November 2, 2016
Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani made a similar comment at an event in Iowa Wednesday. “I think that if [Hillary] Clinton should get elected, I guarantee you, in one year she’ll be impeached,” the former New York mayor said. “One year. And indicted. It’s just going to happen.”

September 9, 2016
As frustrated as Republicans may be with the FBI's findings on Hillary Clinton's use of a private email while she was secretary of state, there's not much they can actually do about it. The FBI and Department of Justice already made their decision not to charge her with a crime, and congressional Republicans can't do much more than review that work and ask the executive branch to launch new investigations. So it's no surprise that we're starting to hear some frustrated congressional Republicans reach for the sharpest arrow in their tool kit: impeachment. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) recently floated the idea to the Associated Press's Erica Werner: "There probably ought to be" impeachment hearings.

November 3, 2016
Senior Republican lawmakers are openly discussing the prospect of impeaching Hillary Clinton should she win the presidency, a stark indication that partisan warfare over her tenure as secretary of state will not end on Election Day.

November 4, 2016
Other Republicans are already using the “I” word. “Assuming she wins, and the investigation goes forward, and it looks like an indictment is pending, at that point in time, under the Constitution, the House of Representatives would engage in an impeachment trial," Texas Rep. Michael McCaul said on Fox News. “They would go to the Senate and impeachment proceedings and removal would take place.” Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson declared that Clinton could be impeached for “high crime or misdemeanor.” And Donald Trump, who has turned “lock her up” into a rallying cry at his campaign stops, said Wednesday that Clinton would be impeached just as surely as Bill Clinton was. “You know it’s going to happen. And in all fairness, we went through it with her husband. He was impeached,” the Republican nominee said at a rally in Florida Wednesday, adding that Hillary is “most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency.”

But something that struck me a little harder than usual was that Biden was almost the only one on the stage who talked like a normal person. There was a point near the end of the debate when he was talking about getting men involved in stopping domestic violence and he said that we need to keep “punching” at it. My heart sank immediately. I knew that everyone would smirk at that. I knew that the twitterati and the analysts would tut tut. Ol’ Joe is just out of touch! He doesn’t know you can’t use words like that.

Meanwhile, every non-political junkie watching the debate thought there was nothing wrong with this. Biden was just using ordinary language, not worrying too much if it was fully approved by the woke brigade.

...

We sophisticates might roll our eyes at that, but I’ll bet most people don’t. That’s exactly what they want to hear, and Biden is the only one giving it to them. His final minute was basically a bid to be the Democratic Ronald Reagan, and I suspect it worked.

As always, I’ll add a caveat: I’m trying to guess about how other people reacted to things, and maybe I’m wrong. But for those who continue to be confused about how Biden retains his poll standing, this is probably it. Most people don’t care very much if he sometimes offends the tone police. They know perfectly well what he meant, and they’re OK with that.

For another example of 'ordinary' people hearing what is said and not what is spoken, see Donald Trump.

I'm not really opposed to Biden. I just cringe a bit when I picture myself spending years trying to figure out what he meant to say vs what he actually said. I'd rather have someone who's a bit sharper with the language.

I think the Trump defenders' best angle is to try to get the Burisma and the "server" fully blended into the overall anti-corruption effort that all the diplomats and NSC people kept talking about. That way, the GOP can argue that the Dems' focus on these two things is misplaced and that they're missing the forest for a couple of interesting trees. They can say Trump wasn't going after those things specifically, he was just using them as examples of things that needed to be fixed.

"He was trying to fight corruption in Ukraine, just like those nice witnesses said the US should! You don't want him to do that?"

It's not even close to true, but it would make it look like Trump was simply a little sloppy in the examples he chose to use as shorthand for the overall effort.

(Clearly I am not a lawyer)

We've had five Presidents win the Electoral College without winning the popular vote (four of them Republicans).

And we've had two Presidents be impeached: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton (Nixon when he figured out that it was going to happen).

But it's looking like Trump will earn the distinction of being the first President to lose the popular vote and be impeached!

Always exceeding expectations.

Kevin Drum knows:

Here’s the explanation: Republicans all know who the whistleblower is. What’s more, a couple of years ago they had a minor run-in with this person on an unrelated issue. Since then, they’ve compiled a 40-page dossier on the whistleblower and they’re practically bursting with impatience to unload it all over Fox News. As you can imagine, there’s nothing of real substance in this dossier, but they figure there’s enough smoke and smears to distract attention from Donald Trump’s crimes for a while.

But first the whistleblower’s name has to become public. None of the Republicans have the guts to just get up in the well of the House and say the name, and they’re endlessly frustrated that no one else of any stature has said it either—nor is any mainstream news outlet willing to say it.

There were two bribes.

This is bribe one:

1. We know Ambassador Sondland and Guiliani and others had been trying to get the Ukrainians to announce "investigations" into Biden and Trump's wacky conspiracy theory (where it was Ukraine, not Russia who interfered i n2016, and they were working for Clinton, not him).
2. We know they were using the promise of a Presidential visit as payment.
3. We know the Ukrainians know this is what Trump wants.
4. We know that the Ukrainians wrestled with the dilemma of getting involved with US internal politics or not.
5. We know they eventually agreed to announce the "investigations".

Give Trump his investigations, get the visit. Bribe one.

This is the second bribe:

1. In the second call, once the pleasantries are done, and Zelensky has asked about the possibility of a visit, and Trump has complained about not receiving enough thanks, Zelensky asks about the Javelins - the military aid.
2. Trump immediately responds with "do me a favor though", and talks about the investigations and his conspiracy theories.
3. Again, Zelensky already knows Trump wants investigations. He knows what the investigations are. He knows they were already used as leverage for the Presidential visit.
4. Zelensky apparently doesn't at this point know that the aid has been held up. So, he likely thinks Trump talking about investigations is about the visit. So he asks again for the visit. Zelensky will later learn the aid is being held up.
5. Trump tells Zelensky to talk to Rudy G, who has been laying the groundwork for the smear campaign against Biden.

That's bribe two. Aid for investigations. From what we know, it was apparently not executed as cleanly as the first.

But then, word gets out that Trump is trying to bribe Ukraine, so Trump shuts the whole thing down: the military aid is released and the Presidential visit is agreed to / set up. And, Ukraine cancels their plans to announce the phony investigations.

So there were two bribes. And the only reason it didn't work out the way Trump wanted was because someone blew the whistle on him before it all came together.

The latest map — designed by state Rep. David Lewis, one of the legislature’s redistricting chairmen, and approved late Thursday by the state House of Representatives — creates a new Democratic-leaning district in Raleigh and another anchored in Greensboro. In the current map, those cities are carved into different districts, diluting their heavily Democratic vote.

...

Under the new proposal, two Republican congressmen — George Holding of Raleigh and Mark Walker of Summerfield, near Greensboro — would be drawn into the new Democratic-leaning districts, making their reelection prospects next year uncertain.

The moron Mark Walker is my Trump-humping Representative. His weekly emails to constituents are full of stories about "Job Creators" and the evil "mainstream media" and the pernicious left's witch hunt against Trump. He has refused my 40+ requests for comment on whether or not the four Democratic Congresswomen should "go back" to where they came from. He has also blocked me on Facebook. Having him lose his seat because the district maps were drawn fairly would be so so sweet.

You know, it really is a surprise to find American's Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, at the heart of a whisper/smear/cloud-of-FUD campaign against Trump's electoral opponent - There's corruption! Look! An investigation! Don't trust Biden!

Well, it would be if you don't remember 2016.

Once, in his days as New York’s chief federal prosecutor and later as the city’s mayor, Rudolph W. Giuliani was a master of releasing damaging leaks aimed at the kneecaps of opponents. Sometimes, they were true.

Now Mr. Giuliani works the other end of the information slurry, and he has had a hard time keeping his stories straight, one day boasting of his inside sources, then denying that they exist.

At a Senate hearing this week in Washington, Democrats took turns at the microphone to ask about the furies that — depending on which version of Mr. Giuliani you believe — ran from the F.B.I. office in New York to Mr. Giuliani during the closing weeks of the 2016 presidential election.

One Democratic senator asked the F.B.I. director, Christopher Wray, if the pipeline was still running.

“Can you assure the American people there are no ongoing leaks from any office of the F.B.I. to Rudolph Giuliani?” Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut asked.

“Senator, I’m certainly not aware of any,” Mr. Wray replied.

Sure.

And days before the election, FBI director Comey announced an investigation into a newly-discovered laptop full of emails tangentially relating to Clinton - an announcement that likely played a big part in her losing the election.

How did that announcement, which went against FBI policy, come to happen? Well, it's suspected that Comey announced it in an effort to get ahead of leaks about the investigation. Comey denies it, but that's at odds with other people who involved.

So who was driving those rumors?

The former attorney general, Loretta Lynch, told investigators that Mr. Comey “said, ‘It’s clear to me that there is a cadre of senior people in New York who have a deep and visceral hatred of Secretary Clinton.’ And he said, ‘It is deep.’”

Mr. Comey said he found it “stunning,” Ms. Lynch told the investigators. She replied to him: “I’m just troubled that this issue — meaning the, the New York agent issue and leaks — I am just troubled that this issue has put us where we are today with respect to this laptop.”

The self-proclaimed tribune of that F.B.I. antipathy was Mr. Giuliani, now a lawyer for President Trump.

On Oct. 25, 2016, three days before Mr. Comey’s stunning announcement, Mr. Giuliani appeared on a Fox morning television show.

“We got a couple of surprises left,” Mr. Giuliani said.

He chortled, and when asked to expand on the subject, replied, “And I think it’ll be enormously effective.”

So, yes, it's a big surprise to see Rudy G running around, spreading rumors about, and trying to get someone to announce an investigation into another of Trump's (likely) opponents. If you didn't read anything I quoted above, that is.

Two Trump v Warren polls from Michigan, today:

NY Times/Siena   Warren 39, Trump 46 (Trump +7)
Emerson          Warren 54, Trump 46 (Warren +8)

Rene Magritte