I’ve already been controversial within the Democratic Party and for good reason. What exactly would have been the endgame here? Even if the Mueller investigation had found evidence of collusion it wouldn’t lead to Trump’s impeachment.

While I don’t support Trump, I do think that this focus on the Mueller investigation may ultimately prove to hurt the Democrats going forward into 2020.

Within the party, the progressive wing is already critical of the Russia investigation, accusing establishment Democrats of using the investigation as a red herring to ignore the ideological rift in regards to policy between progressives and the establishment Democrats.

On the other side, Republicans have framed this investigation as a witch hunt to “unfairly take down Trump.” Regardless of which narrative sticks in 2020, the establishment Democrats have lost credibility on the collusion issue.

For two years, the investigation has been hyped up only to not deliver the level of scandal initially promised. Ideally they should move on rather than double down on the issue.

Now I don’t mean to minimize the importance of the investigation. Even though no “collusion” has been found, that doesn’t mean that Trump isn’t still guilty of obstructing justice. The problem with this is whether the obstruction accusation will be accepted by the general public

For many people not involved in politics, anything less than Trump literally working for the Russian Mafia will appear like false advertising.

In my opinion, the best course of action for the Democratic Party would be to focus more on a workable policy platform for the 2020 election and to highlight the consequences of Trump’s actual policies, such as his tax cuts or his ban on transgender people in the military.

Early polls are already showing that the Mueller Report has already led to a decline in popularity for the Russian collusion conspiracy.

A poll co-produced by NBC and the Wall Street Journal found that following the release of the Mueller Report, only 36% of Americans still have doubts about Trump‘s presidency. This figure is down from the 48% of Americans who held doubts of Trump’s presidency due to the Mueller investigation in February.

What this implies is that the public is largely accepting the results of the investigation as opposed to continuing to fight for proof of collusion.

For the few who continue to hold on to the collusion accusation for 2020, we only need to look back at the 2016 election to realize how futile character attacks on Trump have been.

The 2016 election, as we all remember, was famously full of attack ads aiming at Trump’s “lack of civility,” or his “deplorable behavior,” and, of course, his “grab her by the pussy” video. And yet, none of this seemed to turn his supporters off.

More interestingly, though Republican primary challengers like Marco Rubio announced themselves as “Never Trumpers” based on this type of behavior, Trump’s approval rating remained high among the Republican electorate.

Most importantly, these attacks seemed not to have too much of an effect on the lucrative Independent vote since Trump won 46% of these voters compared to Hillary winning 42% of these voters.

The main point of this comparison is the fact that attacks on Trump himself seem to have ultimately held little effect on the voting public. Attacking Trump for unproven Russian collusion in 2020 will do nothing for the Democrats since those who are voting for him don’t care, those who do care are already unlikely to vote for him, and those who are undecided won’t be swayed by that.

If Democrats want to make Trump a one term president, Democrats need to put up a charismatic candidate who is able to run a campaign that distinguishes itself from just being against the current administration. For the future of our country, we need to be pro-change, pro-people not just anti-Trump.