Don't impeach - outvote

I don't actually want Donald Trump impeached as a result of the Mueller investigation. Trump is not a problem you can solve by impeachment; the real problem is the large number of people who were happy to vote for this clown because they thought they would get something they wanted. Impeach him before they have realized how hollow his promises are, and they will just vote for another clown. Or worse, someone capable who promises the same but is able to keep the charade up for longer and do more damage.

Mueller's job is not to get rid of Trump; it is to track down all the ways the Russians infiltrated his campaign. And to make sure, with prosecutions and reports, that it is much harder for them to do the same again. In this he seems to be doing a great job. As a side benefit he is distracting Trump from the business of mismanaging the country - the less he does, the better.

I don't think Mueller will find that Trump was involved in any sharply obvious collusion. As I've said before I don't think either side thought a win was possible, which limits what they could offer each other. But there are a number of things that will cause problems for Trump.

1) His campaign was a dumpster fire right from the start. Competent people would have expected nothing from it but a stain on their character. So what he ended up with as staff was a mixture of dumb, crooked, or evil. Or family. All of which seem to have been ripe for subversion attempts by the Russians. So no matter what Trump did himself, he hired all those people and each new revelation is going to make him look worse.

2) Trump only cares about rules if he can apply them to other people. He will have cheerfully used any lever or source of funds that came to hand, legitimate or not. He's the kind of person who is only legitimate by accident, or if carefully watched. So there would be nothing to stop him from taking advantage of the Russian contacts all through his campaign staff, and compromising higher ups is basic tradecraft for an operation like that. The Russians will have taken care to involve anyone they could.

3) It's screamingly obvious that Trump has something to hide in his business affairs. Maybe he's not worth what he says he is; maybe he's laundering money; maybe he's cheating on his taxes. I have no idea, but the way he has reacted all through the investigation makes it clear that he's genuinely fearful of what might show up. Each new thread Mueller follows increases the chances that a floodgate will open, as happened to Michael Cohen. I would not be at all surprised if Trump steps away from office at whatever time and into a criminal case that lasts the rest of his life.

As I said, I don't want him impeached. But Mueller could well release enough information (as a result of all the prosecutions) to show a great many voters that they have voted for a fraud; and that would be enough to make them rethink their decision. And that really would solve the problem.

And if it doesn't? Frankly the Russian collusion case is not the core of why Trump is so dangerous. It's just another symptom, and a minor one at that. The rest of his faults should be sufficient to turn voters off, as their effects pile up in unmissable heaps. Let us not rely on Mueller, but instead accept whatever help he can provide and make our own plans.

The real Russian problem is the *next* election

I really don't buy the "Russians flipped the election to Trump" story. For one thing, actually showing that Russian actions genuinely influenced the voting decisions of enough people would be hugely difficult; people have enough trouble explaining what made their minds up at the best of time, and a presidential election is an especially cluttered field. It's not enough to show that X many people saw Russian propaganda or leaked DNC emails; you have to show that they weren't already voting Trump (and I bet there's a strong correlation between pro-Trump opinions and visiting sites showing fake news articles), and also that people weren't influenced the other way by stories about Russian interference that were already around before the election.

And even if you could show that, it would still be only one of a great many influences whose presence or absence would have swayed the vote by more than the eventual margin of victory. A lot of organizations spent a great deal of money (billions of dollars all told) trying to influence the election, and you can't simply ignore them all.

So Muller's inquiry is not going to result in some magic overturning of the election and it won't show that the vote itself was illegitimate. It almost certainly will show that members of Trump's team - and perhaps even Trump himself - have done things that are underhanded and possibly even illegal. Some of them may get themselves into trouble by lying about things they have good reason to be ashamed of - and for good or ill, lying to the FBI is illegal if the FBI wants to prosecute. I predict that Trump's team will come out of all this looking pretty shabby.

But the truth is, practically nobody expected Trump to win. Not the press, not the Russians, not even Trump. An election with Trump in it should never have been close enough for the Russians to touch. So there was no deal to be made there; neither side would have expected the Russians to be able to deliver and neither side would have expected Trump to be able to provide anything in return. And as I've said before, nothing the Russians seem to have done required any kind of collusion (nor was Trump in any particular position to help them do what they did). What the Russians would have wanted to do was lessen the margin of victory, stir up right-wingers against Hillary Clinton, and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the vote.

It is this last point that is the real problem of Russian interference. Nothing happened this time, because the Russians already had all the disruption they could ever have wanted with the election of an incompetent blowhard like Trump. They don't need him under their thumb when he's already making stupid decisions. But imagine if the Russians had corrupted vote tallies and electoral rolls around the country, and then leaked this information to the losing side. A close election always brings grumbling (look at Bush in 2000) even when everything is above board. What would happen if there was clear evidence of errors and widespread reports of registration problems?

Meanwhile, Trump refuses to countenance anything that might even hint that his election wasn't a record win; and the Democrats are cheerfully using the allegations and the investigation to needle him. Understandable on both sides, but the result is that nothing is being done. A smart, forward-looking president might be quietly working behind the scenes to harden the electoral system against further attacks, but all Trump appears to have done is start up and then kill off his travesty of an electoral fraud commission . Ordinarily I would express the hope that something else was in train, but Trump doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt on that. You might hope that Republicans are aware that the boot could be on the other foot next time, but they seem more interested in defending their gerrymanders and voter suppression techniques.

Protecting our electoral systems against determined and well-resourced attackers is a tough problem. It is vital that we succeed and it needs serious attention and resources - if OPM can't currently defend itself, what hope do the myriad state electoral offices have? Unfortunately, the political environment is currently working directly against that.

Let's hope the wakeup call (and there will be one) is not too damaging.