Dems are blaming Mueller rather than themselves

There must have been a point in the Robert Mueller hearings when the big thinkers of CNN and MSNBC curled up on the floor in fetal positions and began breathing into brown paper bags, trying to remain calm.

Breathe. Collusion. Breathe. "Did not reach a determination as to whether the president committed a crime." Breathe. Ted Lieu? Breathe.

Those paper bags popped in and out, out and in, when Democratic media wizard David Axelrod and Harvard Law's Laurence Tribe pronounced the Mueller hearings an unmitigated disaster for their side. And Donald Trump puffed himself up to crow.

"The Democrats had nothing," the president said after Mueller's testimony. "And now they have less than nothing."

He's already elevated the hard left of the Democratic Party -- the socialist "Squad," or as I'd call them, The Gang of Four -- as his true ideological opponents in 2020. And then Democrats said Mueller failed them.

"This is delicate to say, but Mueller, whom I deeply respect, has not publicly testified before Congress in at least six years," Axelrod said on Twitter. "And he does not appear as sharp as he was then."

It was as if Axelrod had just sentenced the former special counsel to be turned into crackers.

Tribe agreed.

"Much as I hate to say it, this morning's hearing was a disaster," Tribe tweeted. "Far from breathing life into his damning report, the tired Robert Mueller sucked the life out of it. The effort to save democracy and the rule of law from this lawless president has been set back, not advanced."

That was after the morning session. It didn't really get much better in the afternoon. Politicians and pundits spent the evening in those little boxes on TV, jabbering about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin -- but Robert Mueller isn't one of them.

So what happens when liberal Democrats who despise Trump are mugged by the reality that when it comes to the Mueller report, there is no there there?

Breathe. Breathe. Stay calm. Breathe.

Mueller seemed lost in his testimony, seemingly unsure of just what was in his own vaunted report about Trump and that mythic conspiracy with Russians.

Mueller seemed confused, asking committee members to restate their questions so that he might grasp them.

"Mr. Mueller spoke haltingly as he testified," sniffed The New York Times, "blunting attacks on him by Republicans but also limiting Democrats' efforts to elevate his words and raising questions about his acuity."

Ouch. His acuity?

When the great gray lady slaps the old gray man, the lady wins.

It's all clearly unfair to Mueller. It was as if you were watching an aging uncle sitting helplessly in a dentist's chair for a root canal, his one foot kicking.

He wasn't confident in his knowledge of his own report, which was clearly staff-driven, not Mueller-driven, and having his lawyer sworn in, sitting next to him, ready to help, said as much.

Republicans pounced. Democrats flailed. Privately, those Democrats on the Judiciary and Intelligence committees should be flailing in range of their chairmen, Jerrold Nadler and Adam Schiff, who wanted these hearings just for the sound bites they might provide.

Mueller and the Democrats were the losers in all this.

That wasn't the Robert Mueller America knows, not the Robert Mueller who took over the FBI just before 9/11. This wasn't the Robert Mueller who served honorably and bravely in Vietnam, made his money in the law, then left lucrative private practice to prosecute criminals.

This was a Robert Mueller who seemed too old, who couldn't remember the name of the president who appointed him as U.S. attorney years ago, the Mueller who couldn't give Democrats the dramatic sound bites they so desperately wanted.

And so Democrats like Axelrod and Tribe trashed him.

The left's anxiety attacks are their own affair. It's what happens when people insist on clinging to a fantasy, that Mueller would appear and make their dreams a reality.

Mueller had warned them he wouldn't perform for them. He told them he'd stay with what was in the report, but the Democrats trotted him out anyway, and they cranked up their organ music as if he were their monkey and told him to dance.

And he wouldn't.

Is that Mueller's fault? No, it's their fault.

The Democrats said Americans didn't read the Mueller report, they wanted Mueller to give them the movie. But it wasn't "Seven Days in May." It was more like "Pee-wee's Big Adventure."

The Mueller report made it clear that there wasn't enough to prove a conspiracy with the Russians. And without a crime, all the Democrats have is their hurt feelings. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knows it.

As Trump puffed his chest in victory, the Democrats lined up and tried to spin again Wednesday evening, but they were exhausted, and it was over.

They'll keep beating their Russian horse. But Trump and the Republicans will now move to the next phase of the story. Attorney General William Barr and FBI Inspector General Michael Horowitz are investigating the federal investigators who started it all.

"I believe what you're going to find out, you are going to find out a lot of things that were done very wrong," Trump said. "That's something you haven't been writing about. And that has to do with the other side, with this thing called 'investigate the investigators.' Let's see what happens. That's going to be very interesting."

It will be. And that's what elections are for.

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John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune who also hosts a radio show on WLS-AM.