The very worst thing about this is that as far as I can tell the demand for more than WS/LCS has always been small - and the current round(s) of postseason expansion are only viable because of TV market oddities involving the network sports channels and, soon, streamers.
Just saying...if it was just that people really wanted 3 or 4 or 5 tiers of playoffs, and I didn't? I couldn't blame MLB for exploiting that. Tough luck for me, but such is life. But that's not what's going on!
If Fox wants another round so they can use it to leverage FS2 onto a few more systems? That's money MLB should leave on the table because it's risking the long-term product for a quick payday.
Anyway I do think @joe_sheehan is correct (if I'm summing him up properly) that the core problem is that baseball management doesn't understand, and doesn't particularly like, their own sport and its particular strengths.
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I think this is a rare situation in which impeachment even knowing removal is unlikely/impossible would still be appropriate.
I've argued in the past that partisan impeachments have a number of drawbacks. But in this situation, most of those drawbacks would be null or limited.
e.g. impeachment has public opinion problems because instead of priming on an improper act, it focuses on removing the president - and normally that tends to push people who voted for the president to rally to him. But with no election coming, that's not so important. Meanwhile
If Republican politicians are following incentives to be on party-aligned TV and other party-aligned media; to raise money from party donors; and to win primaries - that's a story about a *strong* party, with politicians in service, we might say, to Hannity and donors.
It is also, alas, a highly dysfunctional party because it doesn't place winning elections and governing as top priorities. But that doesn't mean it's weak.
Read the whole thread, but this is the key: Trump doesn't know how to get exec branch personnel to do what he wants. He's bad at what Neustadt called "persuasion." And it builds on itself - he's easily rolled, which creates the reputation that he's easily rolled. More...
Truman was wrong about Ike; Ike knew better than to just say "Do this! Do that!" and expect anything to happen, because he knew very well how political and bureaucratic authority worked. Trump is the one who really thinks that it works by saying "Do this! Do that!" It doesn't.
So for one thing: Like Nixon when he failed at persuasion, Trump tries to get around it by, in effect, cheating against the system (and therefore against the law and the constitution). Which is very dangerous to the system, and also dangerous to Trump.
I do think it's correct that moving ahead with impeachment would make impeachment more popular with people who don't like Trump but currently oppose impeachment.
But there's no reason to believe impeachment per se will make Trump less popular. Didn't work in 1998-1999. Didn't work in 1974.
This is a serious question about future presidents and deserves some thought. @YAppelbaum@fordm
Assume we're talking about a party-line vote (plus Amash) in the House, followed by a straight party vote or worse in the Senate. That's what it looks like now. (1/ )
@YAppelbaum@fordm Could hearings and investigation change that? Perhaps! But irrelevant, since those should happen with or without an impeachment context.* I think it's unlikely that the actual drafting and debate over articles of impeachment would change minds.
@YAppelbaum@fordm *Yes, there are arguments that impeachment hearings would be different. That wasn't the case in 1973-1974; I'm not convinced that it would be different now.
So let's stipulate a party-line impeachment and acquittal, which is I think what the advocates are in fact stipulating.
Quick electoral college thread: Went back to the oldest Polsby & Wildavsky Presidential Elections I own - 4th ed., 1976 to see their case for the EC. It's *badly* dated.
They argue mainly that the EC has tended to empower big cities and the diverse populations in large states. That's good, for them, because...
...it balanced off how the Senate (and pre-Baker v. Carr, the House) were biased in favor of one-party states, which tended to be either all-Anglo or ruled by all-Anglo parties.