by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
I’m not suggesting I have any type of panacea when to Trump’s skullduggery, but I do have some observations about how he’s going to handle the Ukraine whistleblower situation.
Ok, first off, this weekend is critical. If nothing new happens between now and, say, Sunday afternoon, then Trump’s in the clear as best I can tell. He then does the following things:
Wrap the entire complain against him in Executive Privilege. At the same time he sends Rudy out every once in a while to babble manically about what’s going on. Rudy will occasionally “slip up” and tell the truth. Everyone laughs at this, but the facts of what happen will be out there. We spend months and months in the courts trying to get the complaint. In the meantime, Trump attacks the credibility of the whistleblower on Twitter day after day.
By the time the case gets to the Supreme Court, even if the complaint is released and we know what happend, the average person will have moved on. They won’t quite know what happened. And, besides, the case has lost its sexiness. We all know what happened, so what.
And given that the 2020 campaign will be in full swing, people will just assume Trump will “self-impeach.” When he doesn’t we all realize maybe we should have done something about Trump before. But by that point it will be too late.
We will have moved on to something else. Trump “jokes” about never leaving office. And then he never does. Lulz!
And, let me note, this is if things go the traditional route. If this particular case gets any existential momentum, Trump’s probably going to get the whistleblower murdered through one of his “jokes.”
How do you combat that? It’s pretty tough. In fact, really, the conditions are there for Trump to use the whole thing to his advantage because everytime it comes up, he’ll rant about Joe Biden’s son. So, ultimately, from a branding point of view, most people will be more concerned about THAT and not what Trump did. Trump gets what he wants:
Biden, like Hillary Clinton in 2016, will have an air of corruption about him. Trump can start a war if need be to wag the dog. He can work actively with the Russians to hack the election. (I mean, he’s faced no consequences to date, what’s to stop him?) And, really, he always has the ability to attack individual Electors post-election if he loses in any way.
If I was a Democratic strategist, I would suggest Radical Resistance. If you want to save America, you’re going to have to, on an ideological level, radicalize. Trump plays dirty, you play dirty. Shut the government down until you get the complaint. Throw money and resources at impeachment.
But the clock is ticking. Speed is of an essence. If the impeachment hearings don’t start by the end of September, what’s the point. Once October rolls around, people are thinking about the holidays. You won’t really be able to start up again until just about the same time the first 2020 primaries start. And by that point the Stormy Daniels Playbook will have worked.
The shock of the initial story will have long faded. People won’t care. “Everyone does it, right?” they’ll say. “And, besides, Joe Biden colluded with the Ukrainians for the benefit of his son, right? Or something like that. I can’t remember. “
If we’re honest with ourselves Radical Resistance’s moment is long past. There’s just not the political will on the part of House Democrats to play dirty. They’re pretty much complicit in Trump’s tyranny. I wish I had more answers, but I don’t.
