Also, I may be reading this wrong. but they seem to have given a 72 hour time limit for the republicans to submit written requests for any witnesses, starting today from the passing of this. (page 3 Lines 15-25)

I may be WAAAAAAAY over thinking this, and require someone who knows a bit more about the workings of the house and congress than i do. but the house does not meet again until the 12th of November, with no votes being held tomorrow. I may be reading this wrong or something, but it would appear that there will be no time within that 72 hour window for a written request for witnesses to be submitted. they could not be that blatant about it right? Like I must be misreading or misunderstanding something.

this vote appears to have been at 3pm. AKA the last vote of the day, on the last day of session for 2 week.

given that the democrats hold the house they can do any sort of procedural nonsense they want. virtually all of the 'rules' are just conventions, and at this stage of the game there's no need to maintain conventions.

we're in the political endgame of this iteration of the american republic. the democrats intend to establish a one-party state. why stick to conventions?

We all know the Impeachment Is gonna be DOA. so the goal is to try and crush the republicans by saying that trump did something impeachable so the only way to hold him into account is to vote out every single republican possible. that iss assuming they dont just pull the totalitarian card when they don't get their way.

i don't really know what their precise strategy is. it seems as if the senate is their big stumbling block. without a way to get around the two-thirds vote for removal, there's no real way to outright take over through impeachment. if they have some strategy for doing that i don't know what it is.

maybe they're still banking on some hidden dirt, and they just want to use congressional subpoena powers for oppo research.

but honestly trump is the most closely investigated president in history.

if there was dirt, they'd have it by now.

Thats just it, i don't think they WANT impeachment. they want the investigation to make him look bad. they want the cloud of doubt like russiagate.

that doesn't seem to be having any traction though. trump's approval ratings haven't really moved.

yet. they now have an "open and fair" investigation where they can run the leading depositions they asked for the last half month in public every day.

that seems like a desperation strategy to me. people are tuning this shit out. it's not having an impact.

its all they have left. no democrat had a chance against him, they have no issues to stand on. all they have lefts is smears and blatant partizanship

the goal is to make him look corrupt. and if he "gets away with it" they can attempt to make the republicans looks systematically corrupt

precisely because they have no legitimate path forward i think there must be some sort of hidden strategy

i don't know yet what that might be, but these people aren't just going to lose with grace and humility.

there's literally nothing that i think the left would refuse to stoop to

is it possible to bar the senate? like physically prevent the senators from entering the senate?

i have seem a few things like that happen in the Canadian senate

well, we're getting into extreme hypotheticals now, but there could be several different ways of removing senators.

but you'd need to remove a lot to get to the two-thirds threshold.

or flip some.

another thing to remember is that the trial is presided over by the chief justice

we don't know what 'presided' over means in this context, as the chief justice isn't the one making the call. it's still a vote.

this is uncharted territory here.

i assume its like a court, where a judge presides over the proceedings but the jury is the one who convicts

but if its not an easy cheat, all i can assume is that the end goal is not the impeachment trial but the investigation itself.....

maybe it's a variation of the russiagate investigation, where as long as the special council's report was outstanding, the president was hamstrung. he was unable to take many actions because doing so could be seen as obstructing justice.

if he's under investigation by the house, he might feel constrained in his actions for fear of giving the house more ammo to use against him in the senate trial. that's kind of weak though.

since 'high crimes and misdemeanors' is a term left up to the house to decide, they can impeach him for literally anything. doesn't really matter what trump does or does not do in the interim.

yes. but the important thing would be the support for what it is. if they say get him on "not taking the presidential salary" nobody will back the democrats when the republicans refuse to impeach him. they want the russiagate cloud, they want to bring forward a plausible election interference case, and they want to republicans to vote not to impeach him i think. just to they can try and tar the whole party with corruption.

also. once this is all over, i would love a republican lead investigation to the Ukrainian investigation, and the origins of the Russian investigation.

i don't think that'll ever happen, because this is not going to end. even if the democrats don't have some clever strategy to end trump's presidency prematurely, they only need to hold out for a few more years until the demographic changes in the US ensure a permanent democrat presidency and house.

hell, they probably already have a permanent democratic house

looking at most poling? not even close. if things continue on at this rate you are looking at the democrats getting knocked down to a bout 25% of the house and senate.

?
<https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/2020_generic_congressional_vote-6722.html>

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/618982545715101719/639656409264291882/EIQDYPTXsAEINsJ.png

https://twitter.com/ryangirdusky/status/1189894916639514624

I dont think those polls are anywhere close to accurate. give them like half a year to actually warm up

if i had to guess, Republican super majority in the senate maybe 67-70 seats. and maybe 230-240 seats in the house. along with trump taking 340~ of the electoral college votes.