2nd Trump Senate Trial and the January 6 commission

[Valmy]

I think he is doing it on purpose because he thinks this is an echo chamber that needs to be challenged. The problem is I don't buy the premise that delaying it would have made it more successful so I don't find the challenge very challenging.

Now maybe they shouldn't have done the second Senate Trial at all for whatever political reasons. That I could maybe concede with good arguments, but I don't buy delaying it would have done much good.

[Berkut]

AR is hilarious. His passion for "being right" is genuinely one of the funnier things on Languish. That he is willing to actually ally himself with Mitch in order to be seen as "right" is truly fascinating.

[alfred russel]

is less important than addressing a President who may have tried to overthrow our democratic government is absurd.

He was out of office. I think something worth remembering in all of this:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/us/general-election-trump-vs-biden-7383.html

Polling on Trump vs. Biden indicates that if the election was held today, Trump would roll Biden. Popular vote is a dead heat, but with the electoral college skew probably anything less than Biden +4% means Trump wins. If you want to really be doom and gloom, the polls also missed by 5% against Trump last time, so if that hasn't been fixed Biden is roughly 9% behind where he needs to be in the popular vote right now.

You can counter by saying polling on a hypothetical matchup 2 years out means little, and fair enough, but with the approach taken on Jan. 6, Trump is in a strong position - probably stronger than when he left office. The 2nd impeachment trial did not succeed breaking him or republicans politically. We are actually now into the midterms: how many competitive democrats are using Jan. 6 as a centerpiece in their argument? Is any republican in danger of paying for their support of Trump? I can only think of possibly Mike Lee in Utah.

[Berkut]

Except you are not obviously right--this is a circumstance where you are clearly wrong as evidenced by literally everyone telling you that, and because you just like to stir up interminable arguments you are fighting the point--to the point that you literally resurrected a dead argument from over a year ago just to engage in more arguing with someone like Berkut who lacks the capacity to just ignore you when you act like this.

Apparently I am not the only one...

[OttoVonBismarck]

is less important than addressing a President who may have tried to overthrow our democratic government is absurd.

He was out of office. I think something worth remembering in all of this:

Which is not the argument you have made, nor do you get to shift to it now. You argue that somehow holding the trial in February '21 was disastrous and they should have waited. If him being out of office means the trial wasn't important, that is an argument for not holding it at all. That is an argument that I find a lot more persuasive than your claim about timing of the trial being of paramount importance, and specifically that doing it in February '21 was a big disaster and doing it now would be some great success.
'

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/us/general-election-trump-vs-biden-7383.html

Polling on Trump vs. Biden indicates that if the election was held today, Trump would roll Biden. Popular vote is a dead heat, but with the electoral college skew probably anything less than Biden +4% means Trump wins. If you want to really be doom and gloom, the polls also missed by 5% against Trump last time, so if that hasn't been fixed Biden is roughly 9% behind where he needs to be in the popular vote right now.

You can counter by saying polling on a hypothetical matchup 2 years out means little, and fair enough, but with the approach taken on Jan. 6, Trump is in a strong position - probably stronger than when he left office. The 2nd impeachment trial did not succeed breaking him or republicans politically. We are actually now into the midterms: how many competitive democrats are using Jan. 6 as a centerpiece in their argument? Is any republican in danger of paying for their support of Trump? I can only think of possibly Mike Lee in Utah.

Literally nothing in tihs quoted passage has anything to do with the discussion of Feb 2021 vs I guess October of 2022 timing for an impeachment trial. You're clearly doing your typical dance of moving goal posts around to extend the argument, particularly since you've been called out for arguing dishonestly for the sake of arguing.

[alfred russel]

Which is not the argument you have made, nor do you get to shift to it now. You argue that somehow holding the trial in February '21 was disastrous and they should have waited. If him being out of office means the trial wasn't important, that is an argument for not holding it at all. That is an argument that I find a lot more persuasive than your claim about timing of the trial being of paramount importance, and specifically that doing it in February '21 was a big disaster and doing it now would be some great success.

I did not hold that it would be disastrous to hold the trial in February 2021. I held that it was a mistake for reasons including:

-democratic optics would be best served by first focusing on covid and the economy vs. litigating / prosecuting the trump administration
-a trial in Feb. would have to be rushed because of the senate calendar and rules,
-delaying the confirmation of the cabinet for the trial was not putting the biden administration on a path to success.


-I also suggested that, assuming the votes wouldn't be decisive, democrats from moderate states should consider voting to acquit because that would give them instant moderate cred without having to compromise on any issues down the road. That was not well received here, but guys like Warnock would probably be a lock right now had he voted differently. And that could easily be the difference between McConnell being majority leader vs. Schumer.

[alfred russel]

My take on this always was that democrats, being in charge of all three branches, will communicate to voters their top priorities by their actions. I'd say we go into midterms with these three priorities communicated (in no particular order):

-abortion rights
-preserving democratic norms
-responsible action on climate change

All three topics are important and on all three democrats are on the right side of the issues. However, I think the democrats lose badly with that messaging. Swing voters are disproportionately lower educated and many if not most of them will have voted for Trump in either 2016 or 2020 - they don't see Trump as a terrible threat to democracy. He also isn't on the ballot now and he may never be again. Priorities should have been raising the minimum wage, raising corporate taxes, expanding access to health care, etc.

That there hasn't been a vote on raising corporate taxes even a little after the massive Trump tax cuts or raising the minimum wage is a borderline malpractice by democrats.

[The Minsky Moment]

That's a better argument.  Go with that one.

[alfred russel]

That's a better argument.  Go with that one.

That was my original argument and I haven't shifted from that.

[OttoVonBismarck]

No--your original argument was not "Democrats suck at messaging", it was that holding the impeachment trial in February 2021 was very bad. The two are not remotely the same argument--although I understand given the weakness of the argument you actually made, a desire to change it to a completely different argument.

I also think your understanding of messaging is fairly off base. I think you get little to no real credit with low information swing voters from "holding votes" unless those votes produce clear and easily explainable policy wins.

The Democrats actually held a vote on raising the minimum wage--it lost because of Kyrsten Sinema (in the short term, I think it also would have had to clear the parliamentarian to even be considered part of the recon bill, which wasn't certain), they get no credit for having held that vote. Raising the corporate tax was not viable in early 2021 because both Sinema and Manchin were not willing to play ball--Biden's most recent Build Back Better law does contain a corporate tax increase and it literally took most of a year to get Manchin to agree to that, there was no magic wand they had to magick Manchin into not dragging his feet for a year had they chosen to listen to Mitch and not put Trump on trial.

I think most people agree the Democrats are in disarray on messaging and basically have been for almost 10 years now, with little sign of improvement. There are big blocks of voters who are locked into both parties and won't be swayed by any messaging, there's another big block who seem to basically be "Golden retriever puppy voters" who just chimerically run from one party to the next based on an almost psychotic desire to never vote for the same party twice (I've seen estimates that peg this phenomenon at upwards of 10% of the electorate), and then you have the 10-15% of persuadable voters, who mostly are conservative--a reality Democrats don't tend to like admitting and means much of their political strategizing to improve with them would involve softening stances and doing things the activist class hates.

But none, absolutely none, of any of that has anything to do with an impeachment trial held in February of 2021, no matter whatever pained, stupid inaccurate or distortionary claim you cook up next to try and make it so.

[crazy canuck]

That's a better argument.  Go with that one.

That was my original argument and I haven't shifted from that.

You shifted with all of the agility of an elite climber going up a very difficult rock face.

You get to name your next thread.

[alfred russel]

No--your original argument was not "Democrats suck at messaging", it was that holding the impeachment trial in February 2021 was very bad. The two are not remotely the same argument--although I understand given the weakness of the argument you actually made, a desire to change it to a completely different argument.

I wish i could find the original thread, but it was that it was bad to hold the trial in February 2021 because it indicated the top priority was prosecuting trump vs. putting in place the administration or other legislative initiatives, and that any potential political embarrassment for republicans would be lessened by having to abbreviate the trial when there were so many competing legislative priorities.

[alfred russel]

I also think your understanding of messaging is fairly off base. I think you get little to no real credit with low information swing voters from "holding votes" unless those votes produce clear and easily explainable policy wins.

The Democrats actually held a vote on raising the minimum wage--it lost because of Kyrsten Sinema (in the short term, I think it also would have had to clear the parliamentarian to even be considered part of the recon bill, which wasn't certain), they get no credit for having held that vote. Raising the corporate tax was not viable in early 2021 because both Sinema and Manchin were not willing to play ball--Biden's most recent Build Back Better law does contain a corporate tax increase and it literally took most of a year to get Manchin to agree to that, there was no magic wand they had to magick Manchin into not dragging his feet for a year had they chosen to listen to Mitch and not put Trump on trial.

Come on--there was never a concerted push to increase the minimum wage with the President out front sending a proposal to congress and Pelosi and Schumer there talking about it being a priority, and spinning the excise tax on corporate share repurchases as a corporate tax increase is silly. Trump reduced corporate taxes from 35% to 21% and Biden ran on taking it to 28%. With some effort I think a minimum wage increase would have passed, and I understand a corporate tax increase probably wouldn't--but pushing these things is meaningful especially on the minimum wage (people will notice if there is a vote that would increase their pay, and it fails because almost all republicans oppose).

The point is they spent not just significant time but also the most important time on a new administration's calendar (the start), on a doomed effort to convict trump of incitement. I think it clearly communicates where their priorities lay, for better or worse.

If the message was, "look what happened is serious and we need to fully investigate, but we are focused on the future and right now we have a covid crisis and our top priority is getting the new administration in place to respond to the crisis and also covid relief to make sure small businesses that are getting crushed by the pandemic can surivive", that would have been the winning play imo.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I also think your understanding of messaging is fairly off base. I think you get little to no real credit with low information swing voters from "holding votes" unless those votes produce clear and easily explainable policy wins.

The Democrats actually held a vote on raising the minimum wage--it lost because of Kyrsten Sinema (in the short term, I think it also would have had to clear the parliamentarian to even be considered part of the recon bill, which wasn't certain), they get no credit for having held that vote. Raising the corporate tax was not viable in early 2021 because both Sinema and Manchin were not willing to play ball--Biden's most recent Build Back Better law does contain a corporate tax increase and it literally took most of a year to get Manchin to agree to that, there was no magic wand they had to magick Manchin into not dragging his feet for a year had they chosen to listen to Mitch and not put Trump on trial.

Come on--there was never a concerted push to increase the minimum wage with the President out front sending a proposal to congress and Pelosi and Schumer there talking about it being a priority, and spinning the excise tax on corporate share repurchases as a corporate tax increase is silly. Trump reduced corporate taxes from 35% to 21% and Biden ran on taking it to 28%. With some effort I think a minimum wage increase would have passed, and I understand a corporate tax increase probably wouldn't--but pushing these things is meaningful especially on the minimum wage (people will notice if there is a vote that would increase their pay, and it fails because almost all republicans oppose).

The point is they spent not just significant time but also the most important time on a new administration's calendar (the start), on a doomed effort to convict trump of incitement. I think it clearly communicates where their priorities lay, for better or worse.

If the message was, "look what happened is serious and we need to fully investigate, but we are focused on the future and right now we have a covid crisis and our top priority is getting the new administration in place to respond to the crisis and also covid relief to make sure small businesses that are getting crushed by the pandemic can surivive", that would have been the winning play imo.

None of this has anything to do with the impeachment trial in February of 2021. Holding a trial did not communicate the things you say it did, and it did not prevent them from doing the things you think they should have done. It simply did not.

[alfred russel]

None of this has anything to do with the impeachment trial in February of 2021. Holding a trial did not communicate the things you say it did, and it did not prevent them from doing the things you think they should have done. It simply did not.

It was a terrible start. Not an unrecoverable one but a terrible start nonetheless.

Look at Bernie Sanders. It doesn't matter what the topic of the day is. His communications are all about the billionaire class, standing up to corporations, and healthcare. You spend the better part of the first month prosecuting trump, the message that sends is that is your priority.

The second part of this is that it made the trial ineffective public theater. The point of the poll at the top of this thread remains: there was a lot of compelling testimony and facts shared during the Jan. 6 hearings. The audience was a fraction of the impeachment trial. If the point of the trial was to make republicans squirm because the result was preordained, make them fucking squirm: don't just go through a quick 2 week presentation without witnesses because you have to get back to confirming people and passing covid relief.