John Hirschauer writes at National Review Online about congressional Democrats’ latest attempt to impeach President Trump.
I don’t envy Nancy Pelosi.
The base of her party has been apoplectic for the better part of three years. Not without help — from the moment that Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton, elected Democrats have carefully built up a sense of panic and scandal around the Trump administration, a sense that, in fairness, has been unwittingly and clumsily abetted by the behavior of the president and his aides. Escalated by the breathless outrage of the media, a shroud of illegitimacy has enveloped the Trump White House from Day 1, and this shroud has, in turn, allowed the base of the Democratic party to avoid facing democracy’s colder realities, such as: Sometimes you lose. And it’s not necessarily anyone’s fault — not Russia, not racism, not rednecks — but your own.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t try to pretend otherwise.
First came efforts to undo the Trump presidency via the Electoral College by flipping enough electors to reverse the result (watching progressives, I must add, make use of the electoral college’s anti-democratic features was quite a sight to behold). After that failed, a California Democrat launched an “Impeach Trump Leadership” PAC. …
… [N]ow that House Democrats might — might! — finally have sufficient predicate to pursue impeachment, Pelosi faces another challenge: to convince the American people that this iteration of Trump hysteria is the genuine article, and that this animal is different from the one that gave birth to Rob Reiner, Keith Olbermann, and the rest of the farcical hyenas who made such a mockery of the Russia probe.
