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Clockwise from bottom left: Reps. Katie Porter, Gil Cisneros, Harley Rouda, & Mike Levin: All going down on the right side of history today.
Of the seven Congressional districts representing all or part of Orange County, only three — CA 38 (Sanchez), CA 46 (Correa), and CA 47 (Lowenthal), are reliably blue, and the latter may be reliable only so long as Lowenthal himself is there. The other four (from north to south) — CA-39 (Cisneros), CA-45 (Porter), CA-48 (Rouda), and CA-49 (Levin) are still competitive.
So with today being the third time in American history that the House of Representatives will vote on articles of impeachment, it’s time to thank in advance those latter four members of Congress — all of who will support impeachment — for whom this is not necessarily a politically winning vote. (Though it may be!) That it’s a risk that they’re willing to take to do what’s right is what makes it both courageous and worth special recognition.
The safety they can feel stems from the biggest change in OC over the last decade: that it no longer stands out as being extremely conservative, but it does stand out as being very well-educated. It’s being well educated — the ability to understand what’s going on, think critically, and reason to valid conclusions — that makes the biggest difference in one’s being able to avoid being a mindless Trump thrall.
I’m not including the members of Congress in that — they know that they’re bullshitting the public, but they don’t believe the bullshit parts themselves. I also exclude the people who truly believe that attempted extortion of a foreign leader facing foreign invasion to get a juicy talking point about a possible opponent “does not rise to the level of impeachment.” Reasonable people (as well as unreasonable ones) can disagree about that; I simply think that it’s not irrational, but just very very wrong.
If OC voters were still in the main the sorts of people who would swallow the swill being served by Reps. Nunes, Jordan, and Collins, these four would be in serious trouble. I don’t think that they are. I think that NOT running for the middle ground — as one might have expected of the three men — actually puts them in a better position for reelection than doing so. A Trumpian True Believer isn’t going to vote for a Democrat regardless of whether they buckled under here. Showing some spine is a good look for them!
If the prospect of a Democratic primary challenge — necessarily in 2022, given our early primary — helped keep them on the straight and narrow, that’s great! But, in an educated and less extremist county, they can all figure out that — even without a primary challenge — they’ll be a lot happier and safer having impeached Trump. The NPPs are moving our way.
So — I’ve been getting emails from all four asking me to donate some money to their campaigns. After the vote, I’m going to do so — a way to celebrate this momentous occasion — and I invite anyone else who hates breach of fiduciary duty to join me.
Three more things to say about impeachment (and Trump generally) before I’m off to work:
(1) When Trump says that his phone call with Zelensky was “perfect,” he is probably thinking of it from the perspective of the Mafia Don that he imagines he successfully emulates: he conveyed to Zelensky what he wanted and what would happen if he didn’t get it without ever uttering the words “bribery,” “extortion,” or “quid pro quo” that anyone listening could use against him. In other words, it was perfectly just ambiguous enough to prevent consequences. Well, as many others have found, that’s not really how it works.
(2) Zelensy has said that he didn’t feel pressured in the call because he was never going to give in to any extortionate demand — which is a bit obtuse on his part, though for understandable reasons, besides which he apparently DID decide to give in to protect his country just before the money was released after the whistleblower’s repurt — and so it didn’t matter what Trump was demanding. It would be nice if he could be pressed to make it more clear, but it’s already clear enough: Trump was *attempting* extortion. “Attempt” is a crime. If you attempt to extort someone and they tell you to go to hell, you have still committed the crime of attempted extortion. But Zelensky can’t say that, because he is still under duress: we all know that Trump very likely won’t be removed from office, which means that Zelensky has to deal with him as he fends off Trump’s buddy Putin — and that means that his artful denials must be taken with a grain of salt.
(3) At work this week, I figured out what Trump meant about people flushing 12 times as opposed to once. No, it’s not that he has concrete turds. He’s talking about those fancy self-flushing toilets they have in those fancy office buildings — like the one where I work — that flush if you move far enough away from them to, say, reach for toilet paper. I’ve never hit the dozen mark, but I have felt that I was wasting water when they go off prematurely. This is an actually legitimate environmentalist concern and I encourage the President to devote all of his attention to solving it before he leaves office.
One thing, though: those toilets exist in large part because germaphobes don’t want to flush by touching the handle or button or whatever being touched by dozens of other people each day. And Trump is a gernaphobe. So does he really want to get rid of those toilets? (I don’t even want to think what he’d do in their absences, but I’d probably favor impeaching him over that too.)
hi I just wanted to say that I appreciate the information and time you put into this blog. I know it is easy for me as a reader to just drop by and browse, but it is hard to find information about local politics in OC side from the papers, so thanks for all the info and work. I always enjoy reading your new articles/coverage !
Why thank you, we will continue to do our best.
Elsewhere you can find out who voted against their party. Here you can find out who didn’t vote at all:
Democrat José E. Serrano (NY-15), due to health complications from Parkinson’s.
Republican John Shimkus of Eastern Illinois, absent with Trump’s blessing, is visiting his son, who is with the Peace Corps in Tanzania.
Southern California Republican Duncan Hunter Jr., who pled guilty to a campaign finance crime and has been warned by the Ethics Committee not to vote pending his resignation “after the holidays” — which probably means he wants a pension bump.
Democratic Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard voted “present” on both counts. What can you say about someone who follows the path of former Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) in the Clinton impeachment?
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2019-12-18/3-lawmakers-miss-historic-impeachment-votes
As for Tulsi — I refer you once against to my article from a month and a half ago, where I hypothesized that she was going to try to win the nomination with crossover votes from NPPs and Republicans in open or semi-open primaries. What happened today is likely to get a lot more people thinking about this possibility. At this point, I’d bet even odds that she’s going to try this gambit. Might write more about this as time permits.
http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2019/11/weekend-open-thread-tulsi-wins-ca-with-gop-votes/