Forget about Impeachment, time to invoke the 25th

[E_T]

The evidence that shows that [Sleezebag] is not fit to be in the office and needs to be removed via the 25th Amendment continues to mount.  At what point with they finally invoke it?  Will it be after everything fall apart or sometime during the fall?  Are we already in the fall, but don't realize it due to not watching the ground rush up to meet us?  Or are we rapidly moving towards the cliff but not paying attention to it? 

At what point will the Adults finally wake up to the danger?

[Rusty Edge]

I don't think that there's anybody left in the cabinet with enough guts to call for a vote.

I like to fantasize that every time [Sleezebag] is alone with Putin, they talk about his exit strategy, and that one day when he leaves the country, he'll never come back.

[Geo]

I like to fantasize that every time [Sleezebag] is alone with Putin, they talk about his exit strategy, and that one day when he leaves the country, he'll never come back.

Next item: the long-awaited chess game between Edward Snowden and Donald [Sleezebag] ended in remise.
Or should that be a poker game?

[Unorthodox]

Sorry, I avoid the news...what happened now? 

[E_T]

The BS with his Intel Chief's report to Congress and his reaction/statements afterwards.

And these are people he put into the jobs that he has a problem with.  Also the post Shutdown rhetoric as well as everything else.

[Lorizael]

The 25th amendment is not intended to remove the president when he's especially inept or corrupt. It's intended to provide a smooth transition of power when the president is disabled in some fashion. Treating it as a way to get rid of a bad president, even a very bad one, is a dangerous road to go down that starts to look increasingly like a coup. We might think "oh the president has X mental health condition that makes him unfit" but he has not been diagnosed as such by any health professional, and the VP and cabinet are not qualified to make that diagnosis.

[Elok]

He's going absolutely nowhere until 2021 at the earliest, barring assassination or natural death.  We'll survive.

[Lorizael]

We'll probably survive, but we'll have to live with the shame of knowing that future historians will refer to our time as The [Sleezebag] Era.

[Geo]

We'll probably survive, but we'll have to live with the shame of knowing that future historians will refer to our time as The [Sleezebag] Era.

Poor Obama, don't historians care for his feelings?

[Rusty Edge]

Here's a legal question-

When making a determination to remove the president on dementia/mental health grounds, do acting secretaries get a vote, or only confirmed cabinet officers? 

[E_T]

Sounds like one for the Courts...

[Buster's Uncle]

Just throwing it out there, 'cause ideas have power...

The smart play for the Republican leadership in the Senate?  Get rid of the SOB.  Convict; he did it, it is illegal, so convict.

The Idiot has been useful, the Supreme Court seat well-stolen; Pence would be useful in the exact same way, w/ a fraction of the toxic downside.  It's good for the Party in obvious internal ways, and it would be FANTASTIC politics for the Party as a whole.

Spread the word.

[Elok]

The GOP is in a state of flux.  Pence is a sop to the rump of a consensus that doesn't really exist anymore: Reagan's archaic tripod of religious conservatism, military adventurism and favoring the rich. 

Religious conservatism has been an obvious paper tiger since Obergefell in 2015.  The only people scared of it any more are liberals who take the Handmaid's Tale miniseries too seriously, and they do that out of habit.  The Falwell crowd have been in tactical retreat for fifty years, and there's not a lot of ground left to give up.  Now the remaining leaders are nailing their colors to the mast of Trumpism in spite of looking ridiculous.  They don't have a lot of better options, after all.  But they have less and less to offer an electoral coalition.

Military adventurism became a bipartisan goal during the Obama years; Tulsi Gabbard ran in the Democratic primaries on STOP INVADING EVERYTHING and got whisked aside.  Hillary, who ran in '16, called her a Russian plant, and would probably have been at least as hawkish as [Sleezebag] had she won (albeit in different ways).  The American public doesn't want war as such, but the military-industrial complex doesn't need the GOP anymore.

The wealthy would seem to be a more valuable resource--booting [Sleezebag] might lure them back--but IIRC the wealthier areas of the country went hard blue in the midterms.  Bernie is less scary than [Sleezebag]; his plans have no chance in hell of getting past the GOP without Obamacare-style bastardization, which offers opportunities for regulatory capture.  Going back on Trumpian economic populism doesn't seem to be in the cards, since the base really believes in that and they've shown an aggressive willingness to defend it.  Between Bernie's lootable pipe dreams and [Sleezebag]'s very real aggression towards foreign labor and foreign trade, blue really is the better option.

It should be more clear than ever that America's political parties aren't about particular positions so much as the interests of particular people--mostly urban versus rural, but not exactly.  Pence is a dinosaur.  [Sleezebag] is incompetent, vain, and ridiculous, but he represents beliefs that have legs right now among the GOP base.  Anyone who picked up his flag without his drawbacks could potentially accomplish a lot, the more so because the Dems are also going through a realignment right now and have no clear leader.  [Sleezebag]'s chances at re-election don't seem great, but Pence would almost certainly do worse.  And [Sleezebag]'s supporters would punish any GOP defectors severely at the next election.  So no.  In purely Machiavellian terms, they should stick with the ape.

[Buster's Uncle]

When you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.

They should aim higher than being subordinate apes throwing turds on behalf of a turd.  Pence is a nothing -and the electability argument is definitely the weakest part of what I'm arguing- but profoundly less of an embarrassment to the species.

Now I'm gonna go bump the Captain America thread again...  It's relevant.

[Elok]

It'll be interesting to see what happens in the next decade.  I'm not really concerned about creeping authoritarianism anymore; the US isn't nearly as dysfunctional as previous societies that have gone that route.  But everything's topsy-turvy.  Where's everything going to land?