Progressives (Liberals)

Takes one to know one. Projection fail. You should hang it up, your credibility has been missing in action for quite awhile.

That is incorrect. The Democrats' abuse of the law to conduct witch hunts against people who don't agree with them caused impeachment.



Impeachment is an attempt to remove someone from office. It failed.

Sanders is making gains in the Iowa vote counting.

Buttigieg - 550.339 SDEs
Sanders - 546.912 SDEs

97% reporting (1711 of 1765 precincts)

https://results.thecaucuses.org/

Perhaps my efforts to learn how to spell Buttigieg will be useful after all. Buttigieg is back ahead of Biden in New Hampshire.

Biden's campaign appears poorly run and organized. I don't believe he can turn it around. Iowa was humiliating.

If it's a Buttigieg versus Sanders race, I don't have any sense of which one of them will win the nomination.

If it's ultimately Buttigieg, that'll get the leftists in Michigan all excited. They're already pushing for a gay rights ballot initiative in the general election (a ploy to try to motivate college students to vote I think). If they have a gay nominee in addition to a gay rights ballot initiative, Michigan progressives have got their theme for the 2020 election all set up for them.

I'll of course be voting for Trump in the general election no matter who the Democrats nominate.

Well that's a serious accusation, coming as it does from this site's acknowledged master of propaganda

Weve always wondered how so many people could have supported Hitler as he dismantled and recast the German Govt to its peak of evil. We are now getting a real time demonstration of how the US isnt above turning into something similar if not identical.

Bernie raised $25 million in January with great thanks to Liz and Hillary.

That's the standard histrionics that the left engages in every time there is a Republican president. I heard it about Reagan. I heard it about Bush. I'll hear it about the next Republican president too.

Sanders has more wind in his sails, more political smarts, more experience than the Pete kid; if his health stays good, I think he will prevail, get the nomination and move on to beat Trump.

I don't think Iowa was particularly humiliating, it's always been a bit of a weird state. Losing South Carolina would be humiliating. It does put some pressure on to do better in New Hampshire.

Losing it by a very large margin was humbling, I think. He fired the head of his campaign there, not the kind of things you do at the slightest bump on the road...

Wonderful news! I crave acknowledgement.
McKay Coppins, Atlantic...much more here

You don't have to read this, george. It won't fit in your noggin's machinery.

It is interesting to speculate on what might have been the trajectory of Nancy Pelosi's outlook and political strategy over the past year as she moved from ( 1) her earlier dismissive assessment of the influence of the new far left contingent in the Democrat caucus in the House, and (2) her then expressed judgment that impeachment was an acceptable option only in cases in which there was a sound basis for the existence of truly serious crimes on the part of the President and then only with substantial bipartisan support for action to impeach; ----- to her recent passionate support of what proved to be a rather weak and totally partisan (and without Republican support in the Senate , unwinnable) case ( one also dangerously involving former VP Biden).

It all arose suddenly with a leaked report of Trump's phone conversation with the Ukrainian President. (and strikingly, so soon after the report of the fruitless two year Mueller Investigation; Mueller's flabby and inept presentation to a sympathetic Congressional Committee; and the initial revelations of the Justice Department's investigation of what are now known to be serious and likely criminal actions attending the opening and subsequent conduct of that lengthy but fruitless investigation.)

Pelosi is a seasoned and sophisticated politician. What drove and guided her on such a significant change of position over such a relatively short, but action-filled time? And now, with a probably fatally damaged Biden; a vacuum among moderate Democrat presidential contenders able to win an election; and a Trump now leading a very united Republican party and increasingly supportive electorate, how did she calculate any net political benefit from her actions attending all this?

One can't really know the inner thoughts and motivations of another person. Indeed, these things are often a very complex mixture of sometimes contradictory impulses arising from the complex external facts and the equally complex mix of one’s interpretations of and reactions to them, and all the other things attending the issues. Indeed understanding (and accepting) one’s own motives in serious, consequential matters is often a difficult and complex chore.

It seems very likely the growing power of the new Left in the Democrat party and Congressional delegation emerging out of the early stages of the Democrat Presidential primaries was a contributing factor. The combined support for candidates Sanders and Warren was just short of a majority for the party and the likelihood of the success of the establishment candidate, Biden was becoming increasingly questionable. Continuing the public hearings into yet another Trump-related issue could arguably have been a reason in that there was a basis on which to believe that this process might further damage Trump’s standing with the public. However, proceeding into a doomed impeachment action with a weak case incapable of garnering any bipartisan support was quite another matter. The ensuing debacle with their failure to pursue judicial approval of needed witness testimony; inexplicable delays in forwarding the matter to the Senate – all accompanied by the hyper-emotional and indignant attitudes expressed by Schiff, Nadler and the other members of the democrat impeachment team – along with Pelosi herself, frankly defies rational explanation based on the assumption that they expected any political gains from the outcome.

It is at least conceivable that Pelosi’s recently expressed rage against President Trump is a consequence of the unfolding reality of a situation which Pelosi failed to accurately understand or predict. Indeed I believe it is a plausible explanation of the current situation.

Well I did read it because, though I generally oppose them, I do take your views at least seriously.

Frankly, in view of Mike Bloomberg's already announced and operating billion dollar advertising campaign designed , as it is, to derail all the Democrat primary activity so far and seize their nomination, I find this continuing fixation on a fictitious Russian boogey man cum billion dollar media campaign, all to elect Trump to be more than a little disingenuous on the part of the writer you quoted.

Indeed In the wake of a now thoroughly discredited and fruitless Mueller investigation into boogey man collusion the cumulative results of this and the Round 2 Schiff investigation, together with Pelosi's very odd conduct of an impeachment process that yielded so little and had no hope of passing- even in Pelosi's own previously stated views on the likely result, it has become a sad, but laughing matter

Rage? Good grief, george.

What's funny is they started the impeachment inquiry so they would have the authority to have the courts compel witnesses to come and testify. Then they didn't bother to try to compel any of those witnesses.

Now they are talking about trying to compel the witnesses that they skipped over. But with the impeachment now over, they now no longer have the authority to compel these witnesses.

No. You "read" the minimal excerpt I pasted. That's ok. I can still be fond of you as a person even while acknowledging that you are quite blind to the proto-fascism you are effectively welcoming into your nation's future.

I agree. Indeed it is very difficult in all of this to understand how experienced and previously savvy political leaders could stumble into such folly.