@ArishMell Well, my point was, how can anyone be confident of a Democrat victory so early in the term and having no idea who the Democratic candidate might be. The identity of the Republican candidate will be relevant too, of course, but at least with the GOP there's already an informal shortlist.
We see it with our own country's politics, when the pundits and gleeful winners of local elections seem to imagine the results will indicate that of the next General Election.
If the comparison holds further, then what we see here are effectively only local elections obviously significant for the locals; but not necessarily nationally at the moment, still less so for their next national elections.
I don't know how they do it, but there is still time for both of the two American parties to select their Presidential hopefuls.
@MoveAlong It is sad. This problem goes all the way back to Reagan. Reagan was looking for ways to cut expenses and Democrats proposed giving crazy people psychotropic meds and shutting down the asylums. There's just enough of these poor people, a danger to themselves and others, to tip some elections.
@IronHamster Yeah Reaguns was a real piece of work. He cut expenses alright.........on the rich. He was the first Repube prez to cut taxes for the rich. Then when he saw the shortfall in the treasury..........which was not paying off the huge debt he was racking up.......so he was the first prez to tax Social Security to make up for what the rich didn't pay for taxes. The Iran-Contra Scandal.....condoning drugs being flown into the U.S. on Air Force planes.......to pay for arms and munitions to be sent to Iran...........that later became the roadside .bombs that killed our kids in Iraq. Our hero.
@anythingoes477 Reagan? You do not remember when gasoline was so scarce the Feds mandated odd-even days for fill-ups, and double digit inflation from bad government policies, much less growing up under the threat of nuclear annihilation from the evil empire. Reagan's policies rebuilt our economy and collapsed the Iron Curtain.
Reagan's economic policies were derided as "trickle down" but the fact of the matter is that innovation builds the economy. It worked. Unlike when Democrat politicians game the system at our expense, real businesses created jobs for hard working Americans. Compare that to Obama who literally told us we were going to HAVE TO get by with less.
Realistically, this kind of flip isn't unheard of a year or two into many presidencies, but the message from last night is fairly clear. Trump has been overplaying his hand. The shutdown only made it worse.
No U.S. president has ever been "booted out of office" through the impeachment and conviction process. The process for removing a president involves two stages: The House of Representatives must impeach (bring charges against) the president by a simple majority vote. The Senate must then hold a trial, and two-thirds of the senators present must vote to convict for the president to be removed from office. Three presidents have been impeached by the House: Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump (twice). All three were acquitted by the Senate, meaning they were not removed from office. Richard Nixon faced formal impeachment proceedings, and it was widely expected that he would be both impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. He resigned in 1974 before the full House could vote on the articles of impeachment, making him the only president to leave office due to the impeachment process, though he was not formally impeached or removed by Congress.
