Two huge developments in recent days will reverberate all the way to Election Day 2020, according to political insiders on both sides of the aisle.…
Two huge developments in recent days will reverberate all the way to Election Day 2020, according to political insiders on both sides of the aisle.
The findings of the Mueller investigation and the Trump administration’s decision to push for the full destruction of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) set the table for a fierce 2020 campaign.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s verdict that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia is already being seized upon by the president to say that he was right all along: Democrats and a pliant media were conspiring against him.
Trump is expected to bang that drum loudly at a rally scheduled for Thursday evening in Grand Rapids, Mich.
One source in Trump’s orbit who has spoken with the president in recent days said Trump was “very happy with the outcome” of the Mueller probe, which the source characterized as a “massive validation of everything the president has talked about” since the special counsel was appointed in May 2017.
Still, if Democrats were deflated by the initial findings from Mueller as conveyed in a four-page letter from Attorney General William Barr, they were swiftly revived by the push to have ObamaCare struck down, which they see as an extraordinary own goal by the White House.
“It’s the single most inexplicable decision I have seen in a very long time,” said veteran Democratic strategist Robert Shrum.
Shrum, like many Democrats, believes that the debate over health care was a major reason why his party won back control of the House in November.
Republicans critical of Trump, meanwhile, were aghast at the administration’s move.
“It’s almost as if the president studies ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory,” said John “Mac” Stipanovich, a longtime GOP lawyer and lobbyist in Florida who served as chief of staff to Gov.
