The Top 6 Things We Learned from the Mueller Testimony
1. Trump Is Impeachable, but He Won’t Be Impeached
Did Trump commit crimes? Yes. Were those crimes impeachable offenses? Yes. Will he be impeached? No. Why not? The House, for whatever reason, will not vote to impeach him (there was a recent attempt. The House voted against it.), and Nancy Pelosi stated openly that she believes the House investigations need to dig deeper before efforts to impeach move forward.
Even if there was an effort launched by Democrats to impeach the President that was successful enough to pass the House, there would not be enough votes in the Senate to convict him. So, there would be no change in authority. No ending the Trump Administration. No early morning raids of Mar-al-Lago or “Winners” being dragged away in handcuffs.
Mueller has never had the authority to remove Trump from office. Nothing he says will trigger law enforcement or Congress to remove him from office. The report won’t do a single thing to undo MAGA. Both Mueller and the report have been and always will be incapable of saving us from the Trump administration. (To learn more about why Trump is unimpeachable, click HERE.) There is enough evidence to indict Trump once he is removed from office, but Mueller has no power to remove Trump or indict him while he sits in the White House.
2. The Democrats Have No Strategy
One of the greatest strengths of the MAGA brand is that it is always WINNING. Even when it is losing. The MAGA media machine is ready to turn every moment and event into a moment to celebrate the Trump Administration. Did Mueller just come out and tell the United States that Trump met the requirements for obstruction of justice and that members of his campaign worked with Russia to rig the election? Sure, but…WINNING!
The Trump Administration was ready with promotional materials, video clips, quotes, memes, and a coordinated and sustained Mueller Day campaign that not only claimed victory in light of Mueller’s testimony, but effectively attacked the Democratic party. The Democrats had…nothing.
There was no coordinated and sustained response from Democratic leadership in the MSM or on social media. There was no competition between Democratic candidates for control of post-Mueller narrative that would be used to push the efforts to impeach into the 2020 campaign. There was no new campaign launched, no consistent escalated narrative, no attacks on the GOP, and no clear next step for the Democrats to unite around. There was quite literally — nothing. And the GOP is already capitalizing.
Either the Democrats have no strategist, their strategists suck, or they are intentionally throwing the game. And with 2020 upon us, that means if we want to defeat the Trump Administration, we have to take matters into our own hands.
3. The Only Way to Take Trump Out is at the Polls
Conviction isn’t an option. Impeachment isn’t an option. Armed insurrection…nope, not an option. Nonviolent resistance…not gonna work at this point, especially if the Women’s March and Indivisible are charged with organizing it. If you want to see Trump tossed out of office, indicted, and thrown in a prison that preferably fails to provide him soap, water, or a toothbrush, he will have to be voted out of office. That means that this petty infighting shit has to stop, we all need to mobilize the vote, and it doesn’t matter if a half-eaten sandwich wins the Democratic nomination, we all need to vote for it because even a half-eaten sandwich would do less damage with the nuclear codes than Donald J. Trump.
4. The Elections are Still Rigged: Voter Suppression
Trump knows his only vulnerability is the polls. So do his handlers. And they aren’t about to let a little thing like an election stop their takeover of the world’s largest superpower. So, for those of us that want to stop the Trump Train, the two biggest issues at hand are 1) Voter Suppression and 2) Election Manipulation.
While the Democratic party focuses on pandering to white voters, it’s actually Black and Brown voters that currently form the base of the party. With the general population approaching a majority non-white status, these voting blocs are also on track to dominate the national electorate.
Unfortunately, millions of them can’t get to the polls because of the voter purging, voter ID laws, felony disenfranchisement, lack of polling places, and inaccessibility put in place by the GOP. Worse, the Democrats have a wide variety of tools at their disposal to counter these efforts, and much like with impeachment, they refuse to do what’s necessary to make it happen. And this has cost us all. Democrats failure to counter these tactics has led to losses of states with large nonwhite populations and sizable electoral college votes. Florida, Pennsylvania, and Michigan for example, fell to the Republicans in the 2016 elections by margins that would have easily been overcome if suppression had not come into play. If the Democrats had countered the voter suppression efforts of the GOP, we wouldn’t have to be fighting white nationalists like Steve Bannon, Seb Gorka, Stephen Miller, and Donald Trump or rooting for Candidate Sandwich right now.
4. The Elections are Still Rigged: Voter Manipulation
Even if black and brown voters can make it to the polls in record numbers, though, there is nothing stopping the GOP or a foreign adversary from changing the outcomes of the elections by hacking into voting machines and tabulators. There is evidence that they plan to interfere again. There is evidence that the suppliers of these voting machines are aware of the vulnerabilities and have done nothing to resolve them. And there is nothing being done at the federal level to secure our elections from interference. In fact, the GOP recently blocked a measure geared at addressing these vulnerabilities.
So all that effort that’s being wasted on being mad at the GOP pretending it doesn’t know what racism means, talking about how f’d up Melania and Ivanka are, and shitting all over the Democrats because Candidate Sandwich doesn’t have enough mayo to your liking is an enormous waste of time. And time is one thing we don’t have much of. The GOP knows that. So, don’t take the bait.
5. There Will be an Investigation Into the Dossier. And it Will Dominate the 2020 Narrative.
One thing the Republicans made clear was that their strategists plan to counter the validity of the Mueller report by putting the Steele Dossier (which launched the investigation into the Trump campaign prior to the election). They also plan to put the entire Democratic party on trial, and don’t be surprised when #LockHerUp becomes as much of a reality as #BuildTheWall. If the Democrats have any chance of winning in 2020, they will need to both tackle election security while successfully shutting down the propaganda that will be generated from the investigation into the Steel Dossier. Again, as the Democratic party seems to be completely lacking in strategy, nonprofits, media organizations, pundits, and advocates might want to network together now and come up with their own plan to fight.
6. Complaining, Tweeting, and Being Right Aren’t Enough.
You aren’t fighting Trump by complaining on twitter or racking up likes or coming up with the snarkiest and most creative comebacks to shut down your friends and family members. Unless your actions translate into getting people to the polls and getting those votes counted, they don’t count for shit. I don’t make the rules. Believe me, if I did — Donald Trump would not be President right now. But long story short, the Democrats aren’t going to do it. The large nonprofits aren’t going to do it. Celebrities like Alyssa Milano aren’t going to do it. It’s up to the grassroots, peer run organizations of color, the people that support them, and YOU to do it.
So just get up and fucking do it.
