To say the least, Jeff Sessions is an unlikely champion of our constitutional liberties, but the fact is that his sense of professional ethics is about the only thing that is preventing us from becoming an illiberal democracy. It isn’t just Mueller, although that matters a lot. It is the complete politicization of the DOJ which is at stake here.
Some GOP senators are apparently telling Trump that it is OK to replace Sessions after the election. If that happens, you can be sure that Trump will be looking for someone who will turn the DOJ into a body designed to protect his legal interests and lock up his opponents. There is no reason to believe that a Senate controlled by the GOP will do anything to prohibit that; after all, if you accept the logic of an argument by a pro-GOP commentator in today’s NYT, an independent DOJ is just a “norm,” not a constitutional requirement, and “norms” are designed to evolve over time.
The bottom line is that it is really, really, really important for the Democrats to do everything possible to win control of the Senate in November, even though the odds are stacked against them. If they don’t, all hell is going to break loose.