So now Trump, who could have been attacked for two years politically on substance for betraying most of the promises that got him elected--more aggressive war, more tax cuts for the wealthy, threatening Medicare and Social Security--has instead been handed, by the Democrats, the strongest arrow he now has in his political quiver. As Matt Taibbi says: "Trump couldn't have asked for a juicier campaign issue, and an easier way to argue that 'elites' don't respect the democratic choices of flyover voters. It's hard to imagine what could look worse."
You might think the Democratic Party would be horrified at this result, which one conservative analyst calls : "one of the greatest self-defeating acts in history."You might think Democrats would now move quickly and decisively toward a strategy of offering a substantive political alternative, and abandon this awful own-goal Mueller/Russiagate tack that has already helped Trump immensely (and which they are not going to turn their way). That is obviously what would happen if the Democrats' main goal was to defeat Trump. But it isn't.
As discussed above, the Democratic establishment's' main goal throughout this was not to "get" Trump, but to channel its own voters' disgust with him into support for some halcyon, liberal, status quo ante-Trump, and away from left demands for a radical change to the social, economic, and political conditions that produced him and his clueless establishment opponent in 2016. The Democrats' goal was, and is, not to defeat Trump, but to stave off the left.
What they are doing with the Mueller Investigation/Russiagate is what they did in the primaries in 2016: Then, they deliberately promoted Trump as an opponent, while working assiduously to cheat their own leftist candidate; now, they gin up a fictional spy story whose inevitable collapse helps Trump, but on which they will double down, in order to continue branding "divisive" leftists who challenge any return to their version of status-quo normalcy as the Kremlin's "useful idiots."
The Democrats' main goal in all this is not to impeach, or stop the re-election of, Donald Trump; it's to prevent the nomination and election of Bernie Sanders, or anyone like him.
Russiagate Forever
Here's Tim Ryan's presidential campaign kickoff speech in Youngstown, Ohio, a poster city of late American capitalist deindustrialization, explaining to the voters what is causing the destruction of their lives and towns. After complaining that "We have politicians and leaders today that want to divide us. They want to put us in one box or the other. You know, you can't be for business and for labor," he elaborates:
Yup, it's
those Russians, you see, sowing
division through certain "politicians and leaders," who are preventing
us from
fixing our healthcare, education, economic and government systems.
This--doubling
down on Russiagate--is the centrist Democrats' idea of a winning
political
appeal. I consider it utterly delusional.
I heard last week from a friend in Western Pennsylvania, not too far from Youngstown. She's a good person who is trying to organize Democrats in the area to beat Trump in 2020, and, pleading for advice, she expressed her exasperation: "They're leaving the party!"
You mean the five million people who voted for Obama in 2012, in the 90% of counties that voted for Obama either in 2008 or 2012, but would not vote for Hillary in 2016, aren't streaming back into--are indeed still streaming out of--the Democratic Party, despite all the Mueller investigation has done for them? Imagine that.
What has Russiagate/The Mueller Investigation wrought? It's either a shrewd political gambit sure to take down Trump, or it's ridiculous political theater leading Democrats, and the country, over another cliff. Double-down or leave that table?
Place
your bets.
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