Gave Democrats a Gift

Mueller Just Gave Democrats a Gift. Will They Take It?

Scandal and impeachment were always political losers. Now the 2020 election can be about which party will improve the lives of more Americans.

By BILL SCHER

The Democrats are showing no signs that they’re going to give up on Robert Mueller and the Russia investigation. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are demanding the public release of the full Mueller report and raising questions about whether there is evidence President Donald Trump committed obstruction of justice. House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler announced he would be calling the Attorney General William Barr to testify. Democratic and progressive legal analysts are picking apart Barr’s letter to suggest a cover-up. Others are shifting their hopes to the remaining outstanding investigations into the Trump campaign, Trump Organization and Trump inaugural committee.

In the interest of historical posterity and legal accountability, these may be legitimate threads to pull. But as a political matter, Democrats, you’re doing it wrong again. It’s time to move on. Robert Mueller has done you an enormous favor.

Trump is not going to be impeached. Trump is not going be hounded out of office early. Trump is not going to be branded a criminal in the court of the public opinion. The hope of short-circuiting the Trump presidency through legal channels is no more.

For the special counsel to have avoided any collusion-related charges is a clear victory for Trump. The coming victory laps are sure to be insufferable for Democrats to watch, but Democrats need to get over it.

By not alleging any illegal collusion, Mueller has liberated Democrats from chasing the impeachment unicorn, which was always a political loser and a substantive dead end. If the Democratic House ever impeached, the Republican Senate was never going to convict, and may not have even held a trial. Impeachment had appeal only to the Democratic base, while doing little for the voters in swing areas who just delivered Democrats the House majority and hold the key to retaking the White House.

Again and again, during the decades since Watergate, opposition parties have tried and failed to exploit scandals for electoral gain. In the wake of various allegations of ethical misconduct in the Ronald Reagan administration, Walter Mondale campaigned in 1984 against the “sleaze factor,” yet Reagan won in a landslide. After the Iran-Contra scandal exploded, Michael Dukakis said, “a fish rots from the head first,” but that didn’t thwart George H. W. Bush’s ascension to the presidency. In 1998, House Republicans moved toward the impeachment of President Bill Clinton shortly before the midterm elections; the resulting backlash helped Democrats gain House seats and contributed to the ouster of Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich. During the first term of Barack Obama’s presidency, Republicans sounded the alarm over “Solyndra” and “Fast and Furious,” only to see Obama win re-election.

In all of those cases, regardless of the severity and accuracy of the charges, voters proved less interested in presidential scandals than presidential job performance, especially on the economy. Conversely, when the opposing party parades its investigative zeal, it can look more interested in scoring political points than governing.

Opposition parties often gravitate toward a focus on scandal because the incumbent president’s popularity leaves them with few other options to flip the political script. With Donald Trump, this is not the case.

His job approval has been underwater from the beginning of his presidency, and has remained so despite the growing economy. Democrats successfully ran against Trump’s health care and tax policies in 2018. Trump’s fondness for dictators, and white nationalists’ fondness for Trump, continues to disturb. Trump’s trade war is unnerving farm states. Democrats have plenty to say about Trump’s white whale of a border wall and his horrific policy of refugee child separation, and they are eager to challenge Trump on climate change. This is a target-rich issues environment for Democrats. They don’t need an indictment or an impeachment to make their case against Trump.

Granted, because there are unanswered questions, House Democrats can’t move on abruptly without disappointing the party base. To fail to demand the full Mueller report and press Barr on his letter would open the Democratic leadership to charges of delinquent oversight. Nevertheless, this is the main question Democrats should be routinely asking between now and Election Day: How is Trump governing?

As soon as possible, House Democrats should take the conclusion of the Mueller investigation as an opportunity to focus its oversight duties on the present. So long as the economy is growing, Trump will be trying to take credit. A good economy is often all an incumbent president needs for re-election. However, Trump isn’t your typical incumbent. He wasn’t able to reap the benefits of economic growth in 2018, because Democrats successfully zeroed in on Trump policies, especially on taxes and health care, that ran counter to the desires of most working families.

Today, Trump barely has a legislative agenda. In turn, Democrats have the opportunity to further the narrative that Trump is a threat to sustainable economic growth, middle-class prosperity and global stability. It won’t matter if Mueller had evidence of obstruction of justice. It won’t matter if the Southern District of New York finds campaign finance violations. It won’t matter if Trump’s inauguration committee took illegal payments or if the Trump Organization lied about its assets to Deutsche Bank.

Many voters won’t care that Trump is a grifter if they believe Trump has made their own lives better. The Democratic challenge is to show that he hasn’t. Thanks to Mueller, Democrats are a better position to do just that. Time to let it go.