Tom Steyer to Dems: See, I told you not to wait on Mueller to impeach Trump

Tom Steyer to Dems: See, I told you not to wait on Mueller to impeach Trump

Billionare Tom Steyer has a fever, and that fever is to impeach Trump.

Steyer started Need to Impeach to push Democrats to impeach Trump. Steyer’s obsession annoyed the Democrat establishment leaders, who feared it would damage Democrats.

Even after the 2018 election, when Democrats regained control of the House, Democrats waited, hoping the Mueller Report would provide the evidence and political cover they needed.

But the Mueller report all but killed impeachment talk. Trump was completely vindicated on Russia collusion, and Mueller’s non-decision on obstruction deprived Democrats of what they needed.

Steyer is not happy that Democrats waited.

Greg Sargent at The Washington Post, who is something of a mainstream Democrat weather-vane, writes Democrats are badly blowing it against Trump. A brutal new TV ad shows how.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has succeeded in stifling impeachment talk. The Post reports that the speaker privately told Democrats to stick to policy and forget about an impeachment inquiry, and not a single Democrat uttered a word in protest.

This is meant to illustrate the iron grip that Pelosi often successfully maintains on her caucus. But, whether you support an impeachment inquiry right now, there’s no way to describe the broader strategy that Democrats have adopted on the impeachment question as a success. It’s been a muddled mess.

A new ad that impeachment proponent Tom Steyer is set to launch illustrates this well. Notably, rather than merely making the case for an inquiry, the ad trains its fire at Democrats for failing to initiate one.

The ad — a $1 million buy on national cable and in Iowa and New Hampshire — takes aim at what might be called the Democrats’ “Wait For Mueller” strategy,

I would not call the Steyer ad devastating, more like a history lesson in frustration. Sargent continues that at every level the “Wait for Mueller” strategy was misguided:

Numerous Democrats did claim there was no need to decide on an impeachment inquiry until we saw Mueller’s findings.

In retrospect, this was a serious strategic failure. If it was intended as a stalling tactic — a way to delay the moment at which Democrats would reveal their real intention not to act — it only created a situation in which Mueller’s extraordinarily serious revelations made it more difficult to definitively close the door on it.

If it was sincere — i.e., Democrats really wanted Mueller’s findings before making the call — then they were not prepared for the possibility that those revelations would be severe enough to overwhelmingly warrant an inquiry, setting them up to look feckless and weak at a moment of extraordinary challenge to the country.

Here’s the ad:

The problem was not Democrats’ “Wait for Mueller” strategy. That was the only strategy they could have followed. To not wait for Mueller on something as momentus as impeachment would have been politically disastrous.

What can Democrats do now? When it comes to impeachment, not much that wouldn’t harm Democrats more than Trump.

Which is why Trump should hope for 2020 that Democrats follow Steyer’s advice and engage in the “really futile and stupid gesture” of trying to impeach Trump.

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