The Democrat Blue Wave turned out to be little more than a gently rushing stream on Tuesday, but it did manage to meet the mildest of expectations and deliver the House of Representatives back into the hands of Pelosi & Friends. That will likely mean a rather abrupt halt to any sort of conservative legislative agenda for the next two years; worse, it will mean that Democrats will take control of the various oversight committees. Most alarmingly, Adam Schiff will now be in charge of the House Intelligence Committee, and we don’t doubt that his first order of business will be to re-investigate the Trump/Russia collusion scandal (or lack thereof).
Many liberals are excited about the fact that Democrats now have subpoena power on their side, but they may not get as far with that approach as they think. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has already shown a willingness to essentially ignore House Republicans and their threats of subpoena. The Freedom Caucus and the investigative committees have been up one wall and down the other trying to get information on the misdeeds of the FBI and the Justice Department during the 2016 election, and they’ve been met with stonewall after stonewall. If Rosenstein suddenly changes course and cooperates with every demand Schiff sends his way, it’s going to look a lot like political favoritism, and that’s not an appearance the Justice Department can afford right now.
Furthermore, there is precedent for the Attorney General of the United States giving congressional investigators the finger. That precedent was set by a man named Eric Holder. And while Holder was held in contempt by Republican lawmakers for refusing to hand over documents relating to the Fast and Furious scandal, the criminal charges that might have followed never materialized. It’s unlikely that Democrats even have the stomach or the will to hold Rosenstein or Sessions in contempt, much less pursue anything more serious.
What we’ll get, though, is Adam Schiff at his television-squawking best for the next year or so. Until Robert Mueller wraps up his own investigation and assures the country that there was never anything even remotely suspect about Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia, Schiff will be able to make all kinds of grand insinuations while re-doing an inquiry that’s already been done. In the end, that’s all the Democrats ever wanted out of this faux-scandal to begin with. It’s a distraction and a means by which they can de-legitimize the President in the eyes of their voters.
Tuesday’s election results showed that this strategy has mostly failed; for whatever success Democrats had, this was not the spectacular left-wing backlash that they were hoping for. And if this is the best the Democrats can do with the entirety of the mainstream media screaming at the country, “TRUMP’S REALLY REALLY BAD” every single day for two years? It does not bode well for their chances of defeating him in 2020.
