Massdriver

I appreciate @sblfilmsfor having the guts to state his opinion here knowing he would be jumped.

It would, and Congress would always be the check if an executive decides to start acting like a king and ignore SCOTUS. There is no provision that allows the Supreme Court to remove a sitting president that is otherwise qualified to be there. But the question is much more important in cases where Congress is doing its duty investigating the head of the executive branch , since by impeding the investigation, the executive is blocking Congress's ability to exercise their express powers. Our Constitution as bad as it is gave a lot of express powers that imply oversight powers to Congress. There is no reason Congress should have to consult with the judicial branch to exercise their responsibilities anymore than SCOTUS should have to consult with Congress to issue a new ruling. What if the judicial branch made a corrupt ruling in favor of the executive and started rubber stamping everything the executive wanted? Sure, there are certain cases where the judicial branch may be needed, but these should only relate to very specific technicalities, not a president illegally abusing their power and then refusing to cooperate with a Congressional investigation. In general, our system has historically relied upon a degree of mutual respect and cooperation between the branches without testing the limits of our fragile founding document. What Trump is doing is normalizing and stretching our document to its limit and exposing how fragile it is. He is making it seem normal that the executive doesn't have to cooperate at all, and he makes it seem like going to the judicial branch is perfectly reasonable when it historically has not been. This is all recent and toxic to our government and is turning the executive branch into a much more powerful branch than the other two. Congress should immediately remove Trump from office to deter future presidents from doing the same thing.

What if the executive ignored the judicial branch? At the end of the day, the real check on the executive in these situations is or should be Congress. Edit: It should be understood by any president that they are subject to being removed if they stonewall Congressional inquiries.

The courts will remain slow. That's not a realistic remedy.

If a president can obstruct Congress without Congress impeaching, then Congress can't exercise their oversight roles. Isn't the case where Obama and Holder didn't give documents to Congress under subpoena still making its way through the courts? If if takes months to years to get courts to settle disputes, and that's the only way, then our system can't function. The executive and legislative branch are supposed to have an understanding that they comply with each other as co equal branches. The executive is behaving like it is above the legislative branch. The legislative branch is being shit on and the remedy isn't the courts. The constitution gives the legislative branch its own authority to take action. Given the quantity of subpoenas that Trump has ignored, I think this beyond qualifies for removal.

The vote itself doesn’t matter. It’s what people say to others about who they are voting for that matters. Basically Jason could have lied and said I’m voting Clinton to everyone around him and secretly voted Johnson and the effect you guys are talking about is achieved without voting for Clinton. No one actually knows with certainty who anyone votes for.

I like charter schools existing. There are a lot of school districts I'm aware of that have had over 10 years to get their shit together and parents have no options except to send their kids to a private or charter school. However, I don't like the idea of private religious schools getting public money because tax dollars shouldn't be used to push a certain religious viewpoint where we can avoid it.

The 2 surprises to me with the poll are Warren leads Sanders as a first choice and Klobuchar has 15% support for a second choice.

Thanks to @SaysWho? for the candidate list! The candidates are listed in order of their national polling numbers according to fivethirtyeight. The results of this poll are public. This thread isn't meant to take the place of the official thread. Have fun!

I deleted that post after catching up. It seems others are more passionate on this than I am, so I'll take a back seat here.

I think the degree of pessimism here is unjustified relative to what's factual. It's not just that I want people to be more optimistic just for health reasons. I think some here have a distorted view of reality that is far darker than what's actually happening. I'm fairly cynical myself, but some here are taking it so bad that they are amplifying the bad beyond what's there. These times are fairly good by historical standards, and while the American voting public is disappointing me with Trump, there is time to turn things around. I don't think Trumpism is going away. It's something we will be dealing with for decades. But that doesn't mean the game is up. Eventually things will align against them. In the meantime, I think the people have made progress looking at issues like climate change, healthcare, criminal justice, and many other issues with a more progressive tilt and it will result in changes on the state and local level even if we regress on the Federal. It will eventually happen on the Federal level too. Looking at Texas, I see some things happening here ahead of schedule. 2018 really showed that this state has changed and Trump's grip is starting to wither. Take a look at the money flowing into state rep races here and in other states. Democrats are learning from their stupidity of ignoring state power. When Democrats take over the Federal government again, I suspect it will be from a more organic base of support from the local level on up. If Democrats start turning on each other and creating purity tests, I think that's the bigger threat to their future than the GOP.

Well it may not factor into what he gets done, but it doesn't help. In any case, there's something about working with the guy that senators don't like.

Bernie has 2 endorsement from the U.S. Senate, current and former combined, Mike Gravel and Patrick Leahy. I think Hillary is partially correct that at least in the U.S. Senate, very few of his fellow senators like him. That raises questions about what he could actually get done as president.

You absolutely belong on this list, and I think I’ve missed some others. Bottom line is the few optimists here make it easier to continue participating. Gloom and doom posting all the time isn’t sustainable or healthy for me nor is it realistic.

I’m going to continue being optimistic. @Signifyin(g)Monkey @sblfilms @mclumber1@SaysWho? are on this team I hope!