I’m the political junkie in the house. But my wife has been startlingly prescient about which way things are gonna break these days. It’s amazing; how does she do it? She has a core principle, a north star.
Nothing is going to go right, ever.
And from Hillary Clinton’s inexplicable 2016 loss to the ignominious fizzle-out of the Mueller investigation, that guiding light has made her the new political guru at this address.
I often share her cynicism, but I do try feebly to counter that there’s still some light left here and there. To naught, most of the time. I know she’s right, because the system has for the most part failed and people are too stupid in general to blame the right people for their discomfort.
Now, Robert Mueller’s report, or its four page summary to be more accurate, came out a few days ago. The full report was hundreds of pages, yet AG Bill Barr took one hell of a speed reading course and dropped its main points into the political bloodstream after only 48 hours. What did the summation say?
I’m afraid to say that part of the answer is “no collusion”.
Yes, yes, there was Russian fuckery all over the place in the 2016 election but it seems that most of Trump and his inner circle were just smart enough to stay away from purveyors of damaging information that would help Trump’s campaign. What made everything so perplexing is why the ones indicted lied so much about it. We just assumed there was some sort of omerta to protect the Don. Turns out they just couldn’t keep a story straight.
This realization has caused more than a bit of distress and stunned silence amongst some of the more pollyannaish of my lefty brethren. It looked so certain that the gods were smiling upon those of us revolted by the obvious corruption surrounding the Trump presidency, that love would KO hate; and since he’s such a imbecilic slimeball there seemed to be zero possibility that there was no fire after choking on smoke for two years. It’s Trump, after all- and stupid is as stupid does, right?
Now I know no one has seen the particulars of the report and that may take some time. But I don’t think AG Barr is lying or mischaracterizing Mueller’s conclusion on the collusion/coordination count. We will find out soon for sure, as a document with so much import cannot be hidden for long.
The other conclusion Mueller came to was that he did not find any purported obstruction on the part of the president and several of his lizard people enablers. Again, it looked to the casual observer that Trump was putting a spin on anything he could regarding the investigation. So many untruths, so much dissembling and character assassination, how could he not get himself pinched for obstruction even if he hadn’t done anything wrong? The people that did obstruct and commit other related crimes are going to jail, but at this point it appears that Trump kept a firewall between him and the people who did the more egregious lying, and was just savvy enough to not allow himself to be deposed.
There’s a ray of hope in the way Mueller puts it: “…while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” It is now up to AG Barr to look at what Mueller did find out and decide whether or not it meets the standards of obstruction beyond a reasonable doubt. I don’t have to tell you that will not bear fruit for as long as Bill Barr is the Attorney General. Sadly, the rules were in place from the start that the AG can more or less do what he feels like with this report, including nothing. So even though President Dummkopf is out there erroneously trumpeting that he’s exonerated because he can’t read and that there was no obstruction of justice on his part, it might as well be true for all the interest Barr has in setting the bar for it. The fix is in.
Nothing is going to go right, ever.
I hope my wife is wrong. And I hope I am totally wrong about all of this as well. But I’m going to do what most Democrats are about to do, and that’s move on- stop trying to make a criminal out of Trump, criminal though he may be- and instead focus on what a horrifyingly bad job he’s doing pretending to be a president. It may be the least satisfying and the longest way towards getting rid of him, but it’s time to stop singing the impeachment song and figure out how to win with ideas and legislate and advocate him out of a job come 2020. Because if we keep trying to ferret out a prosecutorial avenue that just isn’t available, we run the risk of some of our best legislators looking like the Trey Gowdys and and the Lindsey Grahams of the left wing and at this juncture I don’t think that kind of tit-for-tat is our best foot forward no matter how much we want to get a taste of blood.