A post-Mueller path forward
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ust because the modern Republican party is deplorable doesn’t mean the Democrats are dependable. In fact, we know the opposite is true. Democrats will invent purity tests that divide and dismember each other. It’s as natural as breathing. The current example is the frenzy over immediate impeachment.
Democrats need a post-Mueller Report path that both makes sense and can make a difference. Thus, three proposals:
(1) Immediately and continuously charge “coverup”. If Mueller fell short of charging obstruction, he nevertheless proved again and again the desperate moves by Trump to cover up the wrongs he has committed. The value in this attack is that it needs not be employed only in the past tense. Barr’s news conference was a glaring example that they are still terrified and dissembling. Then the White House announced it was going to just ignore a Congressional subpoena for the unredacted version. The coverup continues. It’s not going away--especially with more than a dozen related probes still under Mueller's jurisdiction.
(2) Decide your “ten points”. The report represents an avalanche of sins, both venial and mortal. (For non-Catholics, that means small and large.) If you watched Report Day in real time, you saw cable hosts and guests frantically thumbing through pages, looking for juicy tidbits. Enough time has now passed for the whole thing to be digested. It’s time for Democrats to sit down and decide which ten of those sins to underscore. Memorize them. Publish them. Tweet them every day. Print them on paper and hand them out to voters. This is a party assignment, not an individual one. The shoot-from-the-hip gang needs repeated and enforced key messages on Trump and Russia--more than almost anything else. Do not let up.
(3) Understand: impeachment is not binary. Forcing a “for it” or “against it” declaration right now is stupid and self-defeating. So stop it. However...even though it’s true that impeachment would never pass the Senate…or that McConnell the Traitor would ever allow it to come up for a vote…it is still vital to pursue. But only after all the Congressional investigations run their course. Would a prosecutor go to trial in a criminal matter without gathering all her evidence? Certainly not. Dems, be prosecutorial.
But something is more important than impeachment, and that's winning the next election. Don't let this Mueller anger derail those chances. And it doesn't have to, because both needs can be served at the same time.
How can that be done? Force agreement among the Democratic presidential candidates on two things: (a) they will not proactively bring up impeachment on the campaign trail, and (b) they will answer any question about impeachment only by deferring to the Congressional leaders steering those probes. Let them do the impeachment talking.
That leaves the candidates free to explain how they'll provide affordable, quality health care; how they'll secure a border without ripping children from their parents' arms; and how they'll take back the shameless tax breaks that further aggravated our upside-down form of the socialism. .
Fear not: it’s possible to walk and chew Trump at the same time.
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