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Centrists within US Democrats fear a leftward political slide if Trump impeached
The Green Left Weekly ^ | June 20, 2019 | Steve Ellner

Posted on 06/19/2019 11:13:37 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

No matter how reprehensible one considers former US president Bill Clinton’s actions to have been in the Monica Lewinsky case, they dwarf in comparison to the actions of Donald Trump. The Republicans impeached Clinton and then moved to remove him from office. Hasn’t Pelosi heard of tit for tat?

Similarly, Mitch McConnell, Republican leader of the Senate, has stated that if a Supreme Court vacancy occurs in 2020, the Republicans would fill it — the exact opposite of what the party did in 2016, with the argument that regardless of who former president Barack Obama chose to fill the court’s vacancy, let voters decide at the polls — thus leaving the court with only eight justices and without the possibility of breaking a tie. Why didn’t the Democrats mobilise the public against such an outrageous manoeuvre? With such double standards, why don’t they call McConnell out for what he is: a hypocrite.

Why is the “consensus” mantra for Democratic centrists from Obama to former vice president Joe Biden always the same even though it proves to be so disastrous? The answer is simple. What the Democratic Party leadership most fears is that a heated issue and an emotional response would invigorate and activate the Democratic Party base and create a groundswell which would move US politics in a leftist direction.

Impeachment procedures would harden the position of the Democratic Party toward the Republicans and place on centre stage those Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), who defend principled positions and oppose the strategy of consensus with the Republican Party at all costs.

A similar move to the left and polarisation would have occurred in 2009, had the recently elected president Obama accused Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and company of crimes against humanity for the torture that they permitted, if not ordered, in the case of black site prisons throughout the world.

Similarly, after the Democrats came back in 2006 and public opinion turned against George W Bush’s war in Iraq, Pelosi — then recently elected Speaker of the House — ruled out impeachment procedures against the President. In considering Pelosi’s position on impeachment, one has to imagine what people looking back on the Trump administration ten or more years from now will think. They will ask: Was there no moral outrage in the US in response to what Trump has done and said? Why wasn’t there a complete repudiation of Trump and everything he stands for from US citizens and the US establishment?

What are the Democratic centrists afraid of? They foresee a scenario in which a mobilised public would give rise to a left-wing pole within or outside of the party. Moving the Democratic Party to the left would dry up funding from powerful economic groups amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. Eventually it would pull the rug out from under the centrists.

Another possible scenario is that the rift within the Democratic Party would reach breaking point, giving rise to a third party on the left that would draw voters not from the Republicans but from the Democrats. The Democratic Party has more to lose from such a scenario than the Republicans.

All this is not idle speculation. Pelosi’s decision to oppose impeachment proceedings has a definite explanation and it has to do with the fear of the rise of a leftist pole, be it within the Democratic Party or from without (most likely the latter).

Pelosi did not get to where she is without being shrewd and calculating. The fact is that these scenarios are not long-term future possibilities. The rise of Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) represents a major threat to the Democratic Party centrists.

Regardless of the ideological mindset of US voters, the issues that the Sanders-AOC bloc raises have for a long time represented their beliefs and aspirations. There is every indication that the end-result of the rise of Sanders and AOC will be the emergence of a new left party that would put an end to the US’s two-party system.

The fact that Bernie Sanders won Democratic Party primaries in 2016 in states where independents can vote in primaries is telling. AOC, for her part, lacks influence in the leadership of the Democratic Party, but she speaks to the aspirations of ordinary US voters both in and out of the party.

To sum up, the issue playing out within the Democratic Party regarding Trump’s impeachment has far-reaching implications, which Nancy Pelosi is fully aware of.


TOPICS: Campaign News; Issues; Parties
KEYWORDS: 2020election; declassification; dnctalkingpoint; dnctalkingpoints; election2020; fbi; fisa; globalwarminghoax; greennewdeal; impeachment; mediawingofthednc; partisanmediashills; presstitutes; smearmachine; steveellner
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Comments?
1 posted on 06/19/2019 11:13:37 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

What are the impeachable charges. Getting elected?


2 posted on 06/19/2019 11:19:51 PM PDT by Raycpa
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

It begins with unsustainable premise.


3 posted on 06/19/2019 11:22:01 PM PDT by the_daug
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

There are centrists in the Democrap Party?


4 posted on 06/19/2019 11:31:44 PM PDT by Amberdawn
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

There are “Democrat centrists”??


5 posted on 06/19/2019 11:32:39 PM PDT by vikingd00d (chown -R us ~you/base)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Title and first sentence are mind-numbingly ignorant and it goes downhill from there.

Waste of bandwith.

6 posted on 06/19/2019 11:39:52 PM PDT by M. Thatcher
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Amazing how he refuses to define what he means by “centrist”.


7 posted on 06/19/2019 11:43:05 PM PDT by Olog-hai ("No Republican, no matter how liberal, is going to woo a Democratic vote." -- Ronald Reagan, 1960)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet; AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Arthur Wildfire! March; Berosus; Bockscar; ...
No matter how reprehensible one considers former US president Bill Clinton’s actions to have been in the Monica Lewinsky case, they dwarf in comparison to the actions of Donald Trump.
The partisan media shill suffers from cranial-rectal inversion.

8 posted on 06/19/2019 11:45:48 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: Amberdawn
There are centrists in the Democrap Party?

No, I am sure there are none. 😁

9 posted on 06/19/2019 11:51:09 PM PDT by Mark17 (With Jesus, there is more wealth in my soul, than acres of diamonds and mountains of gold.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
The Democrats will use collusion to get votes while not trying to impeach the President since they have the most to lose.

There was evidence of Clinton's wrongdoings. Roger Stone has shown there is nothing to present to a U.S. court to show the alleged Russian hack actually occurred. The only evidence of any crimes related to the 2016 election are those committed by Obama and Hillary who used the FISA courts as their private secret police.

If the Democrats try to impeach the President, they have to present a case and all the evidence goes public. This is why Comey and Brennan won't shut up and Mueller wants to disappear. If the truth comes out, they are the ones who get indicted first, including Mueller.

So the left will keep talking about impeachment while they should be scared to death if it actually happens.

10 posted on 06/19/2019 11:56:15 PM PDT by Widget Jr
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To: Raycpa

The faked up impeachable charges would go back to the Russian dossier business and the Mueller investigation. If Trump had never had to deal with the fake dossier, then there would have been no impeachable charges.

However, if the impeachment idea would to move onto the next step....House signs off, and sends the charges to the Senate. An impeachment would open up. The problem here...the President could then present a different case, subpoena various FBI members, former Justice Department folks, and former Obama insiders. What would have been a simple two-week take-down of the President would turn into a six-month long impeachment, which McConnell would allow to continue, and hand charges off to Barr to prosecute those giving faulty testimony.

The term ‘burning bridges’? This impeachment would probably burn the Democratic bridge for votes, for an entire decade. Senate Democrats would be begging for a vote to end the impeachment, and be rejected until the the full dose was exercised.


11 posted on 06/20/2019 12:02:46 AM PDT by pepsionice
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Leftward political slide?

The Democrat Party is already in a Leftward avalanche!

And I don’t see anything down slope that has a chance of stopping the mudslide.

12 posted on 06/20/2019 12:13:18 AM PDT by Pontiac (The welfare state must fail because it is contrary to human nature and diminishes the human spirit)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
The Left is doing a good job of lying to themselves.

It is one of their most prominent and useful assets.

It worked very well when they had complete control of the media.

Now that they no longer have complete control of the media, much of the time, their internal lies are exposed.

The Left is terrible at understanding reality.

They are very good at coming up with excuses about why reality does not agree with them.

13 posted on 06/20/2019 1:08:03 AM PDT by marktwain (President Trump and his supporters are the Resistance. His opponents are the Reactionaries.)
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To: marktwain

Oh, they still have control of the corrupt coup media,
it’s just that fewer people are believing their lies.


14 posted on 06/20/2019 1:28:39 AM PDT by EasySt (Say not this is the truth, but so it seems to me to be, as I see this thing I think I see #KAG)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet; Amberdawn; vikingd00d; Olog-hai; Mark17


There are centrists in the Democrap Party?

There are “Democrat centrists”??

Amazing how he refuses to define what he means by “centrist”.



steve does kind of define a dumbocrap "centrist":     Why is the “consensus” mantra for Democratic centrists from Obama to former vice president Joe Biden always the same even though it proves to be so disastrous?

...soooo

barkie and plugs are dumbocrap "centrists."

easy peasy.

this guy just (wisely!) expresses concern that the dumbocraps are falling off the leftist cliff with impeachment, aoc, sanders et al.


15 posted on 06/20/2019 1:49:07 AM PDT by 867V309 (Lock Her Up)
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To: 867V309

I wonder if these idiots consider the Hildebeast to be a centrist?


16 posted on 06/20/2019 2:43:43 AM PDT by Mark17 (With Jesus, there is more wealth in my soul, than acres of diamonds and mountains of gold.)
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To: SunkenCiv
The partisan media shill suffers from cranial-rectal inversion.

Also known as cranial-rectal insertion syndrome.


17 posted on 06/20/2019 3:17:14 AM PDT by Tonytitan
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To: Raycpa

Beating Hillary.


18 posted on 06/20/2019 3:25:20 AM PDT by EvilCapitalist (It's Ok to be white.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

The Left has finally admitted they have devolved into ‘tit-for-tat’ revenge politics, country be damned. how... cute. But that’s what socialism leads to in every country it’s been tried - tit for tat, until the only ones left standing are pre-teens terrorizing old women. What an enlightened idea. For the insane.


19 posted on 06/20/2019 3:59:59 AM PDT by blueplum ("...this moment is your moment: it belongs to you... " President Donald J. Trump, Jan 20, 2017)
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To: EvilCapitalist

“Similarly, Mitch McConnell, Republican leader of the Senate, has stated that if a Supreme Court vacancy occurs in 2020, the Republicans would fill it — the exact opposite of what the party did in 2016, with the argument that regardless of who former president Barack Obama chose to fill the court’s vacancy, let voters decide at the polls.....”

In 2016, Obama wasn’t running for reelection so McConnell wanted the next President to pick the new Justice. Hillary could have won and picked the new Justice. In 2020, Trump is up for reelection so he gets to fill the opening if one emerges.


20 posted on 06/20/2019 4:02:01 AM PDT by EQAndyBuzz (Trump is President and CEO of America, Inc.)
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