Democrats now have to beat Trump the old-fashioned way

The Mueller report removes a potentially powerful campaign weapon.

Democrats were never relying on putting the Russia investigation at the center of their presidential campaigns.

But the freedom to rebrand President Donald Trump as a criminal had been widely viewed as a major potential asset — a crowd-pleaser, at minimum, and an undercurrent to Democrats’ broader effort to portray Trump as unfit for the presidency.

The Mueller report’s findings cut deeply into that prospective line of attack. After a summary of Mueller's report concluded there wasn't enough evidence to find Trump conspired with Russia to win the 2016 election, Democrats seeking to unseat the president joined a chorus of partisans calling for the full report’s release.

But they also emerged from the weekend confronting the near-certainty that Trump will not be felled by an outside investigation, and that the 2020 campaign — in a period of relative peace and economic prosperity — will be waged on familiar ground advantageous for an incumbent president.

Dan Sena, a former executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said if he was advising a presidential candidate he would say that as important as the Mueller investigation is, "what impacts people’s everyday lives are health care costs, anxiety over their next mortgage, anxiety over their next paycheck."

What voters are looking for, Sena said, "is somebody who has a vision for the country.”

A Democratic strategist who has spoken with multiple 2020 candidates added, “This is what happens when you spend two years obsessed with something that there’s no guarantees of panning out.”

Most of the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination, including Sens. Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, for months have clung to a similar position: Mueller must be allowed to conclude his report without interference. Then, before and after the four-page summary was released, they demanded the full report, and for Attorney General Bill Barr to testify before Congress.

But for all the attention it has received in Washington and on cable TV news, the Russia investigation has been far less visible in the opening months of the campaign. At events in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and other early-voting states, attendees have asked far more questions about health care, climate change, education and taxes than they have about Russia or Mueller.

“If you go talk to the 2018 House candidates who won all these districts, they will all tell you they weren’t talking about Russia and Robert Mueller. They were talking about health care and education and other issues,” said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic strategist and veteran of presidential campaigns.

The anti-Trump positions that continue to find favor with Democrats tend to be broader indictments of Washington under Republican control, along with Trump’s antithetical approaches and vulgar behavior.

“People in the smart (presidential) campaigns will get their heads out of Twitter and cable news and focus on what people in early states really care about,” Elmendorf said.

For months, Russia has barely registered with voters as a top issue, with both Gallup and the Pew Research Center finding economic issues, health care, immigration and other concerns at the top of Americans’ minds. And for the most part, candidates have hewed to a belief that voters are less animated by Democrats who are anti-Trump than by Democrats who stand for something themselves. Even as she railed against the president at a speech in front of Trump International Hotel in New York on Sunday, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said she is “not running for president because of who I’m fighting against.”

Even if they did care more about Russia, it's unclear that the Mueller report would change voters’ views about Trump. Opinions about the Russia investigation have long fallen along partisan lines, with large majorities of Democrats believing Trump worked with Russia to influence the election — and large majorities of Republicans believing he did not, according to the latest Ipsos/Reuters poll.

“Folks in Washington, D.C. are in a bubble, so everybody is disconnected from the day-to-day realities of Americans and what they’re thinking about,” said Michael Ceraso, who worked on the presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders in 2016 and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

On a presidential campaign, he said, “When you’re talking about criminal justice or climate change or rural and small-town economies, folks are not thinking about" the Mueller probe.

Still, the findings’ release left some Democrats in a lurch. Former Texas Rep. Shortly before the president was cleared of conspiring with Russia, Beto O’Rourke said while campaigning that Trump had colluded with Russia “beyond the shadow of a doubt,” adding it was “beyond the shadow of a doubt that once in office, the president of the United States sought to obstruct justice.”

After the summary was released, O'Rourke took to Twitter and called for the Mueller report to be released in full.

Trump, for his part, was taking the first steps in what is likely to be a protracted victory lap, telling reporters on Sunday that “it’s a shame that our country had to go through this.”

The Mueller report did not weigh in on whether Trump had obstructed justice, saying there was evidence on both sides but drawing no conclusion. And the report won’t be the last of Trump’s legal troubles or possible financial entanglements with Russia that his Democratic critics can seize on. There's still the question of whether the president will release his tax returns, which for years he has said have been under audit.

Another matter is whether the Trump administration is doing enough to prevent Russia from interfering in the 2020 election.

Carol Fowler, a prominent South Carolina Democrat who has been watching the candidates closely, sees a clear contrast between the president and his opponents on election integrity.

“He can say he was exonerated from colluding with Russians in the last election, but he can’t say he has done anything to keep the Russians from interfering in 2020,” Fowler said. “I believe that’s what we need to focus on — and I think the candidates ought to be talking about everything they would do that the Trump administration wouldn’t do to keep that from happening again.”

Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine