One More Mueller Time Again

Robert Mueller's testimony to Congress takes place tomorrow, and it's as eagerly awaited as the release of his original report on Trump.  And it may very well turn out to be just as disappointing as the release of the report.

Democrats hope that Mueller, who will not disseminate any more information that he already has in this report, will at least reiterate the findings in his own voice and give some drama to findings that most people have shrugged off or haven't even read.  This, they hope, will give some impetus to popular support for impeaching Trump, though the Republican Senate will acquit him. Republicans hope that their questions for Mueller in his testimony will shoot some holes into his report's conclusions in an effort to protect Trump, even though he is still generally unpopular outside of his base.  In the end , both sides will claim victory and America will lose.

I'm crossing my fingers that the tectonic plates of American politics will shift ever so slightly as a result of Mueller's appearance before Congress and will result in Trump's early ouster from office - and by that, I mean an electoral defeat for Trump in 2020.  But I'm not optimistic.  This show is more likely to be the Washington equivalent of an eagerly awaited big-budget movie that disappoints and flops once it opens.       

A Dark Future

The economy is doing extremely well in the United States right now, which is why I think the future of this country looks ominous and foreboding.

Why?  Because, with economic growth exceeding expectations and unemployment down to levels we haven't seen since the Beatles released Abbey Road,  Trump looks like a favorite for re-election to the Presidency.  Even though he and his Attorney General, William Barr, are stonewalling and blocking efforts into looking at possible Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections and the likelihood that Trump may have committed some dastardly deeds not even related to Russia (notice how he's trying to block access to his financial records), none of that matters because, well, it's the economy, stupid.  And Americans are, in fact, a stupid bunch when they vote strictly on their own economic well-being and disregard neglect of problems like climate change, white nationalism, and the undermining of the rule of law.  

It doesn't look good for the Democrats.  They don't want to be seen as going on an Ahab-style pursuit of Trump when they should be demonstrating what they're trying to do for the people.  And they are.  However, an agreement with the White House on an infrastructure program or support for the Untied States (not a typo, I meant "Untied") rejoining the Paris Agreement won't get the ink or the airtime that their investigations of the White House and their demands for the full Mueller report are getting, leading them to defend a presidential investigation that people don't relate to while Republicans get to brag about higher incomes and more jobs.  But if they don't investigate Trump, they let him get away with all sorts of misdeeds.  The Democrats really are in a no-win situation.              

And the Democrats aren't doing themselves any favors.  So hell-bent are liberals on nominating a woman, a person of color or Bernie Sanders that they won't even accept the idea that any white dude not named Bernard by his mother is the best choice to go against Trump.  And I don't necessarily mean Joe Biden.  I saw Michael Bennet, the Democratic senior senator from Colorado who just announced his presidential candidacy, on Rachel Maddow's show, and I found him to be quite impressive.  (More on why later.)  He would be a first for the Democratic Party if he became its 2020 presidential nominee - a candidate from a Western state - but he's running for President in a party where racial and ethnic diversity matters more than geography; hence, California's Kamala Harris is the only Westerner with a real shot at the nomination.  I have a problem, guys, with this obsession with diversity because diversity is all about celebrating differences without setting any common standards for people who differ from each other.  And while I'm not on board with Biden, the petty attacks on his policies and his character coming from Sanders supporters (and, to some extent, Sanders himself) are almost enough to make me volunteer for the Biden campaign.

All of my previous declarations that the Democratic Party was on its way to Whig-like extinction have proven to be premature (a fancy word meaning "dead wrong").  but if the Democrats can't unseat Trump in 2020, they might as well disband before Trump assumes dictatorial powers and has opposition parties outlawed.   

Mueller Time Again

When Attorney General William Barr - whom everybody keeps calling "Bob Barr," confusing him with Bob Mueller and ironically naming a former Republican congressman from Georgia who supported the impeachment of Bill Clinton - released the Mueller report (with redactions) on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, we found out some interesting facts.  First Trump campaign officials made overtures to Russian nationals, some of whom were believed to be Americans because they contacted them through the Internet. (The Russians pretending to be Americans were sending out anti-Hillary propaganda and operating out of building in  St. Petersburg - St. Petersburg, Russia, not St., Petersburg, Florida.)  Robert Mueller's report offers a caveat that, while there were many contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians while the Kremlin was hacking computers, including that infamous June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump, Jr. and Russians operatives over possible "dirt" on the opposition, there was no agreement of collusion between the two parties.  There was no collusion . . . but only because there's no evidence that Paul Manafort and a Putin operative met at a hotel in Prague or Bratislava or wherever and hashed out a plan to sabotage Hillary Clinton.

"While the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign," Mueller wrote, "the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges. Among other things, the evidence was not sufficient to charge any Campaign official as an unregistered agent of the Russian government or other Russian principal. And our evidence about the June 9, 2016 meeting and WikiLeaks' release of hacked materials was not sufficient to charge a criminal campaign-finance violation."

Trump also tried to have Mueller fired or at least reined in, and he even asked then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to withdraw his recusal.  Sessions may be a bigot, but he's not dishonorable; he refused to listen to Trump.  ("Death before dishonor," as they say down in Sessions' native South.)  Many more White House officials stopped Trump from committing any act that could be perceived as a crime; in instances when they failed to do so, Trump himself didn't commit a criminal act only because he didn't know what the hell he was doing.  Because justice was not obstructed - mainly because Trump himself never actually tried to stop Mueller, preferring that someone stop Mueller for him - Mueller decided there wasn't enough evidence to accuse Trump of obstructing justice, but because of all the obvious examples of how Trump wished to impeded the investigation, that was why he could not exonerate Trump either.

Barr has since declared that Trump has been cleared, twisting the facts to suit Trump's argument while leaving out all of the evidence and the charges pointing in a different direction.  Trump, in fact, figured that the jig was up when Trump, upon hearing the Mueller would investigate Russian interference in the election, said, "Oh, my God.  This is terrible.  This is the end of my Presidency.  I'm f--ked."

This is all bad news . . . for the Democrats.

What???  The intent of the Mueller report is to avoid the issue of accusing Trump of any wrongdoing; rather, it is meant to provide Congress a guide for how to proceed.  He wrote that there should be a process where the evidence is weighed, the charges are made through Congress rather than through an indictment (you apparently can't indict a sitting President), and the accused defends himself.  But with enough cherry-picked conclusions to allow Trump, his supporters, and the whole goddamned Republican Party (one honorable exception: Mitt Romney) to claim exoneration at a time when most Americans don't have the stomach for a Watergate-type investigation, the Democrats have two choices, and either way they could give Trump an advantage in the 2020 elections.  If they investigate Trump in the House and possibly vote on impeachment, it will anger the Republican base and turn off swing voters more interested in health care and living-wage jobs than shenanigans in the White House.  If they don't investigate, they let Trump get away with everything he's done up to now . . . and will do later.

I've been told that the Democrats can focus on the issues for 2020 and still investigate Trump - "walk and chew gum at the same time" - but this is a party that famously blows it when faced with dealing with Republican scandals.  The Iran-contra affair should have been a boon for Democrats in the 1988 presidential election, but it was their third straight loss despite Vice President Bush, who won the Presidency over Michael Dukakis, having had more to do with that scandal than he was willing to admit.  How far back do you want to go?  The Teapot Dome oil scandal that occurred under President Harding and was uncovered after Harding's death in office in 1923 put Republicans in an embarrassing position going into 1924, but they kept the Presidency after the Democrats took 103 ballots at their convention to nominate one John W. Davis, an esteemed diplomat, to oppose President Coolidge, who won a full term.  (To be fair, Coolidge had nothing to do with the Teapot Dome.)  And those scandals were nothing compared to the Trump White House, a scandal in and of itself; the Teapot Dome scandal involved illegal profiteering on government oilfields and Iran-contra was an earnest attempt by President Reagan at détente with the Ayatollah Khomeini gone awry when renegades in his own National Security Council hijacked it to benefit right-wing mercenaries in Central America.

What we have going on now is even more serious than Watergate.  If the Democrats can't figure out how to capitalize on this level of corruption while still promoting a positive agenda for 2020, then they're finished as a party.

Less mentioned but just as important is the finding that the Russians tried (successfully, alas) to sow division, influence voters, and promote chaos and discord in the 2016 presidential election, interfering in what Mueller called a "sweeping and systematic fashion."  Even if Trump had lost, as was expected, Russia would have still divided people enough to make a Hillary Clinton Presidency a nightmare for Hillary herself.  Maybe the Russians weren't involved with WikiLeaks as much or as closely as suspected, and maybe the Democratic National Committee should have gotten a better firewall for their servers,  but even the most die-hard Julian Assange fan or the most ardent Jill Stein voter (again, I voted for Dr. Stein out of a personal dislike for Hillary that goes back long before Russian interference in our elections was an issue) has to admit that Vladimir Putin was up to something.  After all the evidence of Russian malfeasance not involving collusion or obstruction of justice, there's no other conclusion anyone can come to.  

As I believe I said once before on this blog, the twenty-teens have been a disastrous decade for the nation.  It began with Citizens United and is ending with citizens divided, with all sorts of social, political and cultural failures in between.  And no one has been able to get away with so much and profit over the polarization of Americans than Donald J. Trump.  How his Presidency unfolds and what ultimately happens with it could tear this country up eve n more.  Or it could be a catharsis preceding a rebirth and renewal of America.  On this Holy Saturday, I'm not optimistic of the latter possible outcome coming to pass.