It’s been eight months since the presidential election and more than nine months since the rumors began about Russian collusion with the Trump campaign that supposedly affected the outcome of the election. The Democrats are rapidly learning the lesson that you can’t keep obstructing the government that people are for the most part happy with. And you can’t peddle a narrative without showing any proof at all.
A new poll conducted by Harvard University and Harris Polls for the website The Hill shows that 64 percent of Americans think the investigations into Russian collusion — by independent Special Counsel Robert Mueller and otherwise — are hurting the country. At least 73 percent of people polled — 81 percent of Republicans, 68 percent of Democrats and 74 percent of independents — also believe that the investigations are distracting Congress from getting to work on more pressing issues such as tax reform and health care. About 56 percent of people would like to see Congress and the media move on to more important matters.
Says Mark Penn, one of the co-directors of the poll, “Most voters believe that the president’s actions don’t rise to the level of impeachable offenses, even if some of them [such as his conversations with former FBI Director James Comey] were inappropriate.”
Even various members of the Democratic Party — including the man who lost the Democratic House Minority Leader position to Nancy Pelosi, Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio — have started calling for party leaders to give up the obsession with Russia in favor of discussing issues that voters care much more about, namely the economy and jobs. “We can’t just talk about Russia because people back in Ohio aren’t really talking that much about Russia, about Putin, about Michael Flynn,” claimed Ryan. “They’re trying to figure out how they’re going to make the mortgage payment, how they’re going to pay for their kids to go to college, what their energy bill looks like. And if we don’t talk more about their interest than we do about how we’re so angry with Donald Trump and everything that’s going on, then we’re never going to be able to win elections.”
In Minnesota, Democratic gubernatorial candidate and current Congressman Tim Walz said that his state’s residents aren’t concerned about Russia. “I did a 22-county tour. Nobody’s focusing on that,” said Walz. “That’s not to say that they don’t think Russia and those things aren’t important, [but] it’s certainly not top of their minds.”
Democratic Congressman Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania concurred with Walz. “If you see me treating Russia and criticisms of the president and things like that as a secondary matter, it’s because that’s how my constituents feel about it. I don’t think anybody wants to give a pass to illegal or unethical activity,” Cartwright said. “But in life we all have priorities, and the first priority for my constituents is to their families — as it should be.”
In Vermont, Congressman Peter Welch agreed with Walz’s and Cartwright’s assessment. “We should be focused relentlessly on economic improvement [and] we should stay away from just piling on the criticism of Trump, whether it’s about Russia, whether it’s about Comey. Because that has its own independent dynamic, it’s going to happen on its own without us piling on,” he said. “We’re much better off if we just do the hard work of coming up with an agenda. Talking about Trump and Russia doesn’t create an agenda.”
Recently, the Democrats lost a special election in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District, where young challenger Jon Ossoff was defeated by Republican Karen Handel, despite the Democrats spending a record $23 million on the race. It was the fourth consecutive loss in a special election for the Democrats this year. The result has raised hard questions for the Democrats about the continuing role of Nancy Pelosi as House Minority Leader but also specifically about the lack of a proactive, positive agenda other than obstruction of the president and his policies.
There’s also a new concern that if Russia continues to be a focus, questions (and perhaps more than questions) will be asked about why the Obama administration wasn’t more forthcoming about disclosures of attempted Russian meddling in the 2016 election when it appears to have had valuable information about the topic. There’s speculation that the administration held back because it was expecting Democrat Hillary Clinton to win the contest. Former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson claims that Obama didn’t want to make it look like the election was being “rigged,” thus falling into the narrative being offered by Republican candidate Trump.
“I think the Obama administration should have done a lot more when it became clear that not only was Russia intervening, but it was being directed at the highest levels of the Kremlin,” said Congressman Adam Schiff of California. “And indeed, Senator [Dianne] Feinstein and I were repeatedly trying to make that case to the administration initially when they didn’t want to make attribution, to talk publicly about Russia’s role.”
“[The Obama administration’s response] was inadequate. I think they could have done a better job informing the American people of the extent of the attack,” admitted Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell of California.
“If Russia was working so hard on the 2016 election, it all took place during the Obama administration. Why didn’t they stop them?” tweeted President Trump last week. “The real [media] story is that President Obama did NOTHING after being informed in August about Russian meddling. With four months looking at Russia under a magnifying glass, they have zero ‘tapes’ of [Trump] people colluding. There is no collusion and no obstruction. I should be given an apology!”
Essentially, all of these statements are just further proof that as much as the Democrats and the globalists may have been able to buy off the media and its commentators, they haven’t been able to sway people’s opinions regarding Russia — in fact, the numbers above show that just the opposite is true, as much of the news stories of the last six months have caused the public to undermine its confidence in the press.
Speaking to Sean Hannity on his syndicated radio program, academic media critic Camille Paglia said that the public’s newfound distrust of the mainstream media has caused long-term damage to faith in the Fourth Estate that will take years to undo. “What’s happened to The New York Times? What’s happened to the major networks?” she asked rhetorically. “It’s an outrage. I’m a professor of media studies, in addition to being a professor of humanities, OK? And I think it’s absolutely grotesque the way my party has destroyed journalism. Right now, it’s going to take decades to recover from this atrocity that’s going on where the news media have turned themselves over to the most childish fraternity, kind of buffoonish behavior.”
