US Presidential Election: Only Politics Will Do

In the end the Mueller hearing delivered very little that could be politically useful for the Democrats. The former Special Prosecutor and FBI chief was a reluctant witness and his reticence was in full display throughout the hearing. Mueller did not, or did not want to, rise to the occasion and make a statement about the implications of what he and his team had uncovered. As a result, notwithstanding some bits of information and parts of his answers that could justify impeachment, the matter is politically dead. At best, the Democrats could hang impeachment proceedings as a sword of Damocles over Trump’s head. But there is also no doubt that Trump would use this very threat to attack the Democrats with full force, while possibly gaining ground since support for impeachment among the general public reaches roughly 21 percent. The dilemma for the Democrats is that, on the one hand, it is their constitutional duty to go ahead and proceed with impeachment, but on the other hand, the political cost of such a move, as precedent proves, may be too high. This dilemma strongly divides the Democrats.

In short, impeachment is not the way to get rid of Mr. Trump, who has no use for the normal standards of ethical and responsible government. As Noah Bookbinder notes, "since Democrats took control of Congress in January, he and his administration have asserted baseless privileges and immunities to undermine ordinary forms of legislative oversight of the executive branch, attacked all attempts at review or accountability, and ignored recommendations to discipline top officials for repeatedly violating the law." Therefore, the only option for the Democrats, and the opposition in general, is to win the Presidential elections in 2020.

To overcome this handicap, the Democrats will have to do what they did in 2018 mid-term elections and downplay, if not drop, "identity" issues dear to their most articulate and militant, mainly upper middle class, white urban constituents. They will have to focus, as they did during the midterms, on the daily concerns (economic, environment, quality of life, crumbling infrastructure) of their natural electoral base and expose the utter hypocrisy of Trumpian rhetoric. Significantly enough, with a growing economy and the lowest rate of unemployment in decades, Trump is still nowhere near the level of popularity of previous successful Presidents. His singular legislative achievement, the tax bill that served mainly the rich, is highly unpopular. His disdain for norms, his racist rhetoric irritate mainstream Americans. However, they will not necessarily sway to the Democrats only out of discontent with the President.

Under those circumstances, the Democrats will have to learn to fight right wing institutions, an aggressive right-wing media, and efforts by the Republicans to block voter participation in elections far more effectively than they have done so far. As Theda Skocpol, who has studied both the Tea Party movement and the anti-Trump social mobilization after 2016, observes, "in the United States, the road to national power does NOT run primarily through California, Massachusetts, or the TV studios of MSNBC in New York City. It runs through middle-American suburbs, cities and rural counties. To win in 2020 and beyond, Democrats have to organize everywhere and project a national message that resonates widely." This is the only way to win the Presidential election at a time when Trump has decided to double down on racism and racial polarization to keep his base agitated and the general public scared.

Then, and only then, will the findings of the Mueller report serve the purpose for which they were gathered and presented to Congress and be used as an indictment.

Copyright : SAUL LOEB / AFP