2020: Why take part in an election when you've decided in advance to reject the result if your candidate loses?

QUESTION:

"Why take part in an election when you've decided in advance to reject the result if your candidate loses?"

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President Trump's political foes--of whatever party, by the way--are preparing to choose a nominee for the Democratic Party's candidate for the office of president of the United States in the 2020 general elections.

But these people have already demonstrated that they shall not respect any other outcome than the victory of their candidate, the Democratic party's nominee--to be determined later next year.

I've previously challenged those readers here, Democrats, Republicans or "Other", who oppose Trump and who favor his impeachment, trial, conviction and removal from office to go on record here, declaring themselves ready and willing to accept the result of the 2020 presidential election even if the Democratic party's candidate is not elected.

Not a single reader here --that I know of--posted in reply in the affirmative. Not one.

It would seem, then, by this evidence, that there is reason to suspect that the nation is preparing for a presidential election the result of which apparently the overwhelming majority who oppose Trump are already determined not to respect or accept--and, chief among them are perhaps most of the members of the nation's mainstream news organizations, the "Legacy media" as some describe it.

That set of circumstances constitutes the very definition of a bad-faith participation in an electoral process. And that is a disgrace.

>1 proximity1:

You're still banging on with the same narrative. The people accepted his election. He's the president, isn't he? Is anyone denying that? Impeachment is a different constitutional issue based on his behaviour since he became president, as with Nixon and Clinton.

Trump was asking outside actors from the get go to help him win in 2016. He didn't care about legality and he got help and that's what the Mueller investigation pretty much entailed. It's a canard to say that the democrats have been out to impeach him from the beginning. It doesn't even make a lot of sense to say so. In early 2017 they did not have the presidency, did not have the courts and did not have either house of congress. They did not have the power to impeach--that only came after the 2018 midterm election. And FWIW Pelosi and the majority of dems never really seemed all that jazzed about the idea. That only changed with the Biden shit.

So in the meantime Donald having dodged the Mueller bullet---turns around almost immediately and asks Ukraine for help in the 2020 election. This is all his own making. He follows that up asking the Chinese on TV and in front of the entire world to investigate Biden. He's a fucking assclown plain and simple and he needs to be removed because if not Biden getting the democratic nomination---let's say it's Warren he'll be up to the same fucking tricks with her because that's one of the things he does......he games elections. Can't win without cheating.

This isn't about 2016 to me----this is very much about 2020. Donald has pretty much shown he'll do anyfuckingthing to stay in power. He thinks he's above the law and can commit whatever crimes to hold on to the presidency. It's too fucking bad for you Prox but that's not how most of the rest country feels and I expect this all will get a lot worse when these hearings go on the TV for everyone to see. Merry christmas to you.

One last thing--your challenges are just an example of your own sense of self importance. They're meaningless.

The Democrats' High-Risk Gamble on Impeachment | COMMENTARY | By Charles Lipson - RCP Contributor | 5 November 2019 (from Real Clear Politics)

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“The Democrats’ activist base considers Donald Trump fundamentally unfit to hold office. Their impeachment drive is really about this damning judgment, not about any specific act such as withholding Ukrainian aid or wanting to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller. They say Trump is erratic, narcissistic, self-serving, and unforgivably gauche. He cozies up to dictators and would like to become one himself. Every day, he tramples the presidency’s historic norms. Surely the voters who put him there made a catastrophic error, or, rather, the antiquated Electoral College did. In short, Trump is not just a bad president—the worst in modern history—he is an illegitimate and dangerous one, at home and abroad.

“Their harsh view is no masquerade. It is sincere, deeply held, and shared by most elected Democrats. Many, perhaps most, career civil servants agree and consider the president only nominally their boss. That’s why they consider it their constitutional duty to hold him in check. That’s why former heads of the CIA openly praised the 'Deep State,' why former FBI Director James Comey wanted his agents to monitor the president in the White House itself. If that means targeting Trump and his key aides for disguised FBI interviews or leaking classified phone calls, so be it. The fight over the Deep State is partly about this profound distrust of Trump (and his distrust of them) and partly about the president’s rising opposition to a century of progressive legislation, executive orders, and court decisions, which grant extensive power to government bureaucrats.

“This revulsion is the backdrop to the Democrats’ impeachment effort and the earlier appointment of a special counsel. The crucial point is this: Democrats see the actions they have investigated for three years less as specific crimes and more as steadily accumulating evidence of Trump's unfitness for office and his repeated violation of his oath, as they understand it. 'Democrats of all stripes look at Donald Trump's business and personal history and see a man who serially does not follow laws and therefore should not be president,' said one well-informed Democrat. For his party, 'Ukraine is a big deal because it confirms this view.'

“Although House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shares those sentiments, she is too shrewd, too experienced to be carried away by her party’s most rabid voices. She is also too vulnerable to ignore them. The loudest voices come from deep-blue districts, but she needs to win purple ones, too, to keep her majority. That’s why impeachment has twin goals: to appease the party's activist base (in Congress and the primaries) and to win the general election by damaging Trump and his Republican allies.

“There are other possible goals. One is to sink moderate Senate Republicans in close 2020 races, which could flip control if Democrats win in Maine, Colorado, Arizona, and North Carolina and hold onto other seats. Another is keeping Joe Biden's rivals, particularly Sen. Elizabeth Warren, frozen in Washington for a Senate trial during the early primaries. National Democrats, led by Pelosi, are deeply worried that Warren, if she is the nominee, will not only lose the presidency but cost them heavily down the ballot. A third is to distract from Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s upcoming report on possible surveillance abuse by senior Obama appointees.

“Still, Pelosi’s highest priorities are retaining her position as speaker and, if possible, retaking the White House. Only then would winning the Senate give the Democrats true governing power.

“The downside of this impeachment gamble is painfully obvious. Without substantially more evidence against Trump, Democrats cannot win overwhelming public support and, without that, they won’t come close to the two-thirds vote in the Senate needed to remove the president. If the upper chamber doesn’t convict, voters are bound to ask why Democrats have spent the past four years on this fruitless quest and neglected their other duties. What legislative accomplishments can they highlight for voters next November? Hardly any. Only a big sign saying 'The Resistance.' ”
… ...
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( all italics above are in the text as published)

What began, then, more than two years ago now, as a witch-hunt pursuit of President Trump for having allegedly “colluded” with certain (official or unofficial) Russians in a suposedly clandestine attempt to pervert the regular operation of the presidential election of 2016 has now mutated through a process of political desperation's “evolution,” into a pursuit of the president for allegedly having used a “quid-pro-quo” bargaining-tactic while engaged in the arts of dipomacy with high officials of Ukraine—and this, because, after all, the “Russian-collusion affair” proved, as Trump predicted it should, to have had no basis in fact in so far as he was concerned, except, notably, as it could and, indeed, did apply, ironically enough, to Trump's pursuers, his high-profile Democratic party adversaries.

“If the upper chamber doesn’t convict, voters are bound to ask why Democrats have spent the past four years on this fruitless quest and neglected their other duties.”

I suspect that voters—some of them, at any rate—shall also ask :

“How dared Trump's opponents in the House of Represenatives deny the president the same Constitutional rights to which the rest of us are entitled when facing criminal accusations?”

Since the Constitution provides (Article II, section iv) for the removal of a president by impeachment “... on … conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” and since the Sixth Amendment expressly provides an accused brought before any criminal proceeding under the jurisdiction of the United States government the right of confrontation*, I suspect that some shall ask how and why it is that, where the procedures for the removal of a sitting president are at every step and stage analogous to formal procedures prior to and during a case at criminal law—the House of Represenatives prepares, through its judiciary committee when matters are handled properly, what, in a criminal case, the state's attorney or the public prosecutor's office would prepare as the evidentiary basis for another body, the grand jury, analogous to the House of Represenatives sitting as a whole body, to vote out or decline to vote out a Bill of indictment specifying the charges which the accused is called to answer—the same procedural protections which the confrontation clause affords the accused in a criminal trial, aren't afforded to the president liable to be impeached.

So we have Trump's adversaries—many of them happy to imagine themselves as “defenders of liberty," of "justice", ready—even eager— to dispense with the fundamental protections afforded accused persons by the Constitution's amendments (notably, here, the Sixth amendment but it appears clear that Trump's adversaries should logically have no more inclination to afford him his rights under other amendments such as the Fourth or the Fifth amendments. Why should they alter their view in those instances?) just because their hatred of Trump, combined with their certainty about his evil character, their own impeccably-just motives and intentions and their complete confidence in their own reading of the known or often merely assumed facts leaves them beyond the reach of doubts or of any serious concerns for Trump's constitutional rights.

The Sixth amendment rests on the legal logic which holds that witnesses and their testimony which is not subject to the accused's direct or cross-examination in open court is liable to be partially misleading or worse, entirely unreliable or false. The public may rightly ask why a routine felon in on trial for purse-snatching or shop-lifting is due these protections but the president of the United States, on trial in the U.S. Senate, has no similarly-founded right to the same legal due-process and formal protection of his Constiutional rights.

To that question, Trump's adversaries have no respectable justification for an answer. They're ready to deny Trump his Constitutional rights because they hate him enough to want to ensure that he is not allowed the opportunity to be tried and judged according to standards of criminal practice which are in place to protect an innocent defendant from a wrongful conviction; by their reasoning, Trump's guilt is not their burden to prove in open court. They've already taken it for granted and there is thus, to their minds, no reason to ensure Trump's formal rights as a defendant.

Such is the reasoning—openly evident—in the minds of millions of self-described “liberals.”
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(from the website Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School)

confrontation* :

“ 'The primary object of the (Confrontation Clause is) to prevent depositions of ex parte affidavits . . . being used against the prisoner in lieu of a personal examination and cross-examination of the witness in which the accused has an opportunity not only of testing the recollection and sifting the conscience of the witness, but of compelling him to stand face to face with the jury in order that they may look at him, and judge by his demeanor upon the stand and the manner in which he gives his testimony whether he is worthy of belief.'(221) The right of confrontation is '(o)ne of the fundamental guarantees of life and liberty . . . long deemed so essential for the due protection of life and liberty that it is guarded against legislative and judicial action by provisions in the Constitution of the United States and in the constitutions of most if not of all the States composing the Union.'(222) Before 1965, when the Court held the right to be protected against state abridgment,(223) it had little need to clarify the relationship between the right of confrontation and the hearsay rule,(224) because it could control the admission of hearsay through exercise of its supervisory powers over the inferior federal courts.(225)” …

… “The Court in Crawford* rejected reliance on 'particularized guarantees of trustworthiness' as inconsistent with the requirements of the Confrontation Clause. The Clause 'commands, not that evidence be reliable, but that reliability be assessed in a particular manner: by testing in the crucible of cross-examination.'(247) Reliability is an 'amorphous' concept that is 'manipulable,' and the Roberts (Ohio vs. Roberts (448 U.S. 56 (2008) )) test had been applied 'to admit core testimonial statements that the Confrontation Clause plainly meant to exclude.'(248) 'Where testimonial statements are at issue, the only indicium of reliability sufficient to satisfy constitutional demands is the one the Constitution actually prescribes: confrontation.' ”(249)

“Crawford represented a decisive turning point by clearly stating the basic principles to be used in Confrontation Clause analysis. 'Testimonial evidence' may be admitted against a criminal defendant only if the declarant is available for cross-examination at trial, or, if the declarant is unavailable (and the government has made reasonable efforts to procure his presence), the defendant has had a prior opportunity to cross-examine as to the content of the statement.(250)”

* Crawford vs. Washington ( 541 U.S. 36 (2004))

221: Mattox v. United States, 156 U.S. 237, 242–43 (1895).
222: Kirby v. United States, 174 U.S. 47, 55, 56 (1899). Cf. Pointer v. Texas, 380 U.S. 400, 404–05 (1965). The right may be waived but it must be a knowing, intelligent waiver uncoerced from defendant. Brookhart v. Janis, 384 U.S. 1 (1966).
223: Pointer v. Texas, 380 U.S. 400 (1965) (overruling West v. Louisiana, 194 U.S. 258 (1904)); see also Stein v. New York, 346 U.S. 156, 195–96 (1953).
224: Hearsay is the prior out-of-court statements of a person, offered affirmatively for the truth of the matters asserted, presented at trial either orally by another person or in writing. Hickory v. United States, 151 U.S. 303, 309 (1894); Southern Ry. v. Gray, 241 U.S. 333, 337 (1916); Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135 (1945).
225: Thus, although it had concluded that the co-conspirator exception to the hearsay rule was consistent with the Confrontation Clause, Delaney v. United States, 263 U.S. 586, 590 (1924), the Court’s formulation of the exception and its limitations was pursuant to its supervisory powers.
Lutwak v. United States, 344 U.S. 604 (1953); Krulewitch v. United States, 336 U.S. 440 (1949).
… …
247: 541 U.S. at 60–61
248: 541 U.S. at 63
249: 541 U.S. at 68–69
250: 541 U.S. at 54, 59

the important moral--as well as the important morals -- described and defended in the following video, entitled, ""Election Aftermath!"" (from Tom Walker's comedic character, the recorded-on-assignment news reporter Jonathan Pie, who speaks his mind 'between-the-'on-Air'-segments') could as easily have gone in the Pro & Con threads' latest iteration (now "Part 4") of the "Brexit!" dialogue-of-the-deaf or in "What will heal the divide in U.S. politics?" or in "2020" , now in its fifth dreary extension--and we're still one day (at this writing) from even getting formally into the year 2020--or, certainly, in the Brits Group's "The (British) General Election" (i.e. of 12 December, 2019).

I chose to put it here, at least first, because the lessons of the latest British general election as Tom Walker expains them in this video are readily available to U.S. voters and because they are so exquisitely applicable to the God-awful political shit-show now in its third year going on in U.S. political affairs and the election facing U.S. voters this coming November. Specifically, the same sort of failures Walker's monologue highlights run through and through all that is behind the most demented elements of the U.S. public which despises Donald Trump, the major Mainstream news broadcast media which despise Donald Trump, and, above all, the current Democratic party's leadership which despises Donald Trump and fears that his administration is going to reveal much of their worst foul deeds since the election of Barack Obama--all of them hysterically outraged since the election of Donald Trump and bent on his removal from office--in the silly hope that this might prevent or hamper Trump's re-election.

Nothing so well illustrates what's going on in such madness as Tom Walker's analysis here, as reporter ('off-Air') "Jonathan Pie."

Watch and listen if you dare.

If you ask, "Why should I!?", well, there's this, from Tom Walker's monologue, linked above,

... "Once again, the strategy of calling anyone who was thinking of voting differently to me, 'self-serving, inward-looking, stupid, racist-"Leave"(the E.U.)-voting-scum,' paid absolute dividends, didn't it!?

"This is what happens when you spend the best part of four years insulting and dismissing 52% of the electorate by writing articles in The Guardian (London) suggesting that anyone who voted 'Leave' was condoning the murder of ( British Labour Party member of U.K. Parliament) Jo Cox." ...

and this, from Jason Sattler's commentary excerpted below; Jason can at least summon the integrity to admit that,

"we all have one thing in common: No one knows for sure how to defeat Trump."

-- that may not seem like much insight--and it isn't. But it's a good deal more than most outraged Democrats can manage. LOL!

(from USA Today)

My one and only New Year's resolution: Don't let 2020 become 2016. Beat Donald Trump. | Jason Sattler | Opinion columnist |Published 5:00 AM EST Dec 30, 2019

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"If you dream of a day when you’ll never have to care about anything President Donald Trump tweets, blurts or belches out again, 2020 will either be one of the best or one of the worst years of your life. And all of us who dare to dream should be humble enough to admit that none of us knows exactly how to make it one of our best years.

"Whether you are a plain-vanilla Democrat, a democratic socialist pining for a political revolution or a “Never Trump” Republican willing to give up another bestselling book to dispose of this deadbeat from the White House, we all have one thing in common: No one knows for sure how to defeat Trump.

"All of us have either backed someone who was beaten by the clown who is probably retweeting Russian bots from the Oval Office right now — or backed someone beaten by someone else who was then beaten by that clown. And all of us can point to reasons why that defeat doesn’t count, or was the unjust result of odious forces summoned by enemies who should be allies. But nothing changes the crucial fact: We all lost when Trump won."

...

(emphasis added) LOL!

Sad, inescapable, fact ~ the Electoral College favors the votes of
people who are infatuated with a cult personality and life-long con
artist. Unfortunately, the Founders' grand plan included a
dangerous time bomb that has been exposed in the 21st Century.
Impeachment is the only cure the Founders provided for when a
president runs a foul of his oath of office because he believes he
is an elected king.

>6 Molly3028:

and regular, properly-conducted, popular national elections by the nation's qualified voters are the founders' "cure"—if any such be possible— for what they well foresaw in people such as yourself.

I'll celebrate that fact and leave you to weep over it.

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from The Hill (Washington, D.C.)

"Pelosi's half right constitutional claim leaves the House all wrong" | By Jonathan Turley, opinion contributor — 12/30/19 11:00 AM EST (The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

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Tulsi Gabbard on Twitter speaking about the presidential race and its stakes:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1212002968528211968

>7 proximity1:

It appears that a Putin puppet is living in the White House and
working in the Oval Office. Voters who prefer that kind of
leadership should be living in Russia. Putin must love voters in
the flyover and swing states.

Biden Backtracks on respecting a subpoena from the U.S. Senate in an impeachment trial—and puts himself in a tighter box by doing so

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Here's the dilemma—and, believe it or not, Democrats did this practically all by themselves with little or no help from the Republicans—

As seems certain now, thanks to blind-stupid Democrats' partisan determination to "get Trump", a trial in the U.S. Senate on the articles of impeachment is going to get underway some time in the early months of next year which, of course, begins tomorrow.

Biden, first asserting that he would refuse to respect a Senate subpoena to appear at the trial and testify under oath, as he'd be required to do, has now publicly reversed his position and announced that he would appear if subpoened by the Senate. (1)

It seems, then, that we are going to see the spectacle of Biden, under oath, asserting his rights under the Constitution's 5th amendment, to refuse to answer a multitude of questions he is bound to be asked about his son Hunter's business dealings with Ukrainian millionaires who, according to reports, paid Hunter Biden many thousands of dollars every month for so-called consulting services in matters which were manifestly outside his competence—all while Hunter Biden's father served as Vice-president under Barack Obama's presidency. (2)

As a candidate for the office of president, these questions surrounding his son's Ukrainian business dealings and his own possible involvement in them as a secondary party of interest are entirely appropriate and legitimate. They also bear directly on the matter of Democrats' motives to mount a clandestine and illegal conspiracy to prevent Trump's fair election and, having failed in that, to undermine through conspiratorial fraud Trump's presidency, including the spurious use of a partisan impeachment.

So it is going to look both very bad and very strange if Joe Biden refuses to answer questions on this matter by invoking his right to refuse to testify where, by doing so, he may incriminate himself. His refusal is his right and that is as it should and must be. That the refusal is not, in and of itself, valid indication of criminal guilt is also true and as it should and must be.

But voters, too, have their rights and among these is the right to consider the full picture of Biden's words and deeds and, from them, draw the conclusions about Biden's (the father, not the son) fitness for the office he seeks to fill by the voters' election.

These voters—in caucuses or primaries in Iowa, in New Hampshire, in Nevada and elsewhere—needn't necessarily conclude that Biden is criminally culpable. They might instead decide that the questions swirling around these issues are enough for them to decide, if they hadn't already done so, that Biden's judgment is just deplorably poor and by itself makes him more than unfit to serve in the capacity of president of the United States. They may also thank goodness that the occasion for that never presented itself while Biden was vice-president.

There are numerous candidates still competing for the nomination and primary and caucus voters are certainly not going to fail to notice that voting for Biden is far from their only option.

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(1) "Joe Biden Says He Would Comply With a Senate Subpoena, Reversing Course" | Thomas Kaplan (The New York Times | Fairfield, IA. | Saturday, 28 December, 2019)

(2) https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/436816-joe-bidens-2020-ukrainian-nightma...

>8 Molly3028:

Red-baiting anti-Trump smears? My! What a "surprise"!
Straight out of Joe McCarthy's play-book.

How fucking creepy! How very like you!

You do know that readers can see the shitty stuff you post here and form their own opinions about you from them, don't you?

>10 proximity1: You do know that readers can see the shitty stuff you post here and form their own opinions about you from them, don't you?

You might want to take heed of your own words there, proximity1.

What we've seen from the republican party even before the impeached one was elected with the Merrick Garland fiasco is an exercise in raw power. It's only increased exponentially since the impeached one was sworn into office. For center right, centrist, center left and left people who vote for a democrat in the 2020 election--if successful that doesn't mean that war is over even if the democrats also take the Senate. Joseph Biden is living in fantasy land if he really believes his 'friends' on the republican side wouldn't grill and tear him apart if he were called to witness in a senate trial. This idea that he can work with them is bullshit--and Barack couldn't either. They are not going to work with the democratic party after the 2020 election. They are going to obstruct every chance they get. So it doesn't matter who the nominee is to take on Trump they are going to be demonized to the hilt. There is no safe and comfortable choice and because the impeached one and his party have nothing substantive to run on they're going to try to turn any impeachment trial or the upcoming election into a mud slinging circus. I don't believe Biden's displays of temper are going to work to work very well for him--unfortunately for him he's not running with a whole lot of substance either and if he is the nominated one I see him as more inclined to react to mud being slung his way and Hunter and Ukraine are going to be part and parcel of the sleazefest whether he likes it or not--it's going to be Swiftboat X 10. Staggering around and stuttering and yelling a lot is what republicans will want to see from him.

The Democrats best choice is Sanders because Bernie though he might throw a one or two line zinger always go back to message and substance. He does his best to stay away from the dirt and he actually believes what he says. Straight forward and no bullshit. He doesn't rattle easily. Surely they'll call him a socialist. He doesn't care. Neither do I. I'm comfortable with the idea of spreading the wealth around. That's a hangup for other people but not for everyone. On the question of health care. Obamacare is not sustainable--if the impeached one is reelected he'll continue to work at replacing it with a ever more and more gutted version that he'll call trumpcare. If it's just any democrat the health insurance industry and big pharma will continue to chip away at it. We need to go all the way to medicare for all--wiping out the health insurance industry (and make no mistake) and its jobs. We need to bring big pharma to heel and for good. The republicans are going to go after any kind of real health care solution because that's what many of their bigger donors want them to do...so wipe out and destroy those donors. On the environment we're at a place in time where we do something like a Green New Deal or we live with the catastrophic consequences of not doing anything or not doing enough.

https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/12/political-disney-world.html