OPINION

The Worm Has Turned on the Democrats

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The Democrats and their media colluders are belching last gasps of impotent protest as their dreams of interfering with the 2016 presidential election come to a screeching halt.

Through forlorn partisan lenses, they have watched the Mueller report, their joyride vehicle on the glorious highway to impeachment, spring four flat tires, all because of nails they placed on the road themselves.

As we watch the mainstream media grow hysterically strident, and the insolent Senate Democrats lash out at Attorney General William Barr for refusing to validate their malicious witch hunt, we realize we are witnessing their gobsmacked reaction to justice served cold.

For three years, they have bombarded us with the damnable lie that Trump conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, they have borne false witness against the president. And now, instead of crossing the finish line and breaking the victory tape, they have run into the brick wall of justice. To quote my son, "That's gotta hurt."

What they should be doing is eating crow -- for dragging the America people along on their joyless journey of deceit. Instead, they are reacting like sore losers, doubling down on their subterfuge and transferring their unquenched antipathy to Barr.

Shame on these sanctimonious senators -- Blumenthal, Harris, Booker, Hirono, etc. -- for vilifying Barr to salvage their dying credibility and regain the upper hand. Shame on the media, who, in a synchronized chorus, called Barr Trump's "handpicked" attorney general -- as if every attorney general in history hasn't been handpicked by the president. Shame on the lot of them.

What a spectacle to behold -- the Democrats and the media feigning outrage at the attorney general for merely formalizing what special counsel Robert Mueller found on the "collusion" charge, and for finishing what Mueller didn't have the courage to finish on the obstruction charge.

As the facts and law are both against them, Democrats are again pounding the table -- going on the offensive to distract from their excesses; shouting epithets and leveling slanders against Barr to obfuscate Mueller's actual findings; playing semantic word games with the term "collusion"; and manufacturing a bogus complaint that Barr withheld the special counsel's 19-page summary despite the subsequent release of that summary showing there's still no "there" there.

The raw truth is that Mueller found no evidence that Trump colluded (non-legal term) or coordinated (legal term) with Russia to interfere with the election. After having used the term "collusion" for three years, Democrats are in a faux outrage that Republicans are throwing it back in their faces, saying there was none. They claim Republicans are trying to distort Mueller's findings. They know better. Mueller explicitly found no actionable coordination either.

Then, Mueller got in a snit over Barr's four-page summary, and Democrats brayed that Barr was misrepresenting Mueller's 19-page summary and the full report. But when Barr followed up with Mueller on his quibbles, Mueller assured him he was emphatically not suggesting that Barr had misrepresented his findings. He just didn't like the contextual presentation, which he thought led to an unflattering media narrative against him and his work. Herein lies the rub. The pristine and unflappable Mueller turns out not to be so unflappable after all. He just couldn't abide by the media blowback after enjoying two years of high praise as the Saint of Pre-Impeachment.

Mueller's apparently thin skin might give us insight into why he didn't have the courage to issue a concrete finding that there was no actionable obstruction claim. Barr was obviously surprised and disappointed with the fecklessness of his lukewarm old friend. Probably fearful that he would go from hero to villain overnight upon the release of his lackluster report, Mueller hedged on the obstruction charge, which is appalling, especially considering that the chief executive has every right to cashier his FBI chief for any reason.

Democrats are as nervous as a criminal defendant at his sentencing, knowing the other shoe might be about to drop. Never did they imagine that their own conspiracy to hatch a false conspiracy against President Trump would not only yield them no fruit but also backfire in their smug faces. For Barr not only sealed shut their farcical investigation; he is signaling that the real investigation against the conspiracy conspirators is afoot.

Multiple criminal leak probes are underway, as well as an inquiry into whether the Steele dossier was part of a Russian disinformation campaign and whether the Democrats, not Trump, were coordinating with the Russians to interfere with the election. Further, Barr could be investigating whether a proper predicate existed for the Obama administration to investigate and spy on Trump and his campaign. Popcorn.