Trump exonerated with full acquittal in the Senate, but will Democrats ever accept election outcome and move this country forward?
http://dailytorch.com/2020/02/trump-exonerated-with-full-acquittal-in-the-senate-but-will-democrats-ever-accept-election-outcome-and-move-this-country-forward/

President Donald Trump is riding high after a triumphant State of the Union Address and full acquittal by the U.S. Senate in his impeachment trial, and with a great, booming economy, it is looking increasingly unlikely whoever the Democratic nominee is will be able to defeat President Trump in November. Trump’s opponents can blame themselves as in many ways, Trump’s durability is a phenomenon of his opponents’ own making. The President has had to endure unending, sequential attempts either to prevent him from taking office or to promptly remove him once he did — only to emerge stronger each time. President Trump has prevailed against everything his opponents have thrown at him: Russiagate, Mueller, impeachment and so forth. Combine the President’s stamina with the lowest peacetime unemployment in modern history, sustained economic growth, new trade deals with Canada, Mexico, China, Japan and South Korea, and new tax cuts and deregulation, which the President highlighted in his State of the Union Address, and you have a solid recipe for reelection in 2020. This is a President who never gives up and will never surrender. He keeps winning, so why would 2020 be any different? The real question is: Will Democrats ever accept as legitimate the verdict of the American people if and when Trump wins again?

Dems feel the Bern as Sanders wins popular vote in Iowa, leads in New Hampshire as Democratic nomination could go socialist:
http://dailytorch.com/2020/02/dems-feel-the-bern-as-sanders-wins-popular-vote-in-iowa-leads-in-new-hampshire-as-democratic-nomination-could-go-socialist/

Believe it or not, Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) may be the frontrunner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination after ending essentially in a tie with Pete Buttigieg in Iowa and leading polls in New Hampshire, making it more likely that the self-avowed socialist will be the nominee to take on President Donald Trump in November. Former Vice President Joe Biden was a distant fourth place behind Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and should he lose in New Hampshire next week, the odds will be stacked against him. That’s because more likely than not, in the modern primary system for selecting party nominees, the candidate who wins either Iowa or New Hampshire is usually the candidate. In more than three-quarters of the years where no incumbent Democrat was running for president — 1976, 1984, 1988, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2016 — the nominee had won either Iowa or New Hampshire. There are two notable exceptions. Bill Clinton managed to secure the nomination in 1992 without winning either Iowa or New Hampshire, and so did George McGovern back in 1972. Still, the advantage shifts to Sanders in this early going, making socialized single-payer medicine, universal basic income and the Green New Deal key issues on the front burner this election year on the Democratic side. Are Democrats about to nominate a socialist?

Without any crimes cited, the impeachment of President Trump is doomed to failure in the Senate:
http://dailytorch.com/2020/01/without-any-crimes-cited-the-impeachment-of-president-trump-is-doomed-to-failure-in-the-senate/

The two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — are not criminal violations under either federal or state criminal codes, nor are they bribery or treason. Yet, Article II, Section 4 of the Federal Constitution says that the President can only be removed for a crime: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” In fact, the Framers anticipated that a President, upon removal, would then be subject to prosecution for the crimes that he was removed from office for, under Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution, “the convicted party shall… be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment, according to the law.” Having failed that most basic obligation to charge the President with a crime in order to have him removed, House Democrats should not be surprised that they face an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled Senate, which is already skeptical of the charges that allege President Trump abused his power when he temporarily paused military assistance to Ukraine while he considered requesting a rescission of the funding from Congress, namely because the President has the power to consider and request such a rescission, and that otherwise, under Article, the President is in charge of foreign policy. What do you think?

If Bolton says Trump ‘wanted’ to freeze $391 million of military aid to Ukraine until investigations were announced, why was it never communicated to Ukraine?
http://dailytorch.com/2020/01/if-bolton-says-trump-wanted-to-freeze-391-million-of-military-aid-to-ukraine-until-investigations-were-announced-why-was-it-never-communicated-to-ukraine/

The New York Times has previewed potential testimony by former National Security Advisor John Bolton at the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, where the President allegedly told Bolton in August “he preferred sending no assistance to Ukraine until officials had turned over all materials they had about the Russia investigation that related to Mr. Biden and supporters of Mrs. Clinton in Ukraine.” And yet, neither the White House nor the State Department never conveyed any such conditions to Ukraine, despite the aid being frozen in July, until after Politico broke the story of the aid being frozen on Aug. 28. Even then, the only official who conveyed such conditions, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, said in House testimony he was simply presuming the aid was being conditioned: “No one told me directly that the aid was tied to anything. I was presuming it was.” According to both former ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor and former Senior Director for European Affairs at the White House and the National Security Council Tim Morrison’s testimony, Ukrainian officials were unaware of any pause in the funding until the Politico story was published a month after President Trump spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25. Zelensky later said in September there was “no pressure.” But even if there had been, these are all things Presidents have the power to do under Article II and this boils down to a policy disagreement between Bolton and Trump, not a high crime or misdemeanor, and certainly not bribery or treason. If this is all the House has, the President’s acquittal is all but certain. What do you think?

NAFTA no more as President Trump wins USMCA passage in Senate, keeps signature campaign promise to put America first on trade:
http://dailytorch.com/2020/01/nafta-no-more-as-president-trump-wins-usmca-passage-in-senate-keeps-signature-campaign-promise-to-put-america-first-on-trade/

A little more than a year after President Donald Trump promised to withdraw from NAFTA if Congress did not adopt the USMCA — on Dec. 1, 2018, he said, “I’ll be terminating it within a relatively short period of time. We get rid of NAFTA. It’s been a disaster for the United States… And so Congress will have a choice of the USMCA or pre-NAFTA, which worked very well…” — on Jan. 16, the Senate has overwhelmingly adopted the USMCA 89 to 10. Senate passage came after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) finally relented and allowed the trade deal to come up on the House floor, followed shortly thereafter by House passage 385 to 41 on Dec. 19, 2019. None of this is surprising. President Trump won in 2016 in the Rust Belt particularly on the political strength of his trade agenda, uniting conservative and union households and savaging Hillary Clinton as a pro-NAFTA pretender. Now, Trump’s success in reshaping American politics around trade has now been confirmed by the massive bipartisan support for the USMCA. Both Democratic Michigan Senators Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters voted for it. That tells you everything you need to know right there. The blue-collar Democrats who supported President Donald Trump in 2016 and put him over the top ended up supporting the Trump trade agenda, making passage of the USMCA a political certainty even as Democrats in Congress were itching to impeach Trump and get the Senate trial underway. This tells you there was greater political risk in going against Trump on his signature issue than anything else. What do you think?