Saturday, November 9, 2019

Democrats are more anti-Democratic than Republicans - Discuss

Just saw this claim:



The claim is that every Republican president since Eisenhower has been threatened with impeachment by Democrats. Apparently it is nearly true; five out of the six Republican presidents since Eisenhower have been threatened with impeachment by Democrats. Presumably, with an administration of two years and four months, they simply didn't have time to get to Ford. And if you modify the claim ever so slightly, it becomes 100% true. Every elected Republican president since Eisenhower has been threatened with impeachment (as measured by the introduction of articles of impeachment).

Ford being an historical curiosity. He was not elected as Vice President when he replaced then VP Spiro Agnew, and he was not elected as President when he moved up to that position upon Richard Nixon's resignation.

Perkins is poking fun at the fact-checkers who rate the claim as mostly false when it is either false (the claim is false that every Republican president has been threatened with impeachment) or it is mostly true (5 out of six, i.e. 83%). It cannot logically be mostly false.

But what about the possible unstated counterclaim? Are Republicans especially virtuous in not using the threat of impeachment at the drop of hat? Perhaps every administration of either party is routinely threatened with impeachment?

How many Democratic presidents since Eisenhower have been threatened with impeachment? There have been five Democratic presidents in that period. Two of them have been threatened with impeachment by Republicans.

In other words, Republicans threaten Democrat presidents with impeachment 40% of the time and Democrats threaten Republican presidents with impeachment 83% of the time (or 100% of the time for elected Republican presidents). Maths dictates that Democrats are more than twice as prone to using impeachment to overturn an election as Republicans. Logic suggests that Democrats are more anti-Democratic than Republicans.

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