‘Stronger today’ but hobbled by division
Trump’s fortunes have changed, but politics hasn’t
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump scored a huge political victory after special counsel Robert Mueller absolved him of conspiring with Russia to swing the 2016 election. The big question is whether the president can use the special counsel’s finding to boost his re-election prospects.
Trump is already harvesting early fruits of his victory. The outcome of the nearly two-year investigation gives him a greater chance to focus on his policy agenda. Congressional Republicans may be less likely to distance themselves from him. Congressional Democrats have to rethink how hard to go after Trump in their own investigations.
“My advice to the president for whatever it’s worth is you’re probably stronger today than you’ve been any time in your presidency,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a Trump ally, said Monday. “The question for you is, how do you use it?”
In many ways, the political landscape remains frozen.
Trump still faces a fragmented Congress in a politically divided nation that will view Mueller’s report through partisan lenses – unless there are hidden
mines waiting to explode from other investigations into Trump and his businesses.
Having struggled to expand his popularity beyond an enthusiastic base, Trump needs to win over skeptical swing voters while fending off a large field of Democrats who have lined up to challenge him and attack him at every turn.
“I don’t plan on voting for Trump, but I say that without knowing who the other candidate is,” said Mike Robertson, a self-described independent from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “I can see a scenario where I really bite my lip and vote for Trump.”
Robertson said Mueller’s findings won’t be a factor for him since there was no “hardcore evidence” of collusion.
The 2020 campaign will probably center on issues such as the economy, taxes, health care and immigration – not to mention the president’s polarizing persona.
“I don’t see (the Mueller probe) fundamentally changing near, or longerterm, politics,” political analyst Stuart Rothenberg said. “It was an additional headache, a question mark that Republicans faced, an additional opportunity for Democrats to talk about the president’s alleged corruption and the like.”
2020 prospects
Any boost to the president’s re-election chances next year will probably be a short-term sugar high, some political and polling experts said.
“It has basically no impact. Not one iota,” said Patrick Murray, director of Monmouth University’s Polling Institute in New Jersey. “The voters who are paying attention to the Mueller report already had strong opinions about Donald Trump one way or the other. Even though we don’t know the details, it won’t change (the minds of ) any of them.”
Scott Jennings, a GOP strategist and commentator, called the findings “a huge boon for Trump in 2020, as it enhanced his credibility and made the Democrats look like unhinged conspiracy theorists.”
“We can all breathe a little easier with this behind us,” said Republican consultant Alex Conant of Firehouse Strategies.
Trump’s agenda
Once the Mueller investigation is behind him, Trump will be able to focus more closely on his legislative agenda, which includes infrastructure changes and winning congressional approval of a trade deal with Mexico and Canada.
That doesn’t mean getting that agenda through Congress will be any easier. The opposite may be true, said Republican political strategist Ron Bonjean.
“The results of the Mueller report will only divide the Democratic-led House further apart from Trump, and the likelihood of him signing high-profile legislation is growing dimmer by the day,” Bonjean said.
Jennings doesn’t see much hope for Trump scoring on legislation “because Democrats just can’t bring themselves to work with this president.” Conant sees a glimmer of hope. “If Mueller had found evidence of wrongdoing, then Trump could have forgotten about getting anything else through Congress,” he said.
Democrats must reassess
The strategy for handling Mueller’s conclusions has the potential to divide Democrats. Some may want to pursue Trump investigations more aggressively than others.
In an interview with USA TODAY last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., dismissed calls by liberals for impeachment and said the evidence would have to be so overwhelming that Republicans got on board or else it would be a gift to Trump.
After the Mueller findings were made public, Democrats called for his report to be made public and avoided talk of impeachment. Even Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who has said she would support impeachment, took a broader approach.
“He can stay, he can go. He can be impeached, or voted out in 2020. But removing Trump will not remove the infrastructure of an entire party that embraced him; the dark money that funded him; the online radicalization that drummed his army; nor the racism he amplified+reanimated,” she tweeted Sunday.
GOP unity
If Mueller had found collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign, there could have been a major split inside the GOP, Conant said. “It would have torn the party apart,” he said. “Instead, Republicans are more united behind Trump than ever before.”
After the attorney general released a four-page summary of Mueller’s report Sunday, some Senate Republicans, including several facing competitive re-elections in 2020, urged the release of more information.
Many Republicans were reluctant to break with Trump because of his popularity with the base, and that is likely to continue.
“I’m sure he feels he can run roughshod over all of them,” Murray said. “Without an indictment, this just simply strengthens his control over the base and therefore particularly cows senators up for re-election in 2020.”
Graham announced Monday that the Senate Judiciary Committee he chairs will examine whether the FBI began investigating Trump during the presidential campaign because of political corruption aimed at defeating him.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., should step down after promoting allegations of collusion between Trump and the Russian government.