Impeachment 2: Impeach Harder

I guess I just don't see how a simple process-change accomplishes that. I can see how broad, intense, long-term political activity might accomplish that—if you bolster the political agency of all members of society, and ensure that representatives are truly accountable to all their constituents. So, to the extent that a simple process change might accomplish that, I'm all for it—but there are greater obstacles in need of more urgent attention, that might be more fruitful to eliminate before you try to build capital for a complete overhaul of the electoral system. The solution for bad politics is more politics—not less politics, or built-in compromise-cheats, or technocracy.

It was in the sixties

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If you guys aren't following this... er, keep not following it, because jfc the defense is shitting all over American conservatism rn. Letting Trump off the hook on the basis of a competent defense would've been one thing, but, after this shitshow, GOP senators are faced with the unpleasant prospect of saying thank you for having the Trump team poop right into their open mouths.

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Originally Posted by Aimless

I guess I just don't see how a simple process-change accomplishes that.

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It's a metasolution. A solution for the problem of finding solutions. It's another tool for the box. Given the regressions we've had this century, it's clear to me that we need to start making progress on making progress easier. As I said, there are other means, and I'm quite open to most of them, either in addition to or instead of STV. I don't see a downside with it, the scope is pretty limited which makes it reasonably safe, and if there's a problem I won't see until it happens, we can always reverse the change and go back to non-transferable votes or a different vote counting method altogether.

Senate votes (55-45) to call witnesses.

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Originally Posted by Wraith

It's a metasolution. A solution for the problem of finding solutions. It's another tool for the box. Given the regressions we've had this century, it's clear to me that we need to start making progress on making progress easier. As I said, there are other means, and I'm quite open to most of them, either in addition to or instead of STV. I don't see a downside with it, the scope is pretty limited which makes it reasonably safe, and if there's a problem I won't see until it happens, we can always reverse the change and go back to non-transferable votes or a different vote counting method altogether.

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Agree in principle re. advantages; the downside is political opportunity cost. An attempt to bring about a change like this has a large cost in terms of political capital and associated political resources (eg. limited campaign time & funds), and the risk of failure is very high—reasonable scenario is, you invest your political capital and your resources on a campaign that ends up burning the policy change you seek for half a generation or more (see eg. UK alternative vote referendum).

In contrast, more modest changes involving shoring up voting rights and making antidemocratic shenanigans more difficult—eg. by passing a new voting rights act, legislating to make partisan gerrymandering more difficult, pushing state-level campaigns to restore voting rights to former felons—are low-cost, low-effort and low-risk approaches with a large democratic payoff. A riskier but still cautious venture is NPVIC. I just think there's so much more that can still be accomplished within the fairly malleable constraints of the current system, without any need for costly gambles on a reformist agenda that I'm sympathetic to but simultaneously not confident about.

Reek McConnell has said he's voting to acquit. So I expect 55-45 to be the final tally.

I was close.

50 Democrats
7 Republicans
37 Reek
6 QAnon

Now the most acquitted president in history. ;)

'my acquitted twice by the senate t-shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by my t-shirt'

Republicans being gutless cowards is less interesting than the question of why witnesses were not called after the Senate voted to call them. Does anyone have any info on wtf happened here?

If this is true, Chris Coons is having an affair.

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