There is another avenue, and Mueller opened the door wide. 
25th Amendment.
Mental impairment, and a chronic, habitual, pathological liar is seriously mentally impaired. If not for his staff...  McGahn for example, saved him from walking in the exact same footsteps Nixon took. Mueller documents no fewer than nine occasions when aids disobeyed Trump and didn't follow through with implementation of orders they knew were criminal and illegal. If it can be determined Trump knew they were crimes, and the way he went around skirting them supports that, then they have grounds to remove him from office. 

Pelosi doesn't want a repeat of what happened with Clinton. Impeachment without Senate trial and conviction. McConnell's Senate blocks. Voters may take care of it in 2020. If not, then they can consider removal then, just like what happened with Nixon. 

Any way cut, Trump is damaging America. But not as much as he damaged the GOP. 
 

The Democrats need to consider their context and act accordingly.
They absolutely need to impeach. However, they need to be smart about it. They need to remove all the political venom from the process. They need to NOT make it about the effort to remove Trump from office and instead, make it about the effort to preserve the power of Congress to perform its duties of oversight and the need of Congress to act in the void created by the (stupid) DoJ policy against indicting a sitting president.

Don't have weeks of hearings designed to drag the president through the mud. Have a simple proceeding. Gather the evidence, lay it out, package it in terms of acting in the best interests of the nation, and send it to the Senate. Recommend to Senate Democrats to NOT prolong the process. This is a simple test for Republicans. Will they act in the best interests of the country, or will they allow party to trump those interests? No need to wallow in it. No need to inflame the partisan divide. Just do the damned job.

Do it, and move on. We can pretty much guess the outcome, so don't dance around it and waste time/money. But absolutely make the Republicans own it. If you don't, then the Democrats will own the erosion of the power of Congress and the growth of corruption.

Just do the damned job you were sent up there to do, whether or not the Republicans will do their job.

Amadeus

Pelosi is right. Impeachment is likely to backfire because the McConnell Senate won't try and convict. McConnell might not even allow it to be heard. if he can. Pursuit of the matter may make a martyr of Trump like it did Clinton, who achieved his greatest popularity and best work afterward. Even though Mueller has more "goods" on Trump than Jaworski had on Nixon, combination of the McConnell-Trump group will never accept any finding or investigation of Trump. 
Trump is a lame duck anyway. Let him stew, fester, and become more unhinged. Nobody important is listening to him. He's now a documented, confirmed, chronic, habitual, pathological liar. At the WH Easter egg roll, he talked to children about his wall. First off, that's grossly inappropriate. Trump lied about what one little boy told him. 

"This young kid just said keep building the wall, can you believe that?" the president told reporters, adding: "He's going to be a conservative someday."

No child would say something like that. But Trump did. 
 

I've seen the Democratic strategy laid out that says the best way forward is to impeach Trump without impeaching him. In other words, don't open official impeachment proceedings, but do everything you would otherwise do - hold the hearings, drag him through the mud, make it clear just how criminal he is, but let him stay in office.

Then, leave the Republicans saddled with him as their candidate, and let him poison the party ticket all the way to the ground.

Burn the Republican Party and salt the earth afterward.

I'll admit, the plan has merit. It could work. It also has plausible deniability built in. Democrats can lean on the operative fact that they can't accomplish the impeachment without Senate Republicans, so why officially launch it? Democrats can frame that to make themselves look like they are hamstrung by a bad-faith partner in the Republican Party in general, reinforcing the message when 2020 comes.

What I don't like about it is that it uses the dysfunction in our government and further stresses it, rather than highlighting that dysfunction and demanding a return to the norms and rules.

Is it worth getting what you want if it further stresses and possibly breaks the system down even more?

Amadeus

I disagree with you somewhat on that. I think the framers didn't explicitly seek gridlock. They didn't foresee it as a virtue. That gridlock is the natural product of a system of government and a base charter that is over 200 years old. We venerated it without learning from it.

We are always so eager to water the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants and so reluctant to fertilize it with the lessons learned from previous iterations of government. And now, who could imagine a constitutional convention?

You have Democrats who represent the current crowd of people seeking to operate within the rules and by the rules and Republicans who are abusing power, breaking norms, looking for every inch of give in the letter of the law before seeing how many times they can cross the line and whether or not they can gain control of the agencies designated to enforce those rules so as to let them off without so much as a whisper of condemnation.

I wouldn't want to try to work with Republicans to formulate a charter in this kind of an environment. And it is only by dint of chance that it isn't Democrats we are talking about. It is a matter of who was in power, who wasn't, and decisions made about how to cobble a base together to challenge for power. After that, the dominoes fell rather deterministically.

It chafes at me that Trump remains in office. He is doing damage. We can limit that damage, somewhat, but the very fact that we do not remove him from office damages the separation and equality of powers.

McConnell. He should be vilified in history books as the man who single-handedly destroyed the US system of government.

Amadeus

Amadeus wrote:

I've seen the Democratic strategy laid out that says the best way forward is to impeach Trump without impeaching him. In other words, don't open official impeachment proceedings, but do everything you would otherwise do - hold the hearings, drag him through the mud, make it clear just how criminal he is, but let him stay in office.

Then, leave the Republicans saddled with him as their candidate, and let him poison the party ticket all the way to the ground.

Burn the Republican Party and salt the earth afterward.

I'll admit, the plan has merit. It could work. It also has plausible deniability built in. Democrats can lean on the operative fact that they can't accomplish the impeachment without Senate Republicans, so why officially launch it? Democrats can frame that to make themselves look like they are hamstrung by a bad-faith partner in the Republican Party in general, reinforcing the message when 2020 comes.

What I don't like about it is that it uses the dysfunction in our government and further stresses it, rather than highlighting that dysfunction and demanding a return to the norms and rules.

Is it worth getting what you want if it further stresses and possibly breaks the system down even more?

Amadeus

===============================

Sometimes, there's really no other option than to further stress and even BREAK the system if the system is already so broken that it cannot be fixed.  No side can afford to allow the opposition side to use the flawed system to get their way while they take the high road and watch the opposition gain more and more power to walk all over them.

Sometimes, it's just necessary to light a match and let it all burn down, forcing both sides to work TOGETHER to rebuild it and remove the giant holes in the system that one side has been taking advantage of.

tRUMP is so nuts and so willing to burn down the entire country that the Dems had better do SOMETHING to stop him.
 

Amadeus wrote:

McConnell. He should be vilified in history books as the man who single-handedly destroyed the US system of government.

Amadeus

==========================

I hope the hell that McConnell winds up booted OUT of office in his next election and that, forevermore, his name is as evil as Benedict Arnold's.

SES wrote:

No hurry. They have six years.

Heh Heh




 

SES,

If ALL voters cared about was the economy, then WHY are tRUMP's poll numbers constantly still in the toilet ??  Normally, with things going "so well", the residing POTUS would be enjoying VERY HIGH poll numbers...

Impeachment?  Of course, Trump should be impeached, but that won't change the national mood and attitudes the put him in office.

SES wrote:

Sia - To what do I attribute President Trump's only modestly good approval rating?

A significant number of Americans STILL THINK that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians.

A significant number of Americans STILL THINK that the Russians actually flipped the election for Trump.

A significant number of Americans STILL THINK that the booming economy is only benefiting the rich (see Bernie Sanders comment that the historically low unemployment isn't benefiting "ordinary people").

A significant number of Americans STILL THUNK that the Trump Tax Cuts primarily helped the rich, which goes counter to ALL of the statistics.

So, I think Trump's only reasonably good approval rating is due to the media-induced ignorance of a significant number of Americans.

===========================

Well, obviously, I DO believe that tRUMP did collude with the Russians and did everything possible to obstruct justice.  The Mueller report spells it out clearly and strongly suggests that it is congress's job to pursue charges/impeachment for that because he, Mueller, could not recommend indictment.

I think that the Russians CLEARLY helped tRUMP get elected but I would not go so far as to say that they flipped the election directly.  They DID, however, influence voters via Facebook and the timed releases of dirt against Hillary.  Every time something terrible for tRUMP came out in the news, Wikileaks released something to take attention off of him and onto Hillary or the DNC.  They also assisted in the handful of states that gave him the win.  However, Hillary's FAILURE to offset THAT assistance is all on her as a terrible, entitled candidate who failed to work for those votes. 

As for the tax cuts, well, it's a fact that the BULK of the tax benefits went to the ultra rich, including tRUMP himself.  SOME Americans were helped in the overall.  But they are predominantly the folks who didn't use the major deductions that are now lost to middle America. Homeowners were hit the hardest because of the limits to property tax deductions and the loss of many other deductions they routinely used.  LOTS of folks had to pay and feel as if the whole tax cut hoopla was more money each week that they lost entirely, plus more, when April 15th came along.  Fact is, the tax cuts for us little people END but the benefits for the ultra rich are permanent.

Also, his numbers only briefly dropped 3 points after the Mueller report was first issued, but they are back up to earlier levels.  A few polls even show a gain now.  So, those things really are NOT why his numbers are so low.  In fact, I've seen dozens of polls over a few months that show that very little about the Mueller investigations are influencing Independent voters in the middle who have consistently rejected tRUMP.  So, claiming it's the Russian investigation is disingenuous because it's simply not true.

Most Americans can't stand him and consider him immoral and vulgar.  Always well above 50% disapprove of him. That's remained constant throughout his time in office.  Women disliking him is the usual reason given for his consistently low polls numbers.  The gender gap for him (14%)  is the widest gap for any modern POTUS.  Only 29% of women, an average of all age groups and political parties approve of him.  The previous low in modern history was Bill Clinton at 48%.  THAT'S HUGE.  Women ARE tRUMP's Achilles heel.

An aside:
Keep one thing in mind as far as the reliability of polls.  The Rasmussen Polls are the least reliable polls overall.  They've historically been as much as 5.89 points off from nearly all other reputable polls.  They lean heavily Republican and only include what they perceive as "likely voters" rather than ALL adults with the right to vote.  Polls are only as good as their methodology and the demographics included.  They also tend to exclude "cell phone" voters, who are the fastest growing group.

I've been called by Rasmussen more often than any other pollster (NH primary season predominantly).  Their questions SEEMED skewed to me to elicit desired responses.  I've been called by so many pollsters that I can recognize skewing a mile away.  (Usually "no name" pollsters do that, which is why it's so bizarre that Rasmussen does)

FiveThirtyEight averages current polls to get a weighted average rating and is probably the most reasonable measure since they take into account ALL of the major polls.

---------------------
From Wikipedia:
In 2010, Nate Silver[/url] of [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times]The New York Times[/url]’ blog [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FiveThirtyEight]FiveThirtyEight wrote the article "Is Rasmussen Reports biased?", in which he mostly defended Rasmussen from allegations of bias.  However, later in the year, Rasmussen's polling results diverged notably from other mainstream pollsters, which Silver labeled a "house effect."  He went on to explore other factors which may have explained the effect such as the use of a likely voter model,  and claimed that Rasmussen conducted its polls in a way that excluded the majority of the population from answering.

 After the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_elections,_2010]2010 midterm elections[/url], Silver concluded that Rasmussen's polls were the least accurate of the major pollsters in 2010, having an average error of 5.8 points and a pro-Republican bias of 3.9 points according to Silver's model. FiveThirtyEight currently rates Rasmussen Reports with a C+ grade and notes a simple average error of 5.3 percent across 657 polls analyzed. 

Jonathan Chait of the New Republic said that Rasmussen is perceived in the "conservative world" as "the gold standard" and suggested the polling company asks the questions specifically to show public support for the conservative position. They cited an example when Rasmussen asked "Should the government set limits on how much salt Americans can eat?" when the issue was whether to limit the amount of salt in pre-processed food.-------------------------

Right now, tRUMP's poll numbers are higher than usual  at 42%, so OBVIOUSLY, the Mueller Report hasn't hurt him overall.  FiveThirtyEight averages out multiple polls to come to an "average".

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/




 

I agree 100% that the vast majority of us who voted for Trump knew that he was a "snake".

He's rude and crude, he exaggerates, he has an annoying way of speaking, and much more.

And we KNEW that. But we also knew that he would be a better President for us than Hillary.

What amazes me about it all is that anyone thinks that we who voted for Trump should now be SHOCKED that he is rude and crude, the he exaggerates, that he has an annoying way of speaking, and much more, after they ACKNOWLEDGE that we voted for him KNOWING that he was rude and crude, that he exaggerates, that he has an annoying way of speaking, and much more.

In my opinion, Trump was an ass, but his policies (most of them) were good. I hated his desire to increase military spending -- I've always thought that the military wastes much of the money it gets, and should be CUT. We no longer need the kind of Military that we needed in World War II, which is what we have.

In my opinion, Hillary was an ass, and her policies were a disaster.

Contrary to what some people continue to insist, I'm one of those who support the President most of the time, but think he's an ass. But if you say you support the President, to THEM, that means that you like every single thing about him.

When have I ever said that he didn't obstruct?

What I've said is that the whole investigation was a sham, started illegally, and that it would be entrapment to accuse someone of obstructing an investigation that should never have happened in the first place.

The only case of obstruction that I think is anything deals with the infamous "Trump Tower Meeting", where the President had a line deleted that said that the meeting involved "information helpful to the campaign". Bt that's flimsy, since no "information" was ever exchanged.

To me, none of the other "attempts" to obstruct amount to anything. I've read them. Nothing.

Source: Mueller Report, Volume II, Executive Summary:

1. The Campaign's response to reports about Russian support for Trump - NOT OBSTRUCTION

2. Firing of Flynn - FIRED FOR VALID REASONS, NOT TO OBSTRUCT

3. Asking Comey to go easy on Flynn - NOT OBSTRUCTION

4. The President's reaction to the continuing Russia investigation - NOT OBSTRUCTION

5. The President's firing of Comey - FIRED FOR VALID REASONS, NOT TO OBSTRUCT

6. Efforts to remove the Special Counsel - THE PRESIDENT SUGGESTED IT, BUT WAS CONVINCED BY STAFF NOT TO DO IT, NEVER DID IT, NOT OBSTRUCTION

7. Efforts to curtail the Special Counsel's investigation - THE PRESIDENT WANTED THE AG TO DECLARE THAT THE PRESIDENT HAD DONE NOTHING WRONG (HE HADN'T), IT WAS NEVER DONE, NOT OBSTRUCTION

8. Efforts to prevent public disclosure of evidence - RELATING TO THE "TRUMP TOWER MEETING", THE PRESIDENT'S EFFORTS WERE ONLY RELATED TO PUBLIC DISCLOSURE, NOT TO ANYTHING THAT WOULD BE OR HAD BEEN LEARNED BY THE SPECIAL COUNSEL, NOT OBSTRUCTION

9. Further efforts to have AG Sessions take control of the investigation - THE PRESIDENT SAID THAT HE TOLD SESSIONS THAT HE WAS NOT GOING TO DO ANYTHING OR DIRECT HIM TO DO ANYTHING. NOT OBSTRUCTION

10. Efforts to have McGahn deny that the President had ordered him to have the Special Counsel removed - REFERS BACK TO #6. NOTHING EVER CAME OF IT. NOT OBSTRUCTION.

11. Conduct towards Flynn, Manafort, [redacted] - NOT OBSTRUCTION

12. Conduct involving Michael Cohen - NOT OBSTRUCTION

The President said and suggested and directed a lot of things, most of which never actually happened. He took actions, such as firings, for valid reasons, not in order to obstruct, even if those actions could have had that effect. Other actions were intended strictly to protect his own "ego" and "image", not to obstruct the investigation.

Added to that you have all of the ways that the Trump Administration cooperated with the investigation.

There's a whole lot of nothing there.