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Gett

POLITIC

A Noun, a Ver and Vladimir Putin
Wh the Democrats are making a ig mistake  osessing over Russia.

 MATT LATIMR | June 04, 2017

T
he Democrats’ strategy could be summed up in two words:
Donald Trump.

He was, they asserted again and again, unacceptable, immoral and

corrupt. Every focus group they assembled raised serious questions
about his disparagement of various ethic groups, his brutish
mannerisms, his business ties to foreign governments, his lack of
qualifications. Almost every professional polling firm showed deep and
mounting disapproval of his behavior—he was, they calculated, the
most unpopular candidate in American history. Many in the Republican
establishment criticized or outright denounced him. And yet, defying all
the confident predictions right up until election night, Trump managed
to eke out a shocking election victory, relying particularly on a surge of
“forgotten voters” in the Midwest.

You’d be forgiven, of course, if you thought this was a recap of the 2016
election. Actually, it’s what the same pundits who got 2016 so wrong
may very well might be saying again four years from now. Such a mind-
blowing, spirit-crushing, defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory redo of the last
election should keep smart Democratic operatives up at night. Yet it
doesn’t.

Like Inspector Javert or perhaps more appropriately Wile E. Coyote, the

Democrats remain fixated on getting their man, Donald Trump, and
proving wrong the voters who elected him. At first glance, the daily drip
of new and shocking revelations over Russia looks like a mounting
shadow over the White House, and it very well may prove to be its
undoing. But the instant scandal—it seemed to start the minute Trump
was declared president-elect—also threatens to be further decimate the
Democratic Party. And Democrats don’t seem to know it.

To those with a bit of distance from cable news—that is, every sane
person in America—
Democrats seem to be replaying the exact strategy that lost them the last
election. What, pray tell, is the Democratic Party’s message otherwise?
That they don’t like Russia, except when they did? That they believe
Russia is the biggest national security threat to America, except when it
wasn’t? Democrats appear to have spent about two minutes trying to
figure out why the voters of Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania
and very nearly Minnesota rejected them only a few months ago. And
why, despite an ostensibly popular Obama presidency, they now have
less political power than at any point in memory. But this is hard and
painful spadework, and what’s unearthed might prove unpleasant. So
why bother?

What did the Democrats do to rebuild the faith and trust of the
“forgotten” voters they still seem to have trouble remembering? They
doubled down. The first thing they did after the biggest political disaster
in their history was to keep their leadership team intact. In the House,
they soundly rejected an Ohio Democrat (a what?) from blue-collar
Youngstown (where?) in favor of a liberal from California, the state that
single-handedly gave them the false comfort of a popular-vote victory in
2016. And they second thing they did was Russia, Russia, Russia.

Nothing seems to have been done to reach out to those who almost
upended the Clinton coronation. Are Bernie Sanders’ voters now OK
with the Democratic Party establishment? Who knows? Do the
Democrats have a tax cut plan to aid the middle class, a position on
trade to respond to the woes of the manufacturing class, or a plan to fix
health care? Uh, boring! By the way, who is leading the Democratic
Party today? Obama? Clinton? Pelosi? Schumer? Warren? TBD? Who
cares?

The real answer, of course, appears to be Vladimir Putin. Whatever

rhetorical white rabbit he sends out into the atmosphere, the Democrats
scamper after. For those who haven’t been following their evolving
storyline: The Russians tampered with the vote tallies in Wisconsin and
Pennsylvania and then had proof Trump hired prostitutes at a hotel in
Moscow for some X-rated sex acts and then worked with Mike Flynn
and Paul Manafort to rig the election and then somehow Jared Kushner
got involved while Trump allegedly gave the Russians illegal intelligence
and called the FBI director a nut job. Hard to follow? Well, don’t worry.
It’s just bad, trust us, and we’ll prove it all, or part of it. Or move on to
something else.

Besides the confusion, there’s another little problem with this modern
remake of “From Russia With Love.” There are serious issues to be
examined, to be sure, but they won’t be given a fair hearing when the
Democratic Party, as partisan an organization as they come, is leading
the effort every day. Politicizing the investigation from the outset, rather
than giving the president the benefit of the doubt and letting
investigators report their findings first after an impartial inquiry,
severely jeopardizes the legitimacy of any potential prosecution. When
half the country believes the Democrats and the media are in cahoots,
and most partisans are siloed off to their favorite media outlets and
eschewing other sources of information, it makes it hard for Watergate
2: The Series to make it on the airwaves. Even Mike Morrell, the former
CIA acting director who accused Trump of being a Russian stooge as he
signed up for the Clinton campaign, thinks the media is hyping the story
and showing bias against the president.

There are, here and there, warning signs that maybe the Democrats
might want to, you know, focus on their own political problems. In
April, the DNC had its worst fundraising month in nearly a decade. As
was seen in crucial states during the 2016 contest, African-American
turnout remains a serious concern. The voters of admittedly red-state
Montana just elected a guy who has been charged with assault instead
of a (seemingly) competent Democrat with a clean police record.
Reporters who actually spoke to voters in places like Ohio seem to have
found some shrugs over the Russia frenzy. More than two-thirds of
voters, according to at least one ABC News/Washington Post poll (if you
believe polls anymore), said the Democrats were “out of touch.” The
Democrats, yes the Democrats, scored lower than Trump and the
Republicans on that issue.

President Trump, meanwhile, is trying to regain his message on border

security, tax cuts, Obamacare repeal and telling off Europeans to their
faces. You know, the kind of politically incorrect, occasionally rude
things that actually ended up helping him win the election. A few weeks
ago, a sociologist at Columbia University flatly predicted that Trump will
be re-elected in 2020. In an even crueler blow to the Democrats, an ABC
poll released in April found that Trump would beat Hillary Clinton in the
popular vote if there were a hypothetical rematch. (A rematch that at
least one humble genius long ago predicted.)

What should the Democrats do now? Obviously their current hope is

that Trump will resign, or be impeached, or be so completely discredited
with endless leaks, allegations and charges that anyone could beat him.
(Where have we heard that strategy before?) Of course, if the Democrats
do get their wish, and Trump is forced out early, then they get President
Mike Pence—who has a pleasant demeanor, is an even more reliably
conservative Republican than his boss and, last time I checked, does not
have a secret Russian passport.

A smarter move for Democrats might be to forge and focus on their own
policy agenda to reach the voters they lost. They might want to take a
breath while they let the Justice Department’s special counsel, the
widely acclaimed Robert Mueller, conduct his investigation
independently. Pulling this off, of course, would require the Democrats
to break their symbiotic relationship with the media. And the media will
never let the Russia story go even if it sometimes reads like a low-rent
John Le Carré novel.

Until wiser minds prevail, the Democrats seem to be betting that the
entire Trump team will go to prison. A long shot, to be sure, but a hell of
a lot easier than doing the difficult work of figuring out what American
voters actually want.