The democrats painted themselves into a corner on this one crying wolf for 2 years and producing nothing. just look at how many victory lap threads LG has started.
If Mueller comes out with something actually condemning then yeah you will see a shift. but if they can't prove Trump worked with the Russians you will get a big yawn fest. that's the standard the democrats created, so when it falls short its going to seem a lot less worse than it probably is. where if they had treated this with any kind of sense and let the truth come out before convicting Trump, even some minor things might have lead to the back lash they wanted. what it looks like now is they promised a home run and bunted down the 3rd base line.
we will see if Mueller ever produces this report. hopefully before Trump's term is done. - this is the part that still doesn't make sense to me, the timing.
I think that’s all well stated and rational.
I think I do understand the timing. There are two likely scenarios:
1. Mueller has nothing to report.
2. Mueller has something on Trump or someone close to him, but believes that republican legislators will protect Trump.
Given that there have already been a number of indictments and convictions and given how badly Trump obviously wants this investigation to be shut down, my money would be on #2.
In fact, I think it’s pretty obvious from Trump’s behavior that somebody he wants to protect was involved and he fears they have criminal liability. If we don’t see a report shortly after the new Congress is sworn in, I’ll start to agree that it seems unlikely that Mueller has anything.
Also, I think Democrats have only backed themselves into a corner with people who don’t look at Trump’s efforts to interfere as wrongdoing, or those who don’t already view his behavior as making him unfit to be president.
Frankly, I think there are a lot of us who do believe that, to some degree or another. The question will be whether the Democrats spend the next two years shrieking like banshees and roll out Elizabeth Warren as the “first Native American woman presidential candidate” and alienate centrists (like me) into voting for somebody else.
I think it’s pretty clear what my expectations are in that regard.
I suppose something crazy could happen, like what was the John McCain arm of the Republican Party splits off and occupies the middle, but I don’t think there are enough votes there to make that viable.