who sent him, plus i suppose quasi republicans and independents. that s a good point. i think for all those reasons, that s why he s playing it close to the vest andimpeach i think sheryl makes some good points there. joyce, you live down there in alabama. you know the state. what are your thoughts? so i think jones, who, you know, full confession, i worked for doug when he was the u.s. attorney in birmingham. i was a line criminal prosecutor. and i suspect that he ll play this trial a lot like he played his approach to criminal justice. which is to look at the facts, to look at the law. to make a decision on that basis and not on anything extraneous. so i don t think he ll look at this as a political matter. it s a pretty good assumption that he s a democrat running in alabama. and that he needs to appeal to his base. to democrats and to moderates. people like to say that no democrat has won a senate race
in alabama in 25 years. but that s because there s never been someone seriously contesting one of these races. and jones will run as an incumbent. he will have some sort of all of alabama successes to bring to the table. most recently, the recision of the widow s tax for military spouses. also, some funding historically black colleges and universities. so he ll have a compelling package and i think he ll be less worried about how this vote impacts his re-election chances than about doing the right thing here. talk to me about those queazy republicans that that sheryl was just mentioning. the ones that didn t want to vote for roy moore. and obviously, i can understand why they wouldn t want to vote for roy moore. are those the same type of people who might forgive doug jones if he votes to convict the president? are they are they deeply in the president s pocket? or or can they can they like somebody they disagree with on that? you know, i don t know alabama politics.
what we see is every time people learn a little bit more information then the support for impeachment and eventually for removal actually increases. and i think we need that kind of pressure in order to compel the senate to come up with a fair trial and a fair process. and this kind of public support for impeachment and explanation of it to the public really will help to do that. one of the sort of macro trend in politics i think is reflected in the vote we re anticipating to happen tomorrow which will largely be almost entirely on party lines, sheryl, is a fact that understanding everyone that the country increasingly votes in an almost entirely parliamentary way, that the person on top of the ticket is tied to your distinguishing yourself on these individual votes gets harder and harder. and that s a kind of collective conclusion i think both sides have increasingly come to.
lines, sheryl, is an understanding that the country increasingly votes almost in this parliamentary way. there is much less ticket splitting. the fate of the person at the top of the ticket is tied to your. distinguishing yourself on these particular votes gets harder and harder. that s a collective conclusion that both sides have come to. yeah, i think that s right. this country has split. this country has been divided. it was divided when barack obama was president. although, frankly, many of us didn t realize just how divided it was. certainly the trump election divided the united states. and what we are seeing now on capitol hill is really a reflection of that, and, frankly, many lawmakers are worried that it s divided beyond repair. that this is a split that, you know, that we will not recover from, and, in fact, speaker pelosi herself said early on this year that she did not want to pursue impeachment because she felt that it would be too
divisive for the country. right. and, of course, as we know, she finally came around when the ukraine news broke and said we have no choice. and that, i think, donna is what underscored here in talking to a lot of democrats is a kind of earnestness about this. to sheryl s point, they re figuring out deals and people are trying to make sure that hospitals are going to stay open in their district. you re doing these back room deals, you re trying to deliver things. this is just in a different category for people. it does seem to me people are voting their conscience on this. well, they are, although i do think the sort of business as usual with the passing of the spending bills and all the legislation, which has been great, but in some ways you risk making this seem actually quite ordinary. yeah. that s why i think you have to keep the drumbeat up, but, look, the reality is that for so many of these democrats that are going to go back home to their home districts, actually,