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What do we Dems do, once we win the House?

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btthegreat

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There is no question in my mind that we will take the house with about a 10-15 vote margin and most of those gains will be in purple or red hued states, and I suspect the Senate will stay in republican hands with even a vote or two to spare of republican votes to spare. The real question is what do we do with the House besides stop Republican initiatives?

The first question is whether Pelosi gets the gavel back and it is to be a very complicated question indeed. Several of the moderate or red hued Dems may have to commit not to vote for Pelosi , when in fact that she is the absolute best option to kill future impeachment hearings. Pelosi was adamant against impeachment hearings on Bush and she is against impeachment hearings of Trump. Meanwhile the progressives will demand Pelosi support such hearings to win their votes because that is what they will have promised the base.

Pelosi will try to walk a fine line re-openning the investigations into Russian hacking and meddling and possible Trump connections but discourage any talk that those hearings should lead to articles of impeachment ( exactly what I support myself by the way) while she plots to pack the Judiciary committee with Dems who are likewise skeptical of impeachment.

I think there will also be an 'anybody but Pelosi' movement based on the idea that Republicans have turned her into such toxic presence that she is dead weight. There is another complication. An awful lot of the winning candidates in these primaries have been WOMEN, who are sensitive to this notion that there is much harsher standard applied to Democratic women politicians in national media than men and Hillary Clinton is exhibit A of gender bias that Dems were too silent about. They and the Womens political action groups will be watching very carefully to see how Pelosi is treated. It would be a very rare act to push the very woman out of speakership that largely maneuvered the party into a position to best take back the reins. Normally the party rewards the leadership team that saw those gains, not ditch them to the curb.

Personally, I don't know that there is anyone better capable of sheparding the kind of legislation most likely to force difficult choices on to the GOP and Trump while avoiding the cocky misteps of newfound power.[This is the actual answer to the title question] Nancy well remembers the Henry Hyde impeachment debacle that lost the GOP its majority. That woman is not stupid, she understands the legislative process and she can count votes. I am not sure she can survive this pincher movement.
 
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btthegreat said:
The real question is what do we do with the House besides stop Republican initiatives?
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Easy.

Capture.png
 
btthegreat said:
There is no question in my mind that we will take the house with about a 10-15 vote margin and most of those gains will be in purple or red hued states, and I suspect the Senate will stay in republican hands with even a vote or two to spare of republican votes to spare. The real question is what do we do with the House besides stop Republican initiatives?

The first question is whether Pelosi gets the gavel back and it is to be a very complicated question indeed. Several of the moderate or red hued Dems may have to commit not to vote for Pelosi , when in fact that she is the absolute best option to kill future impeachment hearings. Pelosi was adamant against impeachment hearings on Bush and she is against impeachment hearings of Trump. Meanwhile the progressives will demand Pelosi support such hearings to win their votes because that is what they will have promised the base.

Pelosi will try to walk a fine line re-openning the investigations into Russian hacking and meddling and possible Trump connections but discourage any talk that those hearings should lead to articles of impeachment ( exactly what I support myself by the way) while she plots to pack the Judiciary committee with Dems who are likewise skeptical of impeachment.

I think there will also be an 'anybody but Pelosi' movement based on the idea that Republicans have turned her into such toxic presence that she is dead weight. There is another complication. An awful lot of the winning candidates in these primaries have been WOMEN, who are sensitive to this notion that there is much harsher standard applied to Democratic women politicians in national media than men and Hillary Clinton is exhibit A of gender bias that Dems were too silent about. They and the Womens political action groups will be watching very carefully to see how Pelosi is treated. It would be a very rare act to push the very woman out of speakership that largely maneuvered the party into a position to best take back the reins. Normally the party rewards the leadership team that saw those gains, not ditch them to the curb.

Personally, I don't know that there is anyone better capable of sheparding the kind of legislation most likely to force difficult choices on to the GOP and Trump while avoiding the cocky misteps of newfound power.[This is the actual answer to the title question] Nancy well remembers the Henry Hyde impeachment debacle that lost the GOP its majority. That woman is not stupid, she understands the legislative process and she can count votes. I am not sure she can survive this pincher movement.
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I think this is a lot of counting your eggs before they're hatched. As good as it looks right now for the Democrats, it's still a long way until election day. Anything can happen between now and then.

That being said, I think Pelosi is a lock for the Speakership, simply because there's nobody with the stature to replace her. All of the Democratic leadership are pretty much in their mid-60's to mid-70's. But look at the generation below them - the ones in their 50's - they don't exist. That's a big problem. The Congressional Democrats have a missing generation who were wiped out in the Republican landslides of 1994 and 2010. They've got a few grizzled veterans at the top who are getting ready to retire, a bunch of younger up-and-comers who are talented but inexperienced, but nobody in between to bridge the gap between the two.
 
As far as Impeachment goes, if you want to avoid the so-called "Hyde Effect", then the Democrats have to realize that for all intents and purposes, the country is about 40% Democrat, 40% Republican and 20% Independent. That means as a practical matter, any Impeachment proceeding against a President is going to be viewed as unjustified and partisan unless and until you manage to split the other Party's base - that means eroding the President approval rating down to the 20-25% range on a consistent basis. Unless and until you can put together a legal case for his impeachment that can convince about half of all Republicans that he is guilty and should be removed from office, then the effort is doomed to backfire.
 
btthegreat said:
There is no question in my mind that we will take the house with about a 10-15 vote margin and most of those gains will be in purple or red hued states, and I suspect the Senate will stay in republican hands with even a vote or two to spare of republican votes to spare. The real question is what do we do with the House besides stop Republican initiatives?

The first question is whether Pelosi gets the gavel back and it is to be a very complicated question indeed. Several of the moderate or red hued Dems may have to commit not to vote for Pelosi , when in fact that she is the absolute best option to kill future impeachment hearings. Pelosi was adamant against impeachment hearings on Bush and she is against impeachment hearings of Trump. Meanwhile the progressives will demand Pelosi support such hearings to win their votes because that is what they will have promised the base.

Pelosi will try to walk a fine line re-openning the investigations into Russian hacking and meddling and possible Trump connections but discourage any talk that those hearings should lead to articles of impeachment ( exactly what I support myself by the way) while she plots to pack the Judiciary committee with Dems who are likewise skeptical of impeachment.

I think there will also be an 'anybody but Pelosi' movement based on the idea that Republicans have turned her into such toxic presence that she is dead weight. There is another complication. An awful lot of the winning candidates in these primaries have been WOMEN, who are sensitive to this notion that there is much harsher standard applied to Democratic women politicians in national media than men and Hillary Clinton is exhibit A of gender bias that Dems were too silent about. They and the Womens political action groups will be watching very carefully to see how Pelosi is treated. It would be a very rare act to push the very woman out of speakership that largely maneuvered the party into a position to best take back the reins. Normally the party rewards the leadership team that saw those gains, not ditch them to the curb.

Personally, I don't know that there is anyone better capable of sheparding the kind of legislation most likely to force difficult choices on to the GOP and Trump while avoiding the cocky misteps of newfound power.[This is the actual answer to the title question] Nancy well remembers the Henry Hyde impeachment debacle that lost the GOP its majority. That woman is not stupid, she understands the legislative process and she can count votes. I am not sure she can survive this pincher movement.
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Stop the economic expansion, open the borders, and start a shooting war with Russia, and accept “the Chinese way” as an antidote to “toxic” capitalism?
 
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btthegreat said:
There is no question in my mind that we will take the house with about a 10-15 vote margin and most of those gains will be in purple or red hued states, and I suspect the Senate will stay in republican hands with even a vote or two to spare of republican votes to spare. The real question is what do we do with the House besides stop Republican initiatives?
Click to expand...

Bookmarking this for the morning, sorry that I saw this too late in the evening. :)
Excellent post and deserves an excellent answer. I'll do my best in the morning after work.
 
Quite frankly, your party doesn't deserve to have power. They all act like immature children, and put blame on someone else.
 
If the Dems do win the House we'll have gridlock. Sweet, sweet gridlock.
 
enderpotato00 said:
Quite frankly, your party doesn't deserve to have power. They all act like immature children, and put blame on someone else.
Click to expand...
I disagree. Whichever party wins gets to have their immature children in power. The only way to break the cycle is to stop electing immature children in the first place.
 
Cordelier said:
As far as Impeachment goes, if you want to avoid the so-called "Hyde Effect", then the Democrats have to realize that for all intents and purposes, the country is about 40% Democrat, 40% Republican and 20% Independent. That means as a practical matter, any Impeachment proceeding against a President is going to be viewed as unjustified and partisan unless and until you manage to split the other Party's base - that means eroding the President approval rating down to the 20-25% range on a consistent basis. Unless and until you can put together a legal case for his impeachment that can convince about half of all Republicans that he is guilty and should be removed from office, then the effort is doomed to backfire.
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Trump is an interesting case when talking about impeachment. While he enjoys very robust support among his base, he's not especially popular among the rest of the Republican party. I grew up in rural Ohio. I know a lot of Trump voters. There are a lot of people who voted for him despite not particularly liking him simply because they were of the opinion "anyone but Hillary".

I also think you have to consider the demographics of the Republican party. They are largely made up of older people, a generation that grew up during the cold war. These people lived a large chunk of their lives seeing Russia as the enemy. If evidence comes to light that Trump was colluding with Russia to manipulate our elections, I think you'll see a large number of those people turn on him very quickly.
 
Here is the dilemma. In order for dems to win the House, they need to get a lot of republican votes in red and purple states. Which is possible in the era of Trump. But do they keep them? If a Jeff Flake primaries Trump in 2020 and should win, its likely they will all go back to voting republican. We have seen this over and over. Bill Clinton won with some republican votes as did Barack Obama. But then the republicans went "back home" and voted for their own. So democrats have to ask themselves a question, do we want to keep these voters? Or can we afford to let them go back to the GOP next election? They risk alienating their own party if they stay in the center or go right. But they also risk losing these center right independents and republicans if they go left.
 
molten_dragon said:
Trump is an interesting case when talking about impeachment. While he enjoys very robust support among his base, he's not especially popular among the rest of the Republican party. I grew up in rural Ohio. I know a lot of Trump voters. There are a lot of people who voted for him despite not particularly liking him simply because they were of the opinion "anyone but Hillary".

I also think you have to consider the demographics of the Republican party. They are largely made up of older people, a generation that grew up during the cold war. These people lived a large chunk of their lives seeing Russia as the enemy. If evidence comes to light that Trump was colluding with Russia to manipulate our elections, I think you'll see a large number of those people turn on him very quickly.
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Maybe but dont forget Trump has brought over a lot of union type blue collar guys due to his nationalism and tariffs. These guys are younger and arent college educated. Thats a new thing for the republicans. They normally attract those in the college educated suburbs. These newer voters dont vote traditional GOP ticket and its possible they dont vote at all if Trump isnt on the ticket. They like him, not the party. I do think if Mueller finds something he certainly will lose the traditional republican support but these other voters are stubbornly Trump and think it is a witch hunt and the media lies. They would go off a cliff with him. We will have to wait and see how those that represent this demographic feel about this. Do they vote for impeachment and risk losing their seats? It will be fascinating.
 
molten_dragon said:
Trump is an interesting case when talking about impeachment. While he enjoys very robust support among his base, he's not especially popular among the rest of the Republican party. I grew up in rural Ohio. I know a lot of Trump voters. There are a lot of people who voted for him despite not particularly liking him simply because they were of the opinion "anyone but Hillary".

I also think you have to consider the demographics of the Republican party. They are largely made up of older people, a generation that grew up during the cold war. These people lived a large chunk of their lives seeing Russia as the enemy. If evidence comes to light that Trump was colluding with Russia to manipulate our elections, I think you'll see a large number of those people turn on him very quickly.
Click to expand...

I agree with everything you say, but I think the problem is that our politics have become so polarized now that any evidence that may be garnered against Trump will have to be extremely convincing to turn those rural Ohio Republicans against him. If it does happen, the Mueller Investigation will only be the beginning, not the end. The Democrats will have to take what Mueller turns up and launch hearings on the matter and make their case for impeachment... and it'll have to be a good one. Assuming the Democrats take the House, then the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee will probably be Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI). I think he'd be a good gauge to watch - if you can convince him and turn him against the President, then I'd say the case is made for impeachment.
 
Cordelier said:
I agree with everything you say, but I think the problem is that our politics have become so polarized now that any evidence that may be garnered against Trump will have to be extremely convincing to turn those rural Ohio Republicans against him. If it does happen, the Mueller Investigation will only be the beginning, not the end. The Democrats will have to take what Mueller turns up and launch hearings on the matter and make their case for impeachment... and it'll have to be a good one. Assuming the Democrats take the House, then the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee will probably be Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI). I think he'd be a good gauge to watch - if you can convince him and turn him against the President, then I'd say the case is made for impeachment.
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Agree. I think some of his most rabid supporters are preparing to defend him no matter what. Mueller is going to have to come up with some serious charges to make enough senators vote to remove him. I think most wont due to the fear they will lose support of these supporters back home. I am starting to think maybe the only way things will change is if maybe Don Jr gets charged or something that hits close to him so he either resigns or refuses to run in 2020. I am starting to think Trump isnt going anywhere.
 
pilot16 said:
Agree. I think some of his most rabid supporters are preparing to defend him no matter what. Mueller is going to have to come up with some serious charges to make enough senators vote to remove him. I think most wont due to the fear they will lose support of these supporters back home. I am starting to think maybe the only way things will change is if maybe Don Jr gets charged or something that hits close to him so he either resigns or refuses to run in 2020. I am starting to think Trump isnt going anywhere.
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I think a lot of it will have to do with how the President himself handles things. If he engineers Mueller's dismissal, that'd be a pivotal point. It may not be enough for impeachment in itself, but I think it'd make a lot of sensible Republicans start asking serious questions and questioning their loyalties. As things lie now, though, the most I can see coming from the investigation is probably a Congressional Censure. I wouldn't even utter the "I" word until Trump's approval rating sinks below 25%... but to get it there is going to take a lot of hard evidence and heavy lifting from the Democrats... and some pretty severe self-inflicted wounds on the part of the President.
 
Moon said:
If the Dems do win the House we'll have gridlock. Sweet, sweet gridlock.
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Someday my inner "No Labels" will get some respect. Someday.
 
Moon said:
I disagree. Whichever party wins gets to have their immature children in power. The only way to break the cycle is to stop electing immature children in the first place.
Click to expand...

This is the House of Representatives. It's built to be a giant playpen.

The Senate is where it's at, yo.
 
Cordelier said:
As far as Impeachment goes, if you want to avoid the so-called "Hyde Effect", then the Democrats have to realize that for all intents and purposes, the country is about 40% Democrat, 40% Republican and 20% Independent. That means as a practical matter, any Impeachment proceeding against a President is going to be viewed as unjustified and partisan unless and until you manage to split the other Party's base - that means eroding the President approval rating down to the 20-25% range on a consistent basis. Unless and until you can put together a legal case for his impeachment that can convince about half of all Republicans that he is guilty and should be removed from office, then the effort is doomed to backfire.
Click to expand...
I agree with most of this. What matters in impeachment that the favorability approval numbers within his own party are crucial. As long as the GOP Congress have real reason to fear Trump, he will not be removed.

I wonder if we overworry the legal case for impeachment, rather than the competence case. Yes its a harder murier sell, but I absolutely believe there is plenty of precedent for impeachment of federal officers like Cabinent officers or judges over competence or moral turpitude questions both here and in England based on the exact same phrase as the founders shoved in the Constitution. That is why they added 'misdemeanors'! If the misdemeanors or crimes were charged against high officials like judges, counselors or other public servants, they were by definition 'high' ones. That adjective did not originally reflect severity of the behavior so much as the impact of it on the nation.
 
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btthegreat said:
There is no question in my mind that we will take the house with about a 10-15 vote margin and most of those gains will be in purple or red hued states, and I suspect the Senate will stay in republican hands with even a vote or two to spare of republican votes to spare. The real question is what do we do with the House besides stop Republican initiatives?

The first question is whether Pelosi gets the gavel back and it is to be a very complicated question indeed. Several of the moderate or red hued Dems may have to commit not to vote for Pelosi , when in fact that she is the absolute best option to kill future impeachment hearings. Pelosi was adamant against impeachment hearings on Bush and she is against impeachment hearings of Trump. Meanwhile the progressives will demand Pelosi support such hearings to win their votes because that is what they will have promised the base.

Pelosi will try to walk a fine line re-openning the investigations into Russian hacking and meddling and possible Trump connections but discourage any talk that those hearings should lead to articles of impeachment ( exactly what I support myself by the way) while she plots to pack the Judiciary committee with Dems who are likewise skeptical of impeachment.

I think there will also be an 'anybody but Pelosi' movement based on the idea that Republicans have turned her into such toxic presence that she is dead weight. There is another complication. An awful lot of the winning candidates in these primaries have been WOMEN, who are sensitive to this notion that there is much harsher standard applied to Democratic women politicians in national media than men and Hillary Clinton is exhibit A of gender bias that Dems were too silent about. They and the Womens political action groups will be watching very carefully to see how Pelosi is treated. It would be a very rare act to push the very woman out of speakership that largely maneuvered the party into a position to best take back the reins. Normally the party rewards the leadership team that saw those gains, not ditch them to the curb.

Personally, I don't know that there is anyone better capable of sheparding the kind of legislation most likely to force difficult choices on to the GOP and Trump while avoiding the cocky misteps of newfound power.[This is the actual answer to the title question] Nancy well remembers the Henry Hyde impeachment debacle that lost the GOP its majority. That woman is not stupid, she understands the legislative process and she can count votes. I am not sure she can survive this pincher movement.
Click to expand...

Does any of it really matter? We live in hyper-partisanship where the only goal of both parties is to not accomplish a damn thing other than having an agenda of stopping the other party. No one wins and the American people always lose. I would be impressed all to hell if one of the parties actually set a goal of accomplishing something in a bipartisan way and not having their only agenda being stopping the other party.
 
Moderate Right said:
Does any of it really matter? We live in hyper-partisanship where the only goal of both parties is to not accomplish a damn thing other than having an agenda of stopping the other party. No one wins and the American people always lose. I would be impressed all to hell if one of the parties actually set a goal of accomplishing something in a bipartisan way and not having their only agenda being stopping the other party.
Click to expand...
Parties use strategies that tend to be seen as working to win and retain power and allegiance. When voters stop punishing compromise , bipartisanship and solution based platforms, while rewarding simplistic cliched dogwhistle rhetoric, they will get more of it in Congress. You vote in Demagogues, you get demagoguery
 
btthegreat said:
I agree with most of this. What matters in impeachment that the favorability approval numbers within his own party are crucial. As long as the GOP Congress have real reason to fear Trump, he will not be removed.

I wonder if we overworry the legal case for impeachment, rather than the competence case. Yes its a harder murier sell, but I absolutely believe there is plenty of precedent for impeachment of federal officers like Cabinent officers or judges over competence or moral turpitude questions both here and in England based on the exact same phrase as the founders shoved in the Constitution. That is why they added 'misdemeanors'! If the misdemeanors or crimes were charged against high officials like judges, counselors or other public servants, they were by definition 'high' ones. That adjective did not originally reflect severity of the behavior so much as the impact of it on the nation.
Click to expand...

If the Republicans lose the House. I think you'll see him lose a lot of support within his own party... if they somehow lose the Senate as well, I think you'll see it collapse. I think at that point you'll see him talking more and more about forming his own party and catering to the 20% or so of the population who are the "true believers".

As for the competence argument, I'd suggest that there's huge difference between impeaching a Judge or a Cabinet Member and impeaching the President of the United States. It shouldn't be easy to overthrow a democratically elected President, no matter how incompetent they may be... it should be and is the hardest task possible. The legal and ethical evidence against the President must be iron-clad, because you're not just acting against the man himself, but you're also acting against the office. To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, "When you strike at a king, you must kill him." ... there is no room for error here. If you strike when the President's approval rating is at 30-40%, you're just going to alienate the Republicans you might have swung over to your side - they're going to reflexively defend the President, and then it becomes partisan and the Democrats lose their legitimacy. If you get his approval rating down to 20-25% by a constant drumbeat of evidence and argument, then you've reached a critical mass of support among Republicans who aren't the true believers, and it becomes a truly bipartisan effort. Like I said before, watch Jim Sensenbrenner. He's your bell-weather. If he turns against the President, then the Republican Party is ready to turn against him.
 
I have a $100 that says the Dems, if they do win the House back, will whiz it down their leg and fail miserably.
 
btthegreat said:
Parties use strategies that tend to be seen as working to win and retain power and allegiance. When voters stop punishing compromise , bipartisanship and solution based platforms, while rewarding simplistic cliched dogwhistle rhetoric, they will get more of it in Congress. You vote in Demagogues, you get demagoguery
Click to expand...

The parties have been in gridlock for many years now. What's the point of having a government at all?
 
pilot16 said:
Here is the dilemma. In order for dems to win the House, they need to get a lot of republican votes in red and purple states. Which is possible in the era of Trump. But do they keep them? If a Jeff Flake primaries Trump in 2020 and should win, its likely they will all go back to voting republican. We have seen this over and over. Bill Clinton won with some republican votes as did Barack Obama. But then the republicans went "back home" and voted for their own. So democrats have to ask themselves a question, do we want to keep these voters? Or can we afford to let them go back to the GOP next election? They risk alienating their own party if they stay in the center or go right. But they also risk losing these center right independents and republicans if they go left.
Click to expand...

Bill Clinton won due to a third part conservative Ross Perot.
 
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