WHY NOT GET IT RIGHT IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Years ago, when I worked in a factory, I recall a popular side-of-toolbox and workbench sign that went something like "Why is there never enough time to do it right in the first place and always plenty of time to do it over?"  That seemed to be the reality on the shop floor more often than the green-eyeshade crowd would have liked.  The job gets moved to the top of the queue, and it must be ready to ship by LUNCHTIME ... and then something turns up wrong upon review or at the test floor, and then it really isn't urgent that it be ready to ship by Miller Time.

So too let it be with the Democrats' partisan impeachment show.  Without irony, a Huffington Post writer called Matt Fuller writes about the aftermath of the likely acquittal.

Rather than a question of whether the House will subpoena [former national security adviser John] Bolton, the real issue may be whether he will abide by the order to testify.

Bolton’s initial refusal to testify in the House impeachment investigation scared off Democrats from entering into a potentially long court battle to force him to appear. While the courts have previously ruled that other officials ― like former White House Counsel Don McGahn ― must comply with congressional subpoenas, Bolton’s lawyers indicated that a subpoena for him would require a separate court case because of the classified and national security implications of his testimony.

Somehow it was so urgent for those Democrats to draft articles of impeachment in a basement of the Capitol and deliver them to the Senate faster than Santa Claus could complete his rounds.  Oh wait, it was more fun to have every Democrat operative with a byline going on about "witnesses and documents" and otherwise delaying the beginning of the trial until the Republican majority in the Senate said, "OK, Democrats, have it your way."

Now, though, the Democrats in the house have all the time in the world to issue subpoenas and have the Administration litigate them in court, you know, the way things worked during the Watergate inquiry.

I suspect we're going to see additional articles of impeachment issuing forth from the House, possibly including an attempt to relitigate the abuse of power request-a-favor-of-Ukraine again.  This time, though, it might suffice to keep raising dust about the existing president and hope enough swing voters turn out in November.

House Democrats have thus far avoided calling outright for a Bolton subpoena because they wanted to keep the pressure on the Senate. They didn’t want to give GOP senators the excuse to claim they didn’t need to hear Bolton testify because the House would.

“We shouldn’t be going to the ifs,” Progressive Caucus co-chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) told HuffPost. “Because, well, sure, the House can do that, just like we can wait for Bolton’s book to come forward. But the responsibility is with the Senate to actually call him as a witness, and nobody should allow them to get away with shifting the attention to anybody else.”

With the Senate voting down witnesses, however, and the impeachment trial nearing its expected end, that dynamic in the House will shift significantly.

We have much to look forward to.