>>
>>which you largely seem to agree on, then what was the point
>of
>>any of it?
>
>Yeah that is my point. If the idea is to make a statement,
>then go all out with the statement.

I don't see why we'd call it "going all out" if doing it loses senate votes and tries the public's patience. Seems like a more apt phrase would be "wear out their welcome."

More words doesn't necessarily equate to a stronger case, especially if they're all words that everyone's already heard. It's a simple case. Everyone knows the facts. Keep it simple.

Case in point: this morning we have reports coming in that they were going to lose "guilty" votes if the trial didn't wrap up *that day*. This has been explicitly reported for Richard Burr, and it's likely the case with Cassiday as well (who we know had a speech prepared to justify a "not guilty" verdict using the same jurisdictional copout).


Nobody wanted to see live witnesses more than I did. You can see that in a very excited post I made above. But I wanted to see witnesses because I like seeing Republicans getting raked over the coals. People who aren't hyper-partisan Democrats don't get as much satisfaction as I do in being reminded about their complicity in a fascist coup attempt. What I wanted would have been counterproductive, not just with the senators, but also with the voters. I would love it if it were possible to shame the Trump voters into never voting again. Sadly that's not how the system works.


>The argument against that seems to be "make a statement, but
>lets get past the statement quickly and wait what will GOP
>voters think of us lets hurry..." which is classic.
>>
>>They wanted to make a statement, and the stronger the
>better.
>>Unfortunately the significance of that statement was always
>>gonna be measured in senate votes.
>>
>>Overall they got 17 elected Republicans, including some very
>>big names, to impeach in the house or convict in the senate.
>>That's not much, but it's a bigger statement than anyone got
>>out of the three previous presidential impeachments.
>
>Sure...and as I said above, thats cool but not worth
>celebrating.


I don't know who you think is celebrating what. The gambit to get Buetler's testimony into the record took about thirty minutes. It wasn't a big deal and nobody ever said it was.

But there was a point to it that I think we should clarify. You ask what the point is of getting it into the record. By "the record" I don't just mean the congressional record that gets read by historians in the year 2400. By "the record," I mean the evidenciary record of the trial. According to the rules of this trial (as for any normal judicial trial), evidence can only be discussed if it's known to both sides ahead of time. All of the tapes, all of the transcripts, all of the quotes that everyone referred to, was listed in documents prepared and shared by the legal teams at the start of the trial.

You might remember that one of the house managers, Madeleine Dean, in her closing statement, tried to play a video that "wasn't in the record." As it turned out, the text of what was said in that video was in the record, but that particular video itself was not. Seems to have just been a mixup on the part of the house managers. But she had to stop, mid presentation, while they figured out how to respond to the objection. In the end, she couldn't show the video and had to apologize.

That's why the managers needed to amend the record to get Buetler's statement added. The statement wasn't out yet when the trial started. So if they didn't get it added to the record, they couldn't have even discussed it in their closing statements. It was maybe the most damning and visceral piece of evidence they had, and they wouldn't have even been allowed to mention it if they hadn't gotten it admitted into evidence.




>My man, they stormed the fucking capital with the Confederate
>flag!
>
>Let them own this for longer. Let them own the testimonies.
>If nothing else, get soundbites for commercials. Control the
>news for a little while longer. Dare the braintrust that is
>the Trump defense to call their witnesses (lol).
>
>
>>
>>And a few more more Senators, including McConnell and
>Portman
>>on the record so far, had to admit that the managers proved
>>their case, that their not-guilty votes were only on
>>jurisdictional grounds. In other words, if Trump were still
>in
>>office, they said on the record that they would have voted
>to
>>convict.
>
>Which I contend would not change had witnesses been called.
>
>I have yet to see a good reason to not call witnesses. And as
>I've said, maybe I am missing the importance of the official
>record so I am open to explanation of why I should be happy
>that a statement is officially in the record of an acquittal.

Well again, the reason not to call witnesses is that they would have lost at least one vote, maybe two, if they hadn't found a way to wrap up *that day*. And it only would have gone downhill from there as Republicans all up and down the government form a chorus of "this is such a waste of time!" Yesterday, the narrative was on our side and more concentrated than it would ever be again. Every good writer knows that if you can say the same thing in two different ways, you choose the way that requires fewer words. (I, by the way, am clearly not a good writer.)




>>
>>The managers got that because they were able to maximize
>their
>>factual case, including this tactic at the end. Maybe
>today's
>>intrigue didn't add much to the case, but because they were
>>able to get through it quickly, it added something and
>didn't
>>subtract anything. If they'd let things drag on indefinitely
>>and become the circus that the Trump lawyers wanted to make
>>it, public opinion would have turned and we'd have ended up
>>with a 46-54 result.
>>
>
>I mean, you think that would happen based on what?
>
>I disagree. I think witnesses help hammer the point home.

A point that everyone already agrees on? If people are already saying "yes he's guilty but we're gonna acquit him anyway" then the only point they can make is already home.


>I
>refuse to believe witnesses decreases support for impeachment.
>And absolute worst case scenario is 51 votes to impeach. Cmon.
> That is another classic Democrat move- paint some abstract
>scary picture where they lose big by acting. 46? lol cmon.
>
>Even Romney was pissed. 51 was the absolute floor.

I think Romney would have gone along with us for one more week. Murkowski too. Remember, their brand isn't "Trump is bad." their brand is "Partisan retribution is bad, especially when it distracts from our work."

Collins definitely wouldn't stick around. She hates Democrats with a fiery passion right now. Any random comment could have pushed her off the bus.

Sasse makes the right noises on the facts of the case, but the man represents Nebraska for god's sake. Every day he continues to be the Republican face of the post-Trump era is a day he puts his reelection at risk. Lucky for him he's not up again until 2026. But if he loses confidence that the fever will break by then he starts looking for an exit ramp. By the way, he voted against witnesses in the first impeachment trial, where witnesses were obviously more important than in this case.

Toomey doesn't seem to give much of a shit either way. He's on his way out the door and not really interested in any of it anymore. If you told him a vote for witnesses would complicate his weekend schedule, he'd vote against witnesses.

And then there's Burr and Cassiday, both of whom were on a knife's edge about the decision, easily could have voted to acquit, and likely would have done so if the trial had lasted one more day.

Then we have *our* caucus to worry about.

Joe Manchin can only go so far. Trump won 70% of the vote in his state! Honestly we should all be on our knees right now begging him not to switch parties. That would definitely be the smart career move for him.

The same applies to Jon Tester, only slightly less extreme.

Mark Kelly and Raphael Warnock just got elected in special elections. That means they'll need to run again, without much of a record, in states with razor-thin party margins, in a year that will almost certainly be very bad for the incumbent party (especially if a narrative sets in that we care more about retribution than about the pandemic or the economy). I certainly don't think Warnock would change his vote (Kelly I'm not as certain about), but if this case dragged on, that's two more seats we lose in 2022.

Then there's Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, both up for reelection in 2022. If 2022 is a hard year for Democrats, as everyone expects it to be, then those two are the first to lose their seats (after Warnock and Kelly). Neither one of them is gonna say Trump isn't guilty, but if this trial starts to smell like retribution and becomes unpopular in their states, they look for a procedural exit and Mitch has one giftwrapped for them with a bow.



So assuming Warnock holds his ground, at this point I think we'd have 45 votes to convict if this took another month.



>So 51 (absolute worst fucking case) votes to convict and
>actual testimony versus 57 and one person's statement in the
>official record?
>
>I'm still lost at how getting statements officially in the
>record is some sort of win.
>
>That seems like lowering the bar for Democrats as a lot of
>their most passionate defenders tend to do. Look for moral
>victories or intellectual victories or inventing doomsday
>scenarios to justify their inaction.


It sounds like you have a narrative in your head about "what Democrats do" and you'd rather rely on that narrative than try to figure out why they do what they do.


>No one is going to be swayed by the official record so I am
>open to what that actually does.


And just to emphasize because you keep coming back to it. "The record" isn't just some document for the ages. It's the set of facts that the managers were allowed to talk about in their closing statements. There would have been zero discussion of this phone call on the final day if they hadn't succeeded in getting it added into the record.


>Live testimony? Now that can sway people.
>
>And, again, I refuse to believe the Trump defense would
>suddenly get their shit together.


They don't have to be smart, they just have to stick to their guns. And let's be clear, the only day that was bad for the Trump team, politically, was the first day. After the first day the Trump lawyers were reading off scripts, literally written for them by political operatives. They weren't trying to make a legal case after the first day. They were relying on political red meat because that's all they needed. And let's never forget, Trump's political team is pretty damn skilled at getting fascists' blood pumping.


>The "we got her statement in the official record" is the "she
>won the popular vote!" of 2021.
>
>No one cares.
>
>I'm also lost at how Democrats and their most passionate
>supports can go on and on and on about how fantastic the
>Impeachment Mangers were, but at the same time somehow not
>trust them to handle witnesses.

I've never heard anyone say they don't trust the impeachment managers with witnesses. I've certainly never said it. The issue is simply that there's negligible upside in getting more testimony on facts on which everybody is convinced, and huge downside in the procedural costs to get there.


>Nah. Break for 3 weeks for depositions. Stop fucking
>bullshitting and get COVID relief done

I could be wrong on this, but I believe they'd have to vote to suspend the trial if they wanted to do any other Senate business in the interim. Then there'd be debate on THAT. The House managers would have to give tortured speeches on "We've made an airtight case here, but now we need you to pause everything so we can get you a little more. Hold the phone, brb..."

And then the Trump lawyers get to rant and rave some more about "They should have sorted all this out before they impeached!!!1! If they need more evidence they should have gotten it before the trial!!1! This is just them admitting that they don't have a case and they never did!!!" Legally speaking, this argument is bullshit, but in a political setting it gets more convincing with every passing day.

>, and resume the trial
>in a few weeks. Call witnesses. Control the cycle a little,
>let the Trump team call their witnesses (lol) and see what
>happens.

We know what happens to their witnesses. Those witnesses don't show up. Then we go to court, then we win in court, then they appeal, then we win again, then they appeal again. Then we say "This is silly, let's just go forward with the testimony we have." Then the Trump team says "This is outrageous!!! How do they get their witnesses and we don't get any?!!!" Senate Democrats were already insisting yesterday that there must be equal witnesses for both sides. Suddenly what had been a very clean case becomes a clusterfuck.


>On no planet does that lead to only 46 votes to impeach.
>Unless the House Managers suddenly become terrible at this.
>Not even then.

As I said above, I'm now prepared to amend that estimate down to 45. Wouldn't that number be a fun coincidence.