Mueller report tilts 2020 landscape in Trump's favor: ANALYSIS

Elections aren’t won or lost some 20 months out. But the 2020 presidential campaign was reset over the weekend – on terrain that appears far more favorable to President Donald Trump.

With Robert Mueller now done and no further charges coming from the Justice Department, the Russian investigation went from being perhaps the most serious threat to Trump’s presidency into one of the president’s most powerful potential weapons.

Trump is wrong to claim that Mueller’s report was a “complete and total exoneration.” The report has not yet been made public, and Attorney General William Barr quotes Mueller as stating it “does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

But such nuance will likely be lost in the “no collusion, no obstruction” talking point that seems ready-made for Trump rallies. As if there was any question, the president’s immediate reaction indicated that he’s prepared to go on offense – calling for more investigations, just this time of his political opponents.

“To be honest, it's a shame that your president has had to go through this for,” Trump said Sunday, shortly after Barr’s letter was made public. “It began illegally, and hopefully somebody's going to look at the other side. This was an illegal takedown that failed, and hopefully somebody's going to be looking at the other side.”

The four short pages transmitted by Barr to congressional leaders Sunday afternoon will force Democratic presidential candidates to recalibrate their messaging. It sets up further tensions with a frustrated base of voters that badly wants Trump out of office, and the many who will continue to ask legitimate questions about the president’s conduct.

Just one day before Barr’s letter was sent, with the world knowing that Mueller was done but not knowing what he would say, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke declared that he believed the president to be guilty of colluding with Russians to win the 2016 election.

“You have a president who, in my opinion, beyond the shadow of a doubt, sought to -- however ham-handedly -- collude with the Russian government, a foreign power, to undermine and influence our elections,” O’Rourke said. “It is beyond the shadow of a doubt that once in office, the president of the United States sought to obstruct justice.”

Quotes like that seem off for this moment, and such declarations appear certain to have to change. The immediate aftermath of Mueller’s report has seen several 2020 contenders criticize Barr as Trump’s “hand-picked” attorney general, with the field of candidates unanimous in demanding that the full Mueller report be made public.

There may be appetite for that among Democratic primary voters. There is also, though, a risk that candidates pursue conspiracy theories and fringe positions if they continue to insist that Trump colluded with Russia, now that Mueller has said he doesn’t believe that he did.

As a matter of political practicality, impeachment had faded as a likely course of action for Democrats weeks ago. Now such efforts are all but dead – something that will frustrate many Democratic voters, and perhaps a few presidential candidates.

To build on O’Rourke’s metaphor, the shadows that have blanketed the Trump presidency haven’t entirely faded to sunlight. Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York continue to pursue investigations that touch Trump’s business activities, up to and including potential campaign finance violations where former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen implicated the president himself.

“This is a president who's had everybody around him, from his personal lawyer to his campaign team be convicted or plead guilty to serious charges, and we want to see how far this corruption goes,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., told CNN over the weekend.

On Capitol Hill, investigations and hearings will continue. Barr will be scrutinized for his decision not to pursue charges against Trump, and what’s released for Mueller’s report will be read closely for what is said and what is not. Other complicated and overlapping investigations appear certain to result in legal fights over documents, tax returns, and testimony.

But the background music for all of these efforts will be at a lower volume now. Mueller accomplished an extraordinary amount in a relatively short period of time, but he did not deliver on the big political pay dirt many Democrats hoped and prayed he would.

On one level, Mueller’s finish frees up the candidates for president to talk about other things – things that have always been more likely to turn the election anyway. As candidates have discovered in early campaign events, voters are far more in tune with the president’s actions on immigration, health care, education and the environment than they have been interested in Russia.

The fact remains, though, that Mueller’s report is likely to remembered as a political bust – one that carries substantial risk for Democrats even now that it’s done.

Many Democrats and candidates’ strategists hoped Mueller would find things that would make their jobs easier over the next 20 months. In fact, Mueller may have made their efforts to unseat the president substantially harder.