Republican will replace her should she leave her House seat, that Republican will be a national unknown and have no pull at all.
Nationally, at the time of my babble here this morning, the morning news shows haven't run, but a comment noted above has been in play all week. Just as President Trump is looking really bad for his Ukrainian telephone call, Joe Biden is fumbling all over with his son's Ukrainian connections.
Given this, the Ukrainian Call stands a good chance of taking them both down. Trump has not handled the event well at all and indeed his reactions to it have been erratic. The Democrats for that matter have handled the press of it pretty masterly, save for the damage its doing to Biden, which they frankly might not really care about anyway.
Trump for his part made a public call of a sort to have China investigate Biden, which wasn't a popular call with anyone at all and really looks bad. Taking to Twitter to criticize him is Mitt Romney, now relocated from the East Coast to Utah and their U.S. Senator. He tweeted:
- Mitt Romney Oct 4
By all appearances, the President’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.Show this thread - Mitt Romney Oct 4
When the only American citizen President Trump singles out for China’s investigation is his political opponent in the midst of the Democratic nomination process, it strains credulity to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated.
Predictably, this brought a reaction from President Trump who replied several times, none of which were in a dignified manner, as if Twitter can be dignified or Presidential anyway.
Donald J. Trump
I’m hearing that the Great People of Utah are considering their vote for their Pompous Senator, Mitt Romney, to be a big mistake. I agree! He is a fool who is playing right into the hands of the Do Nothing Democrats! #IMPEACHMITTROMNEY
- Donald J. Trump
Mitt Romney never knew how to win. He is a pompous “ass” who has been fighting me from the beginning, except when he begged me for my endorsement for his Senate run (I gave it to him), and when he begged me to be Secretary of State (I didn’t give it to him). He is so bad for R’s! - Donald J. Trump
Somebody please wake up Mitt Romney and tell him that my conversation with the Ukrainian President was a congenial and very appropriate one, and my statement on China pertained to corruption, not politics. If Mitt worked this hard on Obama, he could have won. Sadly, he choked!
This is really embarrassing and should stop. There have been people who have questioned Trump's stability and this adds fuel to their fire. More realistically, Trump has been a very wealthy businessman his entire life and while he had fancied himself a great deal maker, he's never had to operate in the environment in which he does and the better evidence is that he doesn't really grasp how to. A recent column suggested that he simply doesn't grasp that any of this upsetting conduct is wrong, and the generally favorable reaction from his base has insulated him from realizing that.
Time magazine this week has a cover illustration with Trump having painted himself into an orange corner. While there have been plenty of predictions of that in the past, he may actually have done so in this instance.
Indeed, the lashing out at Romney in this fashion may aid in this process. There's always been a lot of Republicans who personally disliked Trump but who were also willing to endure him, as it turned out, as the results they were achieving were uniformly conservative and to their liking. Judicial appointments in particular have been quite popular with the conservative Republican rank and file.
But there's no reason to believe that people in that camp are willing to go down with the ship, so to speak. Indeed, Republicans with long memories will recall that Richard Nixon's collapse not only damaged the party, it brought a group of young Democratic left wingers into national prominence who have never left. Even Ronald Reagan's dependency later that decade did not suffice to really change that. If Trump is impeached it will almost certainly result in the Democrats taking the Senate in 2010 and probably the oval office.
Knowing that, quite a few Republicans are probably cringing currently and wishing that Trump would go, as he clearly won't be silent or reform. Its an internal Republican problem. Ironically, for that reason, if he is to be impeached, the best possible result would be to do it quickly. Trump has been complaining that efforts to impeach him amount to a coup, but the irony of that would be, from a Republican prospective, if a coup is in the offering, the best thing would be to do it quickly and position themselves are rapidly as possible for 2020.
Back to the spat with Romney for a moment, an event like that tends to emphasize this. Romney is a Senator from a state which places a high value on politeness. Westerners from the upper West in general, moreover, find New Yorkers to be rude and it forms their opinion of them. People from this region don't find it amusing in any fashion and can genuinely resent New Yorkers for their loud seemingly unrestrained nature. President Trump openly commenting on Mitt Romney in the fashion in which he is won't help Trump one bit and it elevates Romney. Indeed, ironically, what Trump called for is the very thing he's opposing, as Romney being openly critical of Trump isn't an impeachable offense of any kind.
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October 7, 2019
I somehow forgot to note, in the update from yesterday, that Bernie Sanders heart procedure followed his heart attack.
I've noted it repeatedly here, but Sanders is a fairly aged man. All the top candidates are elderly. Sanders doesn't look healthy to start with (and neither does Trump, for that matter). Looking healthy and being healthy are two different things, but the heart episode would have caused a candidate to drop out in any race prior to the 1990s.
In this morning's news are reports that a second "whistle blower" has come forward. Actually, if you wait for the first whistle blower to come forward, you aren't a second whistle blower. The whistle has been blown. Anyhow, this is being treated as big news, but I can't see how it really is. The story has already broken and nobody is disputing the general context of the released transcription confirming the contents of the telephone call, even if they dispute what those contents mean.
In odd news, Corey Booker, over the weekend, said that if President Trump picks on Joe Biden, he'll have to take on Corey Booker. Booker is already taking on President Trump as a candidate for office, so this really makes very little sense, other than Booker using the news on Biden to attempt to boost his own fortunes, which are flagging. Perhaps its just a noble sentiment, but it's one that's an odd one in the context of the current times.
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October 20, 2019
I missed the last debate as I was driving in my truck from one town to another when it was on, and mercifully completely forgot about it. So I didn't post on it.
Still, a lot of odds and ends have been in motion since I last posted. It's become perfectly clear, as Governor Christie noted as a panelist in one of this past week's news shots that the House is going to pass a bill of impeachment on Donald Trump. And so we'll then have a trial in the Senate, as he notes, in which its almost certain that he'll withstand that effort and everyone will go on to the November 2020 election. Chances are fairly high that Trump will use the impeachment effort as a campaign rallying point which his base will like.
Having said that, the ongoing breach between the President and the GOP over Syria continues on, with everyone more or less accepting the results but very few outside the immediate Trump camp being happy about it. The "bringing the troops home" line used to excuse it turns out to be false, as they're actually only redeploying to Iraq, and at the same time, of course, we're sending troops into Saudi Arabia.
In the Democratic field, AoC endorsed Bernie Sanders. We haven't heard much from her recently frankly I think the bloom is off the red (in the traditional political sense) rose and we'll hear less and less about here from here on out. Her endorsement, which I only heard in audio, was pretty ineffective in my view. It's not going to help Sanders, or for that matter AoC. Sanders is pretty much done.
Warren has been in the ascendancy but she continues to be plagued by odd gaffs in which she claims some sort of oppressed status that turns out to be false. This is making her an easy target in some ways for her opponents in the Democratic field which have really started taking her on.
Along those lines, Hillary Clinton has reenter the news cycle by suddenly acting like a candidate and there's real reasons to believe that she might be entertaining another run. She's in the news as she's oddly been picking on Tulsi Gabbard, suggesting some link between Gabbard and the Russians. Gabbard, whose campaign has been flagging, is suddenly back in the news herself as a result.
Gabbard, I'm confident, isn't in cahoots with Putin and this entire detour is really surprising. What with Trump and the Ukrainian call, and Chinese suggestion, and now with Clinton resurfacing with an accusation about failing Gabbard and the Russians, parts of this campaign season are starting to sound like the background music for the whole thing should be Warren Zevon's Lawyers, Guns and Money, which I'd link in here but for the fact that when I pulled up the video it now gives a person the "Official" Impeach Trump poll, and there is no such official poll outside of the House of Representatives and I don't want to encourage such net beliefs.
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October 26, 2019
Headlines this past week showed Liz Cheney to be 20 points ahead of Cynthia Lummis in a theoretical GOP primary match up for the Republican ticket for Senate.
Having said that, Cheney has not announced yet that she's running, although there seems to be a great deal of speculation that she is.
The headline surprised me quite frankly, as I would have thought that Lummis would be in the lead. Having said that, the overall results showed 38%, the largest category, to be undecided. 37% were supporting Cheney in the poll, and 17% Lummis.
That's not good news for Lummis, assuming Cheney decides to announce and leave the House in which she's risen quickly. Having said that, it's still incredibly early in the race and it oddly seems to reflect her original primary results in which three candidates vied for the position and while Cheney came in first, the combined totals of the other candidates exceeded her numbers. The large undecided category here therefore will prove to be critical.
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November 2, 2019
Beto O'Rourke has dropped out of the race.
O'Rourke was the predictable early favorite of some of the press, with his popularity seemingly principally being based there and in those who favor early flashes. Never demonstrating much substance, his star predictably rose and then burned out. Late in the campaign he changed two of his prior stances, one on gun control and one on using foul language, with neither helping himself and one of those positions potentially harming the Democrats overall.
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November 4, 2019
I missed the last debates, like I've missed nearly all of them (I've only seen part of one), but there has apparently been some surprising statistical moves over the last week or so. And some moves and developments in other areas.
Elizabeth Warren had been rising against Biden and there were predictions that Sanders was done for and Biden about to be. And then she hauled off and attempted to co-opt Sanders Medicare On Demand position. That's been hurting her severely.
It doesn't hurt Sanders as his base doesn't care if it adds dramatically to national taxes. They just don't. As younger voters as a rule, who are not yet paying substantial taxes anyhow, they basically don't calculate that into their analysis anyhow. People past their late 20s, however, do.
Warren has attempted to address this through fantasy, imagining saving that materialize out of thin air and which won't exist. Everyone, including her fellow Democratic candidates, have taken her apart on that. Pete Buttigieg did a masterful job of doing just that in one of the weekend shows, and indeed the combination of the senior ages of all of the Democratic front runners combined with Warren's adoption of Bernie's position is causing him to receive second looks.
It also caused second looks towards Warren with a lot of those looking going back to Biden. Now that the polls are really starting to matter, but not yet really an accurate predictor of who will come out on top, Biden is consistently once again in the front position, followed by troubled Warren, followed by Sanders, and down in high single digits, Buttigieg.
That didn't stop, however, Meet The Press from interviewing Yang and proclaiming him to be a remaining serous contender, which is flat out absurd.
Meet the Press is from the same network which gave us the red/blue confusion and for that reason deserves to be sentenced to political kindergarten. It's consistently more partisan than This Week, the only other weekend news show I listen to. I like it, but in recent weeks it hasn't even really pretended to be non partisan. Interviewing Yang at this point really shows where its views fall.
In Yang's defense, some of the things he says about automation in industry may very well prove to be true, and in my view the consequences will be vastly more dire than predicted. So while Yang isn't completely out to lunch on everything, the point is that he can't win. He doesn't poll about 3% in any poll He's going nowhere.
Harris isn't either, we'd note, being all the way down to 4%. Booker is so low he should get out. Indeed, every other candidate mentioned in the Democratic field whom I haven't mentioned is at 2% or below. There's no reason for any of them to hang around. Indeed, their hanging around mostly serves to keep Democrats who might coalesce around a none septuagenarian candidate to have nowhere to go but instead too many places to go.
Buttigieg, as noted, crowds 9% by some polls, which is still low. I don't think he'll make it past the part but as a non septuagenarian in a field crowed with people 70 years old and up, his remaining in the campaign makes sense. As This Week noted, and he avoided answering, he has a problem however in that the African American's in the Democratic Party do not support him and that appears to be due to his open homosexuality.
That's not surprising at all and frankly it likely is a developing aspect of ethnic politics that hasn't been noted yet. The Democratic Party up until this election cycle has maintained that its multi ethnic and its base is, but it runs, for the Presidency, solidly white candidates. The GOP, in contrast, hasn't been doing that. What's misted in that is that some ethnic groups who have gone for the Democrats for some time are fairly culturally conservative. The "black church", which is the real one Christian base in the Democratic Party has struggled with the Democrats' positions on various social issues for years and it has not adopted the Democratic Party's views on same couple marriage. Blacks as an ethnic group tend to reflect that and they're not following White Democrats on this issue.
Indeed, recent polls suggest, and again probably not surprisingly, there's been a retreat from the Democratic views on this among younger voters as well. That hasn't been strongly looked at, but there's a lot of social issues in society at large right now that aren't well grasped in terms of demographics and age. All that is combining to work against Buttgieg rising up in spite of his sounding much less radical on many issues than the other older Democrats. On Medicare for all, for example, he's against it, but acknowledges that long term it may come into being, a surprisingly honest statement for a politician.
At the same time that Buttigieg is running into trouble with an element of the Democratic base it appears that Joe Biden is as well (and indeed, Buttigieg, who may or may not have at one time been part of this element likely already was). We may be seeing for the first time in forty years the emergence of a "Catholic Vote", and that Vote isn't pleased with their co-religious Biden.
Biden, a Catholic, was denied Communion when he presented himself for the same a week ago in Florence, South Carolina. This is extraordinary, but its something that signals an awaking. . . well rage, by orthodox Catholics over the betrayal of major tenants of the faith by Catholic politicians. It's been going on for awhile, but is really starting to emerge.
The extraordinary act was taken by Father Robert Morey, the pastor at St. Anthony's in Florence. In doing this, he stated that he was doing the same as as Biden's support for abortion puts himself outside of the teachings of the Church.
Father Morely is 100% correct, of course. The surprising thing is however that a Priest took this action at this point in time, although laity have been demanding this type of action now for years and years. Indeed, if a person hears a Catholic call in show soon or later there will be a question presented about why the Bishops don't demand that non adherent Catholic politicians be refused Communion.
The answer is usually given that its a matter of pastoral discretion with the goal not to make a situation any worse than it already is, but to attempt to address it. Also, it's impossible to know the state of a person's soul at any one moment. For all you may know, Biden may have gone to Confession the prior evening.
The bigger problem, however, is that there's no reason to believe that Biden has repented of his position, which is, if I understand it correctly, that he's personally 100% observant of Catholic moral teaching but does not support legislation that would impose that on others.
That's a complete cop out, of course, and is the sort of thing that Catholic politicians have even taken refuge in since 1960 when John F. Kennedy ran for office. Kennedy was a watershed politician for American Catholics as he took them out of the Catholic ghetto but, as the same time, allowed Catholics to take the position, which they were never able to do before, that it was okay to be a Catholic on Sunday's only. Prior to that time, there was a definite Catholic culture in the Catholic minority and they were definitely different.
Catholics in 1960 were so excited by overcoming the Tiber Barrier in American politics that they never thought of what they were giving up. At that time, there was a "Catholic Vote". There might be one now, but the fact that a person has to say "might" says something.
If there hasn't been, there's also a lot of speculation if a Catholic vote might be coming back. Indeed, there's some evidence that it is. We'll deal with that topic to a degree elsewhere actually, but a big demographic change occurring in the culture is bringing in a lot of younger orthodox and vocal Catholics into their own at the same time a lot of older Boomer liberal Catholics are making sort of a last ditch effort to get things over the bar that they haven't been able to fully do.The latter will fail at that.
As part of this, Catholics are really in the position for the first time since prior to the 1960s of being vocal about positions they hold that are completely contrary to the supposed American mainstream. By doing this, they're abandoning attempting to remain in the mainstream to some degree, although that varies considerably by individual. This differs dramatically from the "Evangelical Vote" as the position of the Catholic Vote doesn't fit in well at all into either party. Catholic voters were traditionally Democratic but more and more orthodox ones have left the party either for the GOP, where they don't always feel very comfortable, or for no party at all.
Right now the degree to which a Catholic Vote has reemerged isn't clear, but chances are that both parties better start taking it seriously. The grandchildren of Catholics who moved out of the political Catholic Ghetto are voluntarily moving back into it, while their grandparents continue to take the Bidenesque approach to many things. As with many things in this election cycle, the bulge in the demographic aspect of things is pretty clear.
Finally, while not really election news, the House adopted rules for an Impeachment Inquiry on President Trump.
The interesting thing here is that by and large the public is so fatigued that its not paying attention. Impeachment would normally dominate the water cooler talk but it isn't. Out in the streets, nobody is really talking about it. And that really says something.
What will occur is that the House will vote to impeach the President, after the hearings, and the Senate will not remove him from office. So the Democrats will have a failed impeachment on their hands. As it seems to be the only thing at all that the House is doing, in the end it stands to make undecided voters mad at the Democrats. Unless the hearings produce something really dramatic, which in the context of recent events would be hard to do, as prior events seemed dramatic but didn't ignite that much public interest, nothing will be impacted.
Slightly more Americans favor removing the President than retaining him, and those percentages break down nearly directly with his support in 2016. So nothing seems to be moving that much. A strong argument can be made that the Democrats are ripping through political capital by doing this and may end up being hurt by it. The time that anything takes in Congress itself operates against anything being done.
My prediction is that the House will vote to impeach in December and the Senate won't take it up until February. Early on, there will be a motion to dismiss the impeachment trial, which would be a valid motion, and my early guess is that it will be granted. We'll see if that occurs, but the risk there is it will look like the Senate didn't do its job, so the GOP leadership in the Senate will have to weigh that against the look of having a sitting President subject to an impeachment trial. For that matter, Trump is such an anomaly that a trial may actually end up working for his benefit.
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