March 25, 2019--Barr Report: Blessing In Disguise?

To say I am disappointment is an understatement. 

I was hoping that the Mueller Report massaged and published by Attorney General William Barr would find that Trump and his gang conspired with Russians to undermine the 2016 election and that Trump like Nixon before him would be found to have directly led the effort to cover up that collusion, which in turn would mean that they obstructed justice. And thus the denouement would be history.

For Mueller and Barr to conclude there was no such conspiracy made it effectively moot that there was obstruction of justice because if there is no crime to obstruct there can be no justice to obstruct.

I say this in spite of the fact that it appears that Mueller, in fact, concluded that it's 50/50 that Trump was involved in obstruction. That it was Barr himself who disagreed with that assessment and "determined," after barely 48 hours, that Mueller was wrong and that there was no obstruction crime. Thus, the Mueller Report morphed into the Barr Report.

Out of this disappointment, what I next have to say may be more spin and wishful thinking than the truth.

And so on. 

As many have said and I have asserted here for well over a year, politically Trump in 2020 would be best dealt with by the voting public. He would not, perhaps should not be driven out of office by the press or even by the impeachment process. Yes, with Democrats controlling the House there was and still is the possibility that Trump could be impeached, but with the sycophantic Senate there is no way he would be voted out of office. To round up 67 votes for that is more than impossible.

So the focus has to be on nominating someone who can beat Trump in the Electoral College (he will again lose the popular vote) and for voters to work hard starting today to defeat him at the polls.

All polls show that voters do not care about collusion with Russia. A majority do not want to see the country obsessed with impeachment. Indeed, realizing this, Nancy Pelosi had her caucus back off from talking about impeachment 24/7. She knows from having lived through the Clinton impeachment how that is a losing strategy. It's likely that Trump, as with Clinton, would see his approval rating rise as he, victim-like, gets dragged through the process.

Voters are concerned about health care, the economic future of their families, the larger economy and how it is being permanently affected by artificial intelligence. They want to see the end of endless wars, the changing climate confronted, and of course education.

The media hates covering these issues because they are boring compared to the soap opera that Trump engenders. Would most people rather talk about Stormy Daniels or how much debt their college-age children are amassing? 

But with investigations and congressional hearings likely to slip back a notch or two in importance and entertainment value after a couple of weeks of us collectively exhausting ourselves with March Madness and Barr v. Mueller, with Democratic presidential candidates shifting focus to the issues that voters actually care about, that will present opportunities for them to scrutinize Trump's policy failures. How, for example, his tax cuts not only mainly benefitted the very wealthy but that they contributed to record budget deficits and the national debt reached an all time high on Trump's watch. Also, and related, that we recently saw the largest trade deficit in history.

We'll have the chance in the public eye to debate expanding heath care coverage and how to confront climate change. Potentially all good issues for Dems who, with less Mueller on the air, might be able to break through and actually talk about their ideas for how to deal with them.

Again, spin? Wishful thinking? Perhaps but this is what I'm thinking.