Robert Mueller - What Did I Tell You?

There is a metric unit of length measurement called the micrometer, and it is so small it takes a thousand of them to comprise a millimeter.  And if I had the ability to measure anything in micrometers, I still wouldn't be able to measure any appreciable movement of the needle toward impeaching Trump after former special counsel Robert Mueller's testimony before Congress last week.

Mueller testified before two separate House committees last week and Democratic efforts to turn the dry words of his report on Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 election into electrifying prose for the cameras.  Instead he mostly gave monosyllabic answers to what were mostly "yes or no" questions.  When he did elaborate on an answer, or when the answer he gave was not to a "yes or no" question, he sounded like a non-English speaker ignorant of Tudor history reciting Shakespeare sonnets off a page.  Mueller had said that he was not going to go beyond the parameters of his report.  He was not going to provide any new or eye-opening information.  What, may I ask, did the Democrats expect?     

And so the Democrats remain divided on what to do about Trump even as the Republicans are united and confident going forward.  Also, barring a major disaster other than himself, Donald Trump will be the 2020 Republican presidential nominee.  The Democrats, saddled with a choice of two dozen candidates for their party's presidential nomination, have a way to go before even a quarter of them get eliminated - and the ones who will be eliminated first are the perpetual one-percenters in the polls that never had a chance anyway.

Meanwhile, the Democrats were able to salvage something out of the Mueller debacle by getting more attention focused on Russian resole to interfere in the 2020 election.  The Senate Intelligence Committee has just issued a report warning of the danger of Russian interference in all fifty states.  Except that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell won't allow a vote on any election security bills passed by the House, and other Republicans dismiss the idea of a threat to or electoral system.  You know what that means.  It means we're licked.

As those two wise men Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson once wrote, we can't go on pretending day-by-day that someone, somewhere, will soon make a change. We can now stop pretending that Robert Mueller was that person.