Where’s the report by Josh Marshall April 17

Where’s the report

Josh Marshall

1 day ago

One more from this conversation before I set it aside for the morning. TPM Reader EF adds an important point or clarification, one I find myself in deep agreement with. Some people were demoralized after Mueller submitted his report. I don’t count myself in that group at all. I understand that feeling; I don’t share it. I never thought Mueller’s investigation would end Trump’s presidency. That’s only going to happen in an election.

I’m eager to see his team’s findings regardless of what they are because it is critical to find out what happened or as close as we can get to knowing. What frustrates me deeply is that we haven’t seen the Report. It’s a shocking level of coverup that I don’t think most people – certainly most of the press – have remotely grasped. Let me have EF explain …

    I’ve noticed a number of your emailers saying things like those feeling some sense of despair are reacting that way because they expected the Mueller investigation to result in a “magic bullet” that would “end the shit show” or remove Trump from office. Maybe I’m nitpicking and for sure there are some in that group, but I think this sort of dismisses a more grounded frustration that comes from what is so far a significant lack of accountability for profoundly anti-patriotic actions, as well as almost surely criminal white collar activities. We created the special counsel to investigate and to-date not only haven’t we learned anything from it, it’s created a victory lap opportunity for Trump. Now maybe we will yet learn something, but there’s no guarantee, thus far we haven’t, and the person in charge is a shrewd bad acting partisan masquerading as a steward of the law.

    Speaking for myself, I’ve been clear from the jump that Trump wouldn’t be removed from office other than via an election loss. But I did hope Mueller would be an antidote to the fact-free fights over what Trump did or didn’t do and whether he’s compromised by a hostile foreign power. Now the investigation is over and we still don’t know. I am very frustrated by this.

    I’d add that this is happening in the context (as Matt Yglesias occasionally discusses) of a society where we seem to have almost completely lost the capacity to punish the rich powerful. Jeffrey Epstein, banking execs post-crisis, white collar crime generally, tax evasion/avoidance, etc etc. You know the list, it goes on seemingly forever. Add to that the lack of social sanction on e.g., Sean Spicer who lies his way right into a Harvard IOP fellowship. We’ll see with Nielsen. I realize there are exceptions and occasionally there’s a story about Trump staffers having trouble finding post-WH employment; hard to know the full truth with any texture.

    Trump is a specific instance that’s especially problematic because he’s president, but he and his family/staff/etc. are also super flagrant: they break the law and subvert important norms without, it seems, any doubt they won’t be held accountable. I’m thinking of Kushner shifting US foreign policy to refinance his family’s investment albatross. It all offends me and it offends my love of my country. I had hoped the Mueller investigation would create at least a documented record of some of these wrongdoings. But here we are.

    P.S. I sometimes wonder if having such flagrant, arrogant, unflinching lawbreaking committed in the glare of the brightest spotlight can happen without breaking something in the culture. How many are watching and realizing that following the law is a lot more optional than they had thought. Not that this is new, but you can think of the Trump administration as an infomercial for white collar crime and the Con Life.

    This is a bit stream of consciousness but I think it’s a mistake to write off those feels great disappointment and coterminous with those under the misimpression that Mueller could somehow end the Trump presidency. There’s a lot more to it than that. I’m hopeful that as a last resort someone might leak the full report, but then I remember Mueller’s team with access are by-the-book prosecutors and they may just feel that’s a step they aren’t willing to take, regardless of the stakes.

END

April 17

talkingpointsmemo.com

Talking to the Miasma

By Josh Marshall April 17, 2019 2:41 pm

3-4 minutes

Over the last week I’ve been trying to make sense of what seems to be Democrats’ April funk. Some of this seems directly tied to the completion of the Mueller probe and subsequent refusal to share its findings. But as a number of TPM Reader emails I’ve shared in recent days have shown, it goes beyond that. Some of it is simple fatigue. It is difficult to remain engaged and be buffeted by daily outrages and erosions of the edifice of the state after 30 months. But one thing I’ve been particularly struck by – I think growing from each of these factors – is many people thinking Donald Trump is basically a lock or a strong favorite for reelection.

Let me start by saying I certainly don’t think the 2020 presidential election will be a cakewalk for Democrats. One clear lesson of the last century is that US Presidents usually get reelected. But it is hard to see how a President who has never gotten traction out of the low 40s public approval and has consistently had disapproval well over 50% can somehow be a shoe-in for reelection. That can’t be true.

He can win. Definitely. Maybe he can be favored to win because of the electoral college or a divided opposition. But a President who has been so consistently unpopular can hardly be a strong favorite.

I was talking to one midwestern Democrat about this. And this person told me they figured it was pretty likely Pennsylvania and Michigan would return to the Democratic fold in 2020. They were much less certain about Wisconsin. Indeed, they thought President Trump had a good shot at winning it.

Let’s set aside whether these prognostications are accurate. Let’s focus on the hypothetical.

When I pulled up my map I was surprised and dismayed to see the following.

If you take the 2016 election and re-add the number of electoral votes set aside by faithless electors you get Trump 306 and Clinton 232 electoral votes. (Presumably, though we can’t be certain, you don’t have faithless electors if they can really change the result.)

If you take combined 36 electoral votes of Michigan and Pennsylvania and remove them from the Trump column and reallocate them to the Democratic column you get a 268 to 270, an effective tie and an actual tie at 269 each if Democrats win both district electoral votes in Maine.

This assumes all the other blue or swing states stay in Trump’s column. One faithless elector makes it a tie. This is not at all an impossible scenario. The country would be ill-prepared in practice to manage a tie election in any circumstance. In present circumstances, the result could be very dark.

I’ll come back to the general issue of Democratic pessimism soon.

END