Supposedly this week, Congress will receive a redacted version of the Mueller report. Redacted, of course, by the guy who now says that there was "spying" on the Trump campaign. Anyone who trusts William Barr's redaction process after that one apparently forgot that Barr got the job by writing an unsolicited memo saying that Trump couldn't be prosecuted for obstruction, long before Mueller finished his investigation, so... does anyone read anymore?
Anyway, the point is that anything damaging to Trump or his inner circle will be redacted.
Trump has also, of course, refused to give up his tax returns. So, Democrats are demanding them again. Ahem...
And Democrats expect this to work because...
[Facepalm]
So, what have we learned?
Nothing. I am an educator. My lesson to you is: nothing. As I wrote in the aftermath of Mueller's wrap-up, there is a big difference between "collusion," which is not a crime, as Rudy Giuliani regularly reminded us, and "conspiracy," which is a crime. The bar for prosecution of criminal conspiracy is simply very high, and Mueller was never going to get enough for that prosecution. He didn't. The Trump campaign indisputably colluded (see, for example, the Manafort/Kilimnik meeting), but Mueller couldn't get enough for a conspiracy charge. That was the inevitable outcome. Translation: we learned nothing, and Barr will hide everything that wasn't public unless he deems it exculpatory because he's Trump's flunky. See: Barr's ridiculous and already debunked claim that the government "spied" on Trump's campaign.
What else have we not learned? Anything about Trump's taxes or whether or not he will give them up. He won't. Ever. He'll defy a Supreme Court order on this and dare anyone to take him on. Nobody with guns will because he will order people with more guns to block access to his taxes.
Why? Remember the New York Times expose on how he got his money. Tax fraud. He's a crook*, and he's not as rich as he says. He will never give up his taxes. What happens if this goes to the Supreme Court? Realistically, they will deem the conflict to be an inter-branch conflict, call it "a political question," which means declining to intervene, which means effectively siding with Trump. I wouldn't put much stock in New York's plans either, even though non-intervention at the federal level would mean letting the Democrats get his state taxes. Do you trust Alito? Thomas? Gorsuch? Kavanaugh? It'd all come down to Roberts's mood, even with regard to Trump's New York state taxes. Roberts is basically a conservative Republican who will simply make the occasional odd ruling. Don't fool yourself otherwise just because he is the swing justice on the current Court. All that means is that the current Court is very, very conservative, putting things decidedly in Trump's favor.
So, you'll never see Trump's taxes, you'll never see any of the damaging stuff from Mueller's report, if it's there, and truly, we don't know how much is there beyond the public information, and that leaves the following question. What matters?
The tax thing was never going anywhere. If the Democrats want to keep fighting this fight, then fine, but they're never going to see any gains from it. They may even win in the courts, but Trump will defy any court order. The only way Democrats get a hold of Trump's taxes is if someone flips. Someone at the IRS could flip, someone in Trump's organization-- popularly known as the FSB-- could flip, whatever. Without that, you will never see his taxes. Ain't happenin'.
Remember, we don't have a functioning legal system in this country, and Donald Trump is above the law. Yes, that's exactly as bad as it sounds.
With respect to Russian collusion, that case was lost long ago. You will never see the goods from Mueller's investigation, but as I have been writing all along, the probability of a Trump impeachment/removal was always zero anyway. His party made a strategic calculation long ago that he needed to be defended in all matters for the sake of the electoral future of the party.
So, Trump's taxes were never going to matter, and neither was Mueller's investigation.
What was?
OK, let's go back to political science. Here's a thing I've had to address over and over and over again. To those who just think "numbers are numbers," polling and political science forecasting models are the same things. They're not. They are very different.
Polls got the 2016 election wrong.
Political science forecasting models didn't.
I covered this quite a bit in the aftermath of the election. My favorite of the forecasting models has historically been Alan Abramowitz's "Time for a Change" model, which predicts elections on the basis of presidential approval, GDP growth in the second quarter of the election year, and a two-term penalty for the incumbent party. There are similar models constructed by other scholars using other economic measures and such, but basically, unpopular presidents have some problems, a strong economy is good, the two-term penalty is bad, and so forth.
Most incumbent presidents are re-elected. If they aren't, it's because something else is going on. In George H.W. Bush's case, the GOP had won three terms in a row, and people didn't understand that a recession had ended long ago. He got double-dinged, which sounds really bad, as I type it out, but hey, that motherfucker was a sexual harasser, so who cares, right? Carter? Terrible economy. Ford had the two-term problem, and his approval took a hit from pardoning Nixon. There are your post-WWII presidents who lost re-election.
In 2016, the economy was decent, but not good enough for a generic Democrat to overcome the two-term penalty. A Republican won. I should have stuck with Alan Abramowitz, like I did every other year. In 2020, it's back to the forecasting models for me.
Trump's approval has never been high. He'll take a hit from that. Where will it be next year? Dunno. Best guess, somewhere in the low 40s. That's not good, but not enough to sink him. No two-term penalty. That's what did in both Bush 41 and Ford.
This brings us to the economy. What's going on with the economy, and how will it hold up through next year? If I could tell you that, I'd be richer than I am now. The long-term trend is that the economy grows. Recessions are hard to predict. Trade wars are stupid, as is nominating asshats for the Fed, but bringing on a recession in the next year? Eh. The yield curve recently inverted (interest rates on short term versus long term bonds... technical stuff...), which is an OK predictor of oncoming recessions, but still. Are we about to see the economy turn south?
That's pretty much what it would take for Trump to lose.
Mueller, Trump's taxes... none of this really matters. As we observe fights over these things play out over the next week, remember that a) the Democrats have already lost these fights, and b) they will probably lose in 2020 anyway because of the basic structural nature of elections. The economy tends to grow, and there won't be a two-term penalty for that thing in the White House with an "R" after its name that probably has 23 chromosome pairs. Then again, how would we know? Have you seen those pictures of Harold Bornstein?
In 2016, I, along with most other political scientists, made the mistake of disregarding political science forecasting models in favor of the polls. I won't do that again. To hell with the polls. I don't have data on Trump's 2020 approval ratings yet, but they won't be influenced by the fact that we won't see his taxes, nor what we won't see in a redacted Mueller report. They've been range-bound. He won't face a two-term penalty. Watch the economy. So far, there aren't clear indicators of the kind of collapse necessary for him to lose.
None of this matters in terms of 2020 outcomes. The economy matters, and if it holds up, Trump wins.
Statistically, the likelihood of the economy holding up without a serious recession for another five years, given economic history, is extraordinarily low, though. So have fun thinking about what President Merkin Mushroom will do in an economic crisis.
*The IRS rarely prosecutes tax fraud for the simple reason that it is costly to them. Instead, they engage in negotiations for repayment and penalties without prosecution.