Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Why Honor and Mikwut have decided to play this game is interesting, but it doesn't change the facts.
- Doc
What game, Cam?
This line of discussion originated with an exchange between subbie and canpakes. Subbie made a statement about ignoring Joe Biden to go after Trump followed by canpakes saying subbie hasn't articulated what Biden actually did that was wrong. So far, so good.
Schmo made a comment on canpakes' reply to subbie that the reason what subbie said seemed to work with Republicans was their being morons. It was because of that comment where I pointed out the following:
1) The reason the accusations against Biden seem to work is because the facts look bad on the surface. Members of the Obama administration in 2016 recognized this, too. As Schmo subsequently described it, the optics are bad.
2) What makes a person a moron in relation to this issue isn't in viewing the optics as bad, but in not looking into the details enough to realize the optics are superficial and don't stand up to scrutiny.
3) The facts around what happened with Biden aren't that hidden. We know for a fact that he was not acting in the interest of Bursima, Hunter's client, when he informed then-President Poroshenko that PG Shokin had to go or the US wouldn't release a billion dollars in loan guarantees badly needed by Ukraine. VP Biden's demand worked to fight corruption and removed a PG who was protecting Burisma instead of going after them. It doesn't take much effort or time to gain enough of an informed understanding to realize the optics are wrong.
4) I think Democrats have a responsibility to make the actual facts the public narrative rather than side stepping it when it comes up.
Its here you seem to be grossly conflating what mikwut is saying and what I've said. As I said to mikwut earlier in this very thread, one can't view Trump's claim that Biden needed to be investigated with charity. Given the facts, he was either being incompetent in doing so or dishonest. In the first case, he would be incompetent due to either not taking the time to become moderately informed using easily available facts regarding the Ukraine, PG Shokin, and Joe Biden's role in the Ukraine. Or he was given the information but lacked the cognitive ability to understand the evidence. This requires accepting he made consequential demands of another head of state from a position of dangerous ignorance. In the second case, allowing that Trump was informed and mentally competent to engage the available information, he can only be viewed as knowing the evidence didn't support his request, but still proceed to make his demands of Zelensky. This only leaves his having done so for political gain on the table with no real interest in corruption as an issue. I suspect it's a little column a feeding a lot of column b but it doesn't matter.
5) Schmo said it shouldn't matter what Biden did, even if it was what Republican's claimed, because what Trump did is bad.
6) I argued that's crazy talk as to assume Biden actually did what Republicans claimed he did would turn it into a huge scandal. It would mean the VP of the United States physically went to the Ukraine on a personal mission to demand the Ukrainian government remove a threat to his son's client, the corrupt president of Burisma Holdings. And his stick in this was he would block their receiving $1 billion in aid that they needed if they failed to fire the PG before he got on the plane back home.
Process number 6 for a moment. Again, I feel I am obligated to say not only did this not actually happen, but the facts are so clear when actually looked at it's not ambiguous or leaves this on the table as a possibility. But IF IT WERE TRUE, WHICH IT IS NOT, it would change every single thing about the impeachment inquiry. You don't reframe the facts as we have them into fitting this narrative. It changes the future that follows from it irrevocable.
The upside of this is we can combine the facts as they happened with the other evidence available around the Bidens and Burisma and feel reasonably confident what we are dealing with here is Trump having abused his office rather than going after actual corruption. It's another reason I think Democrats need to address it head on as well.
Moving on.
7) This discussion gave rise to numerous complaints that the inverted universe of Biden having actually done the things claimed doesn't excuse what Trump did in this universe so we need to focus on that. We appear unable to agree that in this fictional universe the magnitude of the claimed actions and details that are tied to it would reframe the entire impeachment process in ways that we might postulate about but should be reasonable enough to not pop a gasket over. Guess that was not the case.
8) Republicans are relying on a narrative that the impeachment process isn't about justice or protecting the Nation. Instead, it's about overturning the 2016 election results. Republicans claim Democrats don't care about actual wrong doing. Yes, this is another inversion of facts, and yes it's hypocritical as it gets. BUT, when we can't agree that in a fictional universe where Biden was the wrong doer it would be justified to criminally pursue Biden, and it would reframe Trump's behavior, it gives the Republican argument weight.
If one sees attackers of Trump dismissing anything and everything Biden did to the point his worst possible motive and behavior could be taken as a given and it would not change a thing about the impeachment process, then it validates the Republican claim in 8.
And that's why it's insane to me that what started out as a hypothetical what if scenario turned into an absolute crap show of bizarre partisanship and blindness.
But I guess I'm playing a game of some kind. So whatever.