Conservatives cannot complain about the sprawling nature of Mueller’s investigation, especially since the Clinton investigation began with a financial infraction and ended with fellatio in the Oval Office. If Republican’s investigation could be broad and open-ended, it’s only fair that Democrats are afforded the same privilege. The issue with such open-ended investigations though is this – everyone is guilty of something. I recall listening to season 1 of the Serial podcast, involving the case of Adnan Syed, and Sarah Koenig made a simple yet brilliant point about any police investigation; no matter the investigation, under the microscope, you will always turn up errors. Thus, the idea that a broad reaching investigation of a political candidate is not going to turn up something untoward is as likely as throwing an object into the air and it never hitting the ground.

The original charge of the investigation was about collusion – that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to bring down the Clinton campaign. This has always been illogical for four reasons. One, Hillary wasn’t a great candidate. She lost to Obama in the primaries in 2008,  struggled again in the primaries in 2016, and eventually needed the Super Delegates to overcome the Sanders Campaign. Two, 2016 was a change election and Trump was the only candidate who promised change. Trump vs Sanders would have been a very interesting race, not-at-all resembling the hockey-jumper beat-down Trump put on Clinton. Three, Hillary had a credibility problem – she was perceived as a liar and the electorate did not trust her. And four, you mean to tell me there’s a supposed program that hackers can load into cyberspace that makes Hillary Clinton suddenly unlikable? That suggests she was actually likeable to begin with. Sophisticated hacking isn’t required to accomplish that end, you only need to run repeats of her campaign ads or dreadful campaign slogan and voters would turn off immediately.

As hard as she tried to play the woman card, she did not and could not generate the same enthusiasm that President Obama did. Black voters did not warm to her after she ran against Obama in 2008, she had little accomplishments to point to as Secretary of State, men were given few actual reasons to vote for her, and the Sanders campaign held a grudge against her (and fair enough too). None of this is Trump’s fault, it’s all internal Democrat squabbling. That said, it appears the Trump team did genuinely meet with Russians to collect dirt on candidate Clinton and they have to own that.

If true, whilst not surprising, it does not look good for the Trump campaign. President Trump says this is politics as usual, which is right enough. I would argue that a light shone over the Clinton campaign would reveal the same, if not worse. But, if the Trump campaign can be held accountable for this meeting then they should be, although let’s not let this distract us from the actual impact of this meeting. Because the question remains, how did the information they supposedly collected at this meeting influence the final election result? The meeting looks sus, no doubt, but given how the Clinton campaign was sailing up a tidal wave into the wind, how do they measure the impact on Clinton losing? This meeting proves a meeting, and may even prove the reason behind the meeting, but how does it prove the actual impact the meeting had on the election outcome? Sitting around Trump tower, eating small triangle sandwiches in comfy leather chairs and talking down about Hillary doesn’t prove impact, it just sounds like a good day out.

I hope Democrats haven’t stalled us for over a year without answering that question. Just because Trump met some Russians doesn’t equal Hillary losing an election. She was more than qualified to lose that on her own.