Real People Never Cared About the Mueller Report
Most voters are focused on jobs, climate, and health care, but not Russia.
(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Donald Trump’s presidency has unfolded on two distinct and separate planes. On cable television, the dominant story for two years has been Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation and the question of whether Trump colluded with Russia. Out in the real world, especially in the early presidential primary states, most voters are focused on jobs, climate, and health care, but not Russia.
Mueller’s conclusion that Trump didn’t collude with Russia to steal the 2016 election is an important victory for Trump, both legally and in the realm of cable news coverage. But it won’t necessarily have a big impact on the presidential race, and it’s not far-fetched to think Democrats worried about 2020 may be better off now that impeachment is realistically off the table.
One of the more disorienting aspects of the Trump era for a political reporter is the experience of moving between the television green room and the campaign trail. As anyone who’s watched cable news can wearily attest, even the most incremental developments on the subjects of Russia and Trump’s possible impeachment were given four-alarm, wall-to-wall treatment. If you’re the type of person who spends all day binging on MSNBC, CNN, or Fox News you might imagine that Mueller’s conclusion—or at least attorney general William Barr’s interpretation of it—greatly set back, if not outright destroyed, Democrats’ hopes of beating Trump in 2020.
But if you’ve spent any time interacting with voters across the country in the midterm elections and the early primary states, you’ve probably been struck, as I have, by the degree to which Mueller and Russia don’t even come up—like, ever. While criss-crossing the country over the last 12 months, from Maine to California (including the pivotal 2020 states of Iowa and New Hampshire), I’ve kept a running list of subjects that voters raise with Democratic candidates or bring up with me in conversation. Here are just some of the things that came up more often than Mueller and impeachment: the Affordable Care Act, the environment, guns, tax rates for the wealthy, billionaires, education, money in politics, gerrymandering, tariffs, prescription drug costs, wind power, electric vehicles, Michael Avenatti’s alleged handsomeness, Colin Kaepernick, and Oprah Winfrey.
It’s not that voters weren’t aware of the Russia investigation or approved of Trump’s alleged malfeasance; it’s that the overwhelming majority of them were focused on issues more immediately pertinent to their own lives and situations. My impression was that, for most of them, the Trump presidency unfolding on cable television was like something beamed in from a parallel universe.
Public opinion surveys back this up. A February Pew Research poll found that the top priorities for Democrats were, in order: health care, education, environment, Medicare, and “poor and needy.” Russia didn’t rate. Democratic candidates, no fools, have taken the hint: during the midterm elections, few even mentioned Trump’s name, focusing instead on the issues their voters cared about. They were rewarded with a 40-seat pickup in the House. It’s no accident that most of the presidential hopefuls are emulating this tactic.
If Mueller had turned up smoking-gun evidence that Trump knowingly colluded with Russia, these two worlds—the cable news presidency, and the one unfolding on the ground—would have come crashing together. An impeachment inquiry would have been inevitable. Whether or not Democrats succeeded in removing Trump from office, the proceedings would have dominated the remaining two years of Trump’s presidency, including the race for the Democratic nomination. I think this scenario would even have been likely had Mueller stopped short of implicating the president and merely indicted someone close to him, such as Donald Trump, Jr. or Jared Kushner. The pressure on Democratic leaders to try to force Trump from office would have been unrelenting, dividing the party in damaging ways.
But Mueller didn’t take either of those steps. As his report states (per Barr’s letter to Congress): “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” And while Mueller declined to draw a conclusion about whether the president obstructed justice, Barr concluded that he didn’t. It’s true that congressional Democrats will continue investigating Trump, as will the Southern District of New York. But the liberal fantasy that Mueller would deliver a death blow to the Trump presidency is gone, and while the ancillary investigations aren’t going away, none will command anything like the attention that Mueller’s has.
On cable news, this is all being spun as a great victory for Trump, which in a certain sense, of course, it is. But it also means that the next two years aren’t going to be defined solely by Democratic efforts to impeach Trump—a controversial move that even Democratic voters weren’t wild about.
Instead, as Mueller’s investigation recedes from the headlines, it’s likely that the issues on the ground will shape the presidential race more than they otherwise might have. They may even penetrate the cable news coverage. That hardly forecloses the possibility of Trump’s reelection. But with the economy slowing, Trump’s approval rating sagging, and Republicans bleeding support in the critical Upper Midwest states that decided the last election, Democrats will have little trouble unifying behind numerous lines of attack that have nothing to do with Russia. That may please Trump. But the midterm results suggest it may also cost him a second term.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jillian Goodman at jgoodman74@bloomberg.net
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