Plus, they know that their guy is dirty and can't defend him on the substance, so they're spending vast amounts of time attacking the credibility of the witnesses against him, the process, and everything else, totally unrelated to the actual charges. It's character assassination, plain and simple.

1. Create a problem that either didn't exist or if it did, exacerbate it with poorly thought out "solutions" or ideas and recklessly implement them with little or no consultation with people whom might know better.
2. When things start to go bad, ignore it or minimize it, attack the critics, basically do anything other than addressing the problem and/or acknowledging responsibility for it.
3. "Solve" the problem or find some way to address it that makes things not so bad
4. Declare victory and pretend that he deserves high praise for fixing his f**kups
5. ???????
6. Profit

This feels different somehow. And I think that we can get Impeachment through the House easier than how things were looking before. Everything else, however, will hinge on how the GOP-controlled Senate reacts. If they mostly hold fast and support Trump, there will be no conviction in the Senate, nor Republican calls for Trump's resignation. If Republicans start to turn on Trump in large enough numbers in the Senate, there will likely be attempts to get him to resign first or, if all else fails, we may get the very first conviction of a sitting US President in the history of the country. However, I am less certain that Republicans will abandon Trump. There's no way out of this for Trump without taking on some severe damage though IMHO.

I honestly think that we need to ditch the private insurance companies, but, realistically, that's not going to happen, at least not right away. I think that we need to open up Medicare/Medicaid for everybody and let people choose what they want. Given a fair chance to prove itself, I think that, over time, people will start to move away from private insurance and sign up for Medicare/Medicaid and private insurance companies will either go away or be absorbed, creating a national health care M4A system. I don't think that, absent a sea change of opinion, people will consent to the complete removal of the private insurance system in one fell swoop.

that the (unconfirmed) whistleblower report has something to do with the Ukraine scandal? The timing seems to fit.........

Democrats are trying to act like responsible parents and Republicans are acting like bratty children. But the media (and all the other pundits) just want to sit on the sidelines and tut-tut the Democrats for not being able to easily or effectively control the Republicans' misbehavior. Some of our pundits do basically the same thing- but argue instead that Democrats should act like bratty kids too in order to get something done.

Seems like no matter what Democrats are talking about, it seems like there are always a group of people who are flipping out that we shouldn't talk about x, y, z or "we'll just be walking into the Republicans' trap and will probably lose bad in 2020!" Some people are trying to advise candidates against talking about guns at all. Others want candidates to stop talking about Impeachment of Trump (or Kavanaugh). Some think that Democrats are talking too much about Trump and not about "policies". Others think we are not hitting Trump hard enough. Some are freaking out and thinking that if we nominate Biden, it's game over in 2020 because the progressives won't turn out for him. Others argue that if we nominate Bernie or Liz, we'll lose white, blue collar "Middle America" voters. It's just getting really frustrating and anxiety-provoking. I'm just as much up in the air about how things will go for us in 2020 and afraid enough that something will happen that will mess things up but we have to maintain some kind of perspective. I obviously don't have all of the answers and can't be more reassuring about things turning out ok in the end, but I think that the "hair on fire" approach is likely not going to help us either and is probably only going to make us all more anxious and more fearful than we all already are living under the Trump Presidency. I really miss it when, every time we got worried about McCain/Palin winning in 2008, we used to put up a pic of Obama telling us to "Chill the f**k out, I got this!"

They're against promoting birth control......but
They're against abortion........but
They're against public assistance, including expanded help for childcare.....but
They think women should stay at home and raise their young children and shouldn't leave them in daycare

All this with the end result that young, unmarried women can't work to support themselves and their children and any women with young children who DO work are sinful/neglectful of their children.

And, of course, Republicans/Right-Wingers don't want to raise the minimum wage/provide a living wage to anybody.

It's all weaves together to basically trap people whom aren't inherently wealthy/well-off.

then he still gets to claim that he was vindicated. If our Democratic nominee goes after Trump on virtually anything related to the Mueller report or any one of a number of instances of wrongdoing, criminal or otherwise, Trump could easily just rebut it with: "If what I did was so bad, why didn't the House impeach me?" Then, how does the Democratic nominee respond? If he/she has to explain all of the nuance and calculations that went into that decision, then the argument will likely fall on deaf ears. We are going to need to have a good way to argue that Trump has abused his powers as POTUS that doesn't also make us look like we've abdicated our role of holding him accountable. A lack of a conviction by a Republican Trump-loyalist enabling Senate doesn't really look that good for Trump by comparison IMHO- and makes the Republicans in the Senate look corrupt.

but I literally can't figure it out. Even if you (somehow) think that the Mueller report is more or less a "nothing burger"- just because Mueller didn't find prosecution-worthy evidence of collusion with the Russians (GOVERNMENT)- there's very few people out there I know whom don't think that Trump is walking dumpster fire who has been an unequivocal failure as POTUS and almost everybody I know is just freakin' exhausted by him and want him gone. I wonder what the reasoning behind the lack of appetite out there for impeaching Trump? Nobody is- or should be- under the illusion that he will actually wind up being removed from office (though we won't know for sure until there is an actual inquiry), but that smacks me as a cowardly reason for the House not trying to do *something*. And if we don't do something, the next "Trump" knows that they can basically do all the same things (and probably worse) and escape consequences as long as they have loyal "foot soldiers" in Congress and in other posts to help protect them.