IMPEACH IN HASTE, REPENT AT LEISURE.

Now that the Senate has acquitted Our President, the Democrats seem bent on demonstrating that a failure to convict and remove will lead to a public loss of faith in national institutions by failing to properly count the votes in a caucus and failing to conduct a candidates' forum that doesn't degenerate into a shouting match.

Why should Democratic incompetence in February be any different from Democratic incompetence in conducting an impeachment?

It was perfectly fair for Democrats to set all the rules in the House impeachment process. They held secret testimony, and then they held hearings with no GOP witnesses. Then they held hearings where maybe the White House could have witnesses, at Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler’s discretion, but those witnesses couldn’t have legal counsel.

Then instead of subpoenaing the witnesses they wanted like John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney, the Democrats said, “Oh my goodness, there’s no time for that, this is an emergency, we have to impeach Trump RIGHT NOW!” Even without those witnesses. At that point, they sat on the articles of impeachment for weeks hoping for some miracle to save their hopeless case. And by the way, if the acquittal isn’t legitimate because we didn’t hear from Bolton, how on earth is the impeachment itself legitimate?

The speed with which coordinated Democratic talking points infect the news media represents some of the most efficient propaganda the nation has ever seen. Efficient, but not effective.

That's The Federalist's David Marcus, and yes, he has a point of view, and yet, wouldn't an investigation that, oh, developed the evidence, and interviewed the witnesses, and obtained court orders where sources and methods or executive privilege arose, have been more effective?

Here's law professor Jonathan Turley making a similar argument.

House Democrats made a decision to choose certain failure over completing their impeachment case. There was no reason to expect Senate Republicans to assist House managers in making their case, particularly in calling witnesses not subpoenaed by the House. Democrats had opposed any witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Clinton and voted as a bloc for a summary acquittal. There was no reason to expect Republicans to adopt an entirely different approach.

We will never know how this impeachment trial would have unfolded if the House had waited to secure additional testimony and court orders. One thing, however, is certain. The case against the president could only have become stronger. The vote for witnesses failed by one for a tie and by two for a majority. A more complete record could well have tipped the balance and certainly would have made the vote against witnesses more difficult for some senators. Instead, the House submitted an incomplete record and failed to subpoena important witnesses like Bolton, making it quite easy for the Senate to refuse to do what the House had never even tried.

None of the explanations offered by House Democrats make any logical sense. That, however, does not matter. As Todd said of supporters of the president, people “want to be lied to sometimes” and “do not always love being told hard truths.” The hard truth is that House Democrats lost this case the minute they rushed an impeachment vote, and they knew it. With the approaching Iowa caucuses, they chose a failed impeachment rather than taking a few more months to work on a more complete case against Trump, a case more difficult to summarily dismiss.

Yes, and whatever effect that hurried impeachment (see Mollie Hemingway for all the ways the Donks screwed up) might have on voters in the general election might be overwhelmed by, oh, that failed count of caucus participants or that smackdown of a candidates' forum, and we have yet to see whether allocating delegates proportionally in primaries will force a brokered convention in Milwaukee.  The American Conservative's Peter van Buren sees that voters, particularly those loyal to Our President, will weigh the evidence and find the Democrats wanting.

If they had a real case a special prosecutor could have sorted through Parnas and Hunter and Bolton, with subpoenas if necessary, and warrants could have shown us exactly what was said in those calls. But that would have come up weaker than Mueller and the Democrats knew it.

You don’t think voters see they were played — again? As with Brett Kavanaugh, when things seemed darkest, the Democrats produced a witness that appeared to turn everything around.

Yes, Bullwinkle can only pull that "new evidence has turned up" rabbit out of his hat a few times before people get wise to the scam.  Mr van Buren concludes with an observation consistent with Reality Prevailing (q.v.)  "Would you trust the nation to the people the Democratic party has become? Because that is the question Democrats have thrust into the minds of voters. As they have said many times, this was always more about America than it was about Trump."  And with that Iowa failure in mind, an Adam Schiff quote Commentary's John Podhoretz found is particularly amusing.

The idea that the coming of the Iowa caucus would serve as a key factor regarding the timing of an effort to do so revealed the hollowness of the effort. Perhaps the key moment in the entire process was Rep. Adam Schiff saying that it was necessary to impeach Trump to make sure “he doesn’t cheat again.”

To a first approximation, calling attention to what might be campaign malfeasance is a valid political move, but using a strong sanction such as impeachment, particularly in such a rushed way, isn't. We'll see how voters respond, come November.

Perhaps, though, the real repentance will be among Democrats.  David "Voluntary Xchange" Tufte suggested that the timing of the inquiry coincided with a brief surge by Massachusetts senator Elizabeth "Fauxahontas" Warren in the polls.  Perhaps the Democrat Women's Caucus saw an opportunity to sink former vice president Joe Biden.  Now Mrs Warren, Mr Biden, and the unlikely beneficiary, Minnesota senator Amy "I'm just here for the ranch" Klobuchar herself perhaps also past her surge and back to the Lake Wobegon church supper.

I'll see Dave his conjecture and raise a wilder one:  did Donald Trump troll the Democrats into conducting the inquiry just to get it out of the way?  Yes, he professes to be distressed with that mark on his resume; on the other hand, he was comparing and contrasting his economy (it's not his economy; presidents get too much blame and take too much credit) with the pressure from the Resistance to impeach him in rallies for at least a year and a half.