re: #2 makeitstop

I like this take.

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McConnell created a content vacuum, and Schiff has taken full advantage of it.

mcconnell et al outfoxed themselves in a more fundamental way

this will go down as the biggest Pyrrhic victory since the actual Pyrrhic War

this is about a month old and it’s spot on:

Melber suggested Trump and McConnell may actually end up tainting their public claim to an acquittal of the president by rigging the process in Trump’s favor. Tribe agreed.

The reason it may backfire is that an exoneration, if that’s what emerges by a Senate that is essentially rigged and fixed so that it’s coordinated in this way with the defense, really doesn’t clear the name of the accused so that the president will go down in history as having been essentially found guilty by the House in a proceeding where he had a chance to defend himself but didn’t take advantage of it, and then in a kind of rubber-stamp sort of toss-off, not really given a meaningful trial so that he will have been adjudicated fundamentally by the House of Representatives to have abused his office, abused his oath, and endangered the national security and then blockaded in the inquiry as though he were a dictator.