Last Call For Impeachment Reached, Con't

As the Senate trial of Donald Trump gets underway tomorrow, a new CNN poll still finds that a narrow majority want Trump removed from office

About half of Americans say the Senate should vote to convict President Donald Trump and remove him from office in the upcoming impeachment trial (51%), according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, while 45% say the Senate should vote against conviction and removal. 

Nearly seven in 10 (69%) say that upcoming trial should feature testimony from new witnesses who did not testify in the House impeachment inquiry. And as Democrats in the Senate seek to persuade at least four Republican senators to join them on votes over allowing witnesses in the trial, the Republican rank and file are divided on the question: 48% say they want new witnesses, while 44% say they do not. 

The poll is the first major national telephone poll since the articles of impeachment were sent to the Senate, formally launching Trump's trial there. They are also the first such poll results since Soviet-born businessman Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani, publicly implicated the President in the Ukrainian pressure campaign during a series of television interviews. 

The new poll also finds majorities of Americans view each of the charges on which Trump will face trial as true: 58% say Trump abused the power of the presidency to obtain an improper personal political benefit and 57% say it is true that he obstructed the House of Representatives in its impeachment inquiry. 

But what matters is what Republican primary voters want.

Massive partisan gaps continue to dominate views on Trump and his impeachment trial. Overall, 89% of Democrats say he should be removed from office, while just 8% of Republicans feel the same way. Among independents, it's nearly dead even: 48% say the Senate should vote to remove him, while 46% say that they should not. Views on whether Trump should be impeached and removed are also evenly split across battleground states, 49% are on each side across the 15 states decided by 8 points or less in 2016. Those states are Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. 

Beyond partisanship, there are wide divisions in the poll by gender, race, education and age. Nearly six in 10 women (59%) say the Senate should remove Trump from office; 42% of men agree. Among African Americans, 86% say Trump should be removed. That drops to 65% among Hispanics and 42% among whites. 

Combining race and gender, about eight in 10 women of color (79%) say he should be removed. That dips to 59% among non-white men, 49% among white women and 33% among white men. For whites, education adds another degree of division: 59% of white women with college degrees say the Senate should remove Trump, compared with 43% among white women without degrees, 44% among white men with degrees and 27% among white men without college degrees. A majority (56%) of those under age 45 say the President should be removed, while older Americans are more evenly split (47% in favor among those age 45 and over, 50% opposed).

As long as the Senate GOP has far more to fear from the 90% of Republican primary voters who demand acquittal than the big majority of remaining general election voters who want removal, there will be no witnesses, there will be little in way of a trial, and it will most likely all be over at the speed that the White House wants.

King Of The Grifters

The Trump regime corrupting Dr. King's memory for their own vile purposes happens yearly at this point, and I don't know why anyone expected anything different in 2020.

Kellyanne Conway on Monday responded to a question on how the president is observing Martin Luther King Day by claiming the civil-rights leader would oppose the impeachment of President Donald Trump.

During a press gathering at the White House, NBC News correspondent Geoff Bennett asked the senior Trump aide how the president was observing Martin Luther King Day, prompting Conway to first note that Trump was preparing for his trip to Davos before saying the president “agrees with many of the things that Dr. Martin Luther King stood for.”

From there, it only got more bizarre.

Adding that the president and Dr. King would see eye-to-eye on “unity and equality,” Conway complained that it’s not the president who is “trying to tear the country apart through an impeachment process and a lack of substance that really is very shameful at this point.”

“I’ve held my opinion on it for a very long time, but when you see the articles of impeachment that came out, I don’t think it was Dr. King’s vision to have Americans dragged through a process where the president is not going to be removed from office, is not being charged bribery, extortion, high crimes and misdemeanors,” she continued.

After declaring that anyone who cares for the phrase “and justice for all” should appreciate that the president has a “full-throttle defense” when it comes to impeachment, Conway concluded by linking herself with MLK.

“I, this morning, was reading some of the lesser-known passages by Dr. King and I appreciate the fact that we as a nation respect him by giving him his own day,” she proclaimed.

“I’m happy to share a birthday with this day,” Conway concluded.

I'm pretty sure Dr. King would tell Kellyanne Conway to shut the hell up.

A Case Of Government Cheese

The biggest problem that Democratic 2020 presidential candidates have with selling the grandiose plans of Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg and others to black voters especially is that in practice, government programs run headlong into systemic racism and become things that work for white America, but not for the rest.

Democratic candidates have come to understand that they need policies that target racial inequities, especially to win over black voters — a vital force in the Democratic primary. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont says single-payer health insurance will close disparities like the higher infant morality rate in black families. Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., released his Frederick Douglass Plan, which calls for overhauling the criminal justice system, health care equity, and education funding.

In addition to her proposals for black farmers, Ms. Warren has aimed to design her health care and education plans so that they take corrective steps to address historical inequality.

Still, even as the plans add up, black voters have largely not shown enthusiasm about these candidates, and the polling numbers have barely budged. According to a recent nationwide poll of black voters from The Washington Post and Ipsos, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. holds a significant edge, with the support of nearly 50 percent of respondents. Among black voters 65 and older, poll showed Mr. Biden ahead by 60 percentage points.

Mr. Sanders had 20 percent support, driven largely by his popularity with black voters under 35 years old. Ms. Warren was third in The Post’s poll, with 9 percent.

Over the course of her campaign, at events geared toward black voters, Ms. Warren often cites policy proposals such as investment in historically black colleges and new housing in formerly redlined communities. Crowds generally respond positively.

“I want a world where the color of your skin doesn’t matter, you get the same opportunities,” Ms. Warren said at an event over the weekend hosted with groups including the Iowa chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. “We do not fix a system like this by pretending that race doesn’t matter.”

Mr. Sanders’s progress with black voters has been a mixed bag; he is beloved among younger voters and viewed with some suspicion by older ones, who largely supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 and found his insurgent campaign to be harmful to her in the general election. Late last year, Mr. Sanders replaced his South Carolina state director, a sign of the campaign’s desire to shift his strategy for winning over black voters.

Mr. Biden’s candidacy is helped by several factors, including his widespread name recognition, public proximity to former President Barack Obama, and close relationship with black community leaders dating to his years in the Senate.

But in interviews with dozens of black voters in Virginia and South Carolina, another theme emerges: Mr. Biden is also ahead because his leading rivals have yet to wrestle with how their promises of structural change must overcome historical distrust of the government in black communities.

When you ask black voters like myself why we should trust Joe Biden, it's because he spent eight years as Obama's VP.  You ask me about Sanders, and I'm gonna say "the guy who spent more than 30 years in Congress and got nothing passed?"  Warren at least ran for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau...and then Trump and the GOP neutered it to the point where it does nothing now precisely because it was helping black and brown folk.

Nobody in SC believe Sanders or Warren or Pete are going to get any major programs past Mitch or the Roberts Court because we all saw what happened to the ACA and to Democrats in 2010 and again when Black Lives Matter gained national attention in 2014.  Affordable health care for all Americans, not just the white ones, became a massive political liability when it threatened the careers of Democratic politicians and they ran from Obama.

We know what Sanders' supporters said and did to the ACA.

We know Warren decided the ACA was bad but she would do better.

Same with Mayor Pete.

Everyone says "We can do better."  Not one of them pointed out that the ACA was sabotaged again and again by Republicans and oh yeah, more than a few Democrats.  Well, Joe Biden did.

It's not rocket science, guys. Joe Biden has his issues, there's a reason I did not vote for him in 2008 in the primaries, in fact several reasons, all of which are pretty terrible baggage.  And he still pretends that the GOP will work with him, when they will spend every day calling him a socialist and a traitor and will sabotage him just as much as they did to Obama, if not more so.

But he is loyal to Obama, and he is loyal to the voters who put Obama in office. And frankly, the GOP will try to destroy any Democratic president, and there's no guarantee Trump will even leave office.

Right now, until somebody can make the case better than Biden that you gotta dance with the people that brung ya, he's my current choice.

StupidiNews (MLK Jr. Day Edition)

As I reflect on the Dr. Martin Luther King holiday here in the Trump era, I post his Letters From A Birmingham Jail, hoping people will finally get it.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

Nearly 57 years later, we still have the exact same problem.  The people Dr. King warned us about are the ones who today say "I don't see color!" or "But all lives matter!" and they mean it, because they don't understand, and they have chosen not to.

The negative peace, which is the absence of tension.

The positive peace, which is the presence of justice.

Still, two generations after Dr. King wrote these words, the former remains preferable and the latter is brutally punished.

Try to imagine getting the Dr. King holiday through today's Senate GOP.