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"The US House of Representatives has passed a resolution to formally proceed with the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.
The measure details how the inquiry will move into a more public phase. It was not a vote on whether the president should be removed from office.
This was the first test of support in the Democratic-controlled House for the impeachment process.
The White House condemned the vote, which passed along party lines.
Only two Democrats - representing districts that Mr Trump won handily in 2016 - voted against the resolution, along with all Republicans, for a total count of 232 in favour and 196 against."
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Trump Impeachment: House Votes to Formalise Inquiry
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And tomorrow will be like today, only more so.
-- Isaiah 56:12, New Standard Version
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @06:05PM (1 child)
Ever action has impacts. Even if Trump is not removed from office, impeaching and not-impeaching sends and is itself impactful.
Imagine you have a child, and she shoplifts a pack of gum. You see it. Obviously you aren't going to call the police on your own child. However, if you do nothing, do you think the kid is going to stop on her own, or do you think she's going to steal another stick of gum? Maybe a bag of chips next time, or that new pokemon game which you aren't willing to buy her.
People always test limits and push harder. Even if the Republicans aren't willing to remove from office (which, assuming the allegations are true, would be shameful), the symbolic effect of impeaching is better than the symbolic effect of not-impeaching.
That is, unless you prefer a "the president is elected dictator for 4 years; he can only be removed during an election year or assassination" style system. I feel horrible for having to say it, but I do not prefer that system... and I'd hope everybody else here could agree with that.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @06:57PM
The president is not a dictator. His power is heavily constrained by our system of checks and balances, as has been regularly shown. Nonetheless I do agree that executive power has become too centralized, but the problem there is people are all to gleeful to support expanded governmental power when "their" party is in power - as if that will always be the case. We all need to push for a weaker government at all levels, regardless of our feelings for whom happens to be in power. Power granted is rarely ungranted and, sooner or later, it will be abused.
Similarly, impeachment is not a symbolic slap on the wrist for corrective behavior. It's in the constitution for a reason. In times past when leaders fell out of the support with their nation, the frequent conclusion was assassination or forced abdication such as through kidnapping. Impeachment is basically the nuclear weapon that ought be used in cases where you otherwise would have widespread support and thus justification for extreme action. None of this stuff comes anywhere near that standard. By contrast compare Nixon's impeachment. He hired people to literally break into opposition hotel rooms, bug them, and then tried to engage in a mass cover-up all of this being funded using a slush fund connected to his election coffers.
That's no longer a partisan issue. And indeed even though the democrats did not have anywhere near enough people to convict in the senate, Nixon resigned knowing full well he would be convicted. Because again, it wasn't a partisan issue. Here? A president asking another leader to investigate high level corruption... is corruption? It's literally something out of a Saul Alinsky playbook: "Accuse your opponent of what only you are doing, as you are doing it, to create confusion, cloud the issue, and inoculate voters against any evidence of your guilt." Biden did engage, quite overtly and openly, in a quid quo pro in Ukraine. And so the DNC immediately took this and claimed that's exactly what Trump was doing. And indeed it does create confusion and cloud the issue, but I'm not sure it's really a wise longterm political strategy. You obviously have no reason to believe me and I probably wouldn't believe myself, but I was a lifelong 'democrat' (never identified as such but did vote for e.g. Obama). But these sort of actions, alongside the party's general 'ideological migration' has pushed me in quite the opposite direction. It's not like another party won me over, but rather that these tactics pushed me away - and they will probably account for another orange man vote in 2020. Dirty tactics get you short-term victories and long-term defeats.