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Comment by JadeNB | Hacker News Reader

> For sure, but did you see Democrats do anything different with Trump's agenda? They fought him just as hard or harder than Republicans fought Obama. Nobody gets a pass in my opinion.

I believe that the difference is that some in the Republican party—McConnell, for example—explicitly advanced the position "whatever Obama does, we will oppose." Whereas I am aware of no mainstream Democratic politician who stated a blanket opposition to anything Trump might do; it just happened that they very often disagreed with him on the things he did do.

I think bad-faith accusations come from opposing a person's positions ad hominem, because of who holds them, rather than from simply disagreeing, even consistently, passionately, and vociferously, with many or all of the positions that a person happens to hold.

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>Whereas I am aware of no mainstream Democratic politician who stated a blanket opposition to anything Trump might do

They literally tried to impeach him before he took office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efforts_to_impeach_Donald_Trum...

This is the sort of thing where argument is probably fruitless, but they didn't try to impeach him for being Donald Trump, which is what I mean by an ad hominem attack. Rather, they (for some values of ’they’; this position was signally not taken by, to reach for the Democrat in what seems to be an analogous position to McConnell, Pelosi) talked about impeaching him, but in fact did not impeach him before he held office, for something he'd done—or, rather not done, namely, for his failure to resolve certain conflicts of interest that, according to a reasonable legal theory, made him ineligible to hold office.

Notice that the Wikipedia article you cite itself cites two sources for the claim of talk of impeachment before election, and, as far as I can tell, neither of these quotes any Democrat by name as calling for impeachment before he held office. This is, again, a far cry from McConnell, who very much went on record from his leadership position as opposing anything Obama might do; and, for that matter, from the Republicans who, on the record, called for Biden's impeachment before he held office.

April 2016 - "Impeachment is already on the lips of pundits, newspaper editorials, constitutional scholars, and even a few members of Congress"

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/donald-trump...

As far as I can tell, that is speculative fiction, written before Trump's inauguration, but about what might happen only after Trump took office. Its only direct quotes seem to be from an attorney and a lecturer, not politicians, and from the Republican head of the Chamber of Commerce and Rush Limbaugh, neither of whom can be thought to have an inside source on Democratic intentions. There is a mention that Grayson said actions, taken while Trump was in office, and following Trump's stated intentions, could lead to impeachment, which is quite different from calling for impeachment pre-inauguration (besides which, even this prediction/warning—not call to arms—is something Grayson is only said to have said, rather than a direct quote).

(I find on re-reading that my parent post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30095537 said "neither of these quotes any Democrat by name as calling for impeachment before he held office." I meant, though I see now that I did not say, any mainstream Democratic politician. I apologise if this seems to be moving the goalposts; I can say only that I misspoke, rather than trying intentionally to change the debate mid-stream. I will certainly grant that there were everyday Democratic voters who would have been happy to see Trump impeached before office, and who maybe even explicitly called for it, but I think such on-the-street voices cannot reasonably be compared in prominence or impact to McConnell's actions.)

>but I think such on-the-street voices cannot reasonably be compared in prominence or impact to McConnell's actions

Did you miss the entire Russian Collusion Conspiracy Theory that they promulgated during his entire time in office? I happen to think Trump was an ineffective President who repeatedly shot himself in the foot, but it's delusional to act like the Democrats didn't fight him from day one on literally everything.

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