Basically at this point if the Mueller report doesn't say that Trump or those in his inner circle did Russia-related stuff, and doesn't indict anyone else, Democrats take a huge L on this in any future messaging.
Republicans and Trump will just HAMMER them with, "It was a total witch hunt, Mueller and his 78 angry Democrats found NOTHING AT ALL NOTHING!!!! Now the Dems are doing the presidential harassment! What happened to waiting to see what Mueller found and trusting him????"
If this is the dud that it appears to be*, Dems should basically shut it down in terms of any high profile investigations. Do it quietly in Congress, but basically publicly say we all had to trust Mueller and now it's over. When Trump rails against those quiet investigations say, "The president should focus on governing. We're just doing very basic due diligence, it's not a focus of ours, we have no plans whatsoever to impeach him... Mueller didn't find anything and we're fine with that. We don't know what the old man's yelling about at this point..."
Like, the implications of this if it's the end are massive. Trump is literally completely above the law and he now totally knows it. DOJ ain't touching him. Mueller didn't touch him. He basically gets a green light to collude again in 2020, and obviously he will. It'll make Dems the laughing stock of 50% of the country if they accuse him of it again, and the investigation would never get off the ground.
What really scares the **** out of me now that he knows he can get away with anything is what happens if, in 2020, Trump "wins" 60-40 in the popular vote and takes every state that's not on the west coast (and Hawaii) or New England? And the GOP takes 67 seats in the Senate and a big majority in the House? Do we take the streets and riot over a sham election? If we do, it'll be a civil war because the right wing will honestly believe that this is what happens when you stop illegal immigrants from voting. The fact that he knows he's 100% completely and utterly untouchable for election meddling is ****ing terrifying. Because, news flash, I don't think we take the streets and riot.**
What's he got to worry about? State crimes? Has that problem already... But what's going to happen if, say, the NYAG indicts him? They aren't going to perp walk him out of the White House... He's most likely going to tell them to **** off. Are we going to have a showdown between NY law enforcement and the Secret Service? No, if they do indict, it'll almost immediately go to SCOTUS and we'll find out if Kavanaugh et al think the President of the United States can be indicted. Even if they rule against him, I think we just have a major constitutional crisis. Trump has no respect for the law and he's the most powerful person in the country, he's not just going to turn himself in and face charges.
* There's a decent chance this isn't a dud. I'm a little confused on some of the reporting and admittedly was working yesterday and didn't drill down into all of the details, but there's a difference between "there will be no more indictments, sealed or unsealed," and "there are no remaining indictments that have already been filed under seal." We also have no clue what's in the report. It could say, "Trump did it, here's the proof, DOJ doesn't indict presidents so Congress, it's up to you." I don't expect that, but I don't think it's a total dud either. I mean, if it is, Mueller is a total partisan hack. We know Don Jr lied to Congress at a minimum (we actually know more). We know Kushner was a near-lock to have committed felonies. We know that Mueller cut deals with cooperating witnesses... to what end? To NOT indict anyone else??? Was it just charity day at the special counsel's office? It's also possible that if the report is a dud, when Mueller gets subpoenaed by Congress and the first question is, "Were you ever obstructed in any way, and if so how?" The answer could be a very long one... Maybe Whitaker shut him down on a lot of stuff, maybe Barr did. We'll find out if that happened, and the **** will really hit the fan and get wild. So I'm not saying I expect the world from this at this point, but I also don't think it's just going to be a total dud.
** I'd like to think we take the streets and riot, but I was thinking about this last night... After the election a lot of experts on authoritarianism were saying, "Write down right now what would be totally unacceptable to you and make you take to the streets, because by the time it happens, you will be so used to the attacks on norms/law, you won't even think it's as bad." These people are right, because if you told me the day after the 2016 election that they'd be locking ****ing kids in ****ing cages, and asked me what I'd do about it, I'd tell you that I'd be on the fence about whether I'd be in the streets peacefully or picking up a brick. And what am I actually doing? Typing up way too many words in a politics forum on a ****ing poker website. And while that makes me a ****ty human being, I'm probably in the top 5-10% of the least ****ty human beings in the United States.
That said, if like 1,000 people were in the streets in any major east coast city over that, I'd absolutely be there with them. I'd do it every ****ing day if there were the numbers... And I have no expectation that there would be the numbers if Trump and the GOP won a Maduro-style victory in 2020. The majority of Americans would just show up to work the next day, and go about their business as long as their checks kept cashing, the economy was reasonably okay, etc...
Anyway, at this point, Dems should just be totally focused on 2020 regardless of what is or is not in the report that we may or may not see that was written by the guy who may or may not have been a joke of a special counsel. Healthcare, jobs, lower middle class taxes/higher 1%er taxes, climate change, democracy/voting reform, etc. But really just healthcare and jobs. If Dems don't do a damned thing between now and November 2020 but talk about Medicare for All, they win. If they get mired in investigating Trump even after Mueller makes it look like nothing, they lose.
At this point it's not what you know, it's what you can prove and what the public perception is. If the Mueller report is a dud, Trump wins the battle. Dems can't let him win the war because they didn't notice they lost this battle.