Impeaching Trump and then not following through with what you did? What idiotic bumbling!

Don't start what you don't know how to finish. What a spectacle of incompetence!

And then they slink off for their Christmas vacation. Thanks for the tidings of comfort and joy.

I started watching the Democratic candidates' debate last night. The first question was about the impeachment: What should be done now, now that the House Democrats have voted to impeach without amassing and building support from a strong majority of Americans?

With the exception of Andrew Yang, they all blathered about how Trump should be impeached, as if the argument that hasn't worked yet could work if it were just repeated endlessly. It's not working, and you have no new ideas, no creativity, no thinking on your feet, and no restraint about seizing power, beginning to use it, and then not knowing how to complete the action that you began.

Yang spoke last. It looked as though he was going to speak second to last, before Tom Steyer, as moderator Judy Woodruff called "Mr. Yang," while looking straight at Tom Steyer. Yang had to call out "I'm over here." Woodruff kept speaking to Steyer, calling him "Mr. Yang," and Yang called out "Judy!" and then Judy realized her screwup and finally addressed the person she was looking at as "Mr. Steyer." I guess all businessmen look alike.

Anyway, what Yang said was (transcript): "What we have to do is we have to stop being obsessed over impeachment, which, unfortunately, strikes many Americans like a ball game where you know what the score is going to be, and actually start digging in and solving the problems that got Donald Trump elected in the first place."

That gave me a little hope that the debate could go somewhere, but the next question was about the new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada and it immediately devolved into spewing factoids about how our economy is actually terrible or something. The subject of suicide got dragged in. Bernie was yelling. Something about Bernie's yelling makes me grab reflexively for the remote control. I can't take the perpetual anger and negativity, and I used to find Bernie Sanders to be charmingly lovable.

I turned the debate off in the middle of that second question. I heard myself say, "I'm not watching debates anymore." I wasn't just turning off that debate. I felt I was turning off all debates, that debates had become something a sensible, sensitive person ought to avoid.

I switched over to volleyball and enjoyed seeing the Badgers defeat Baylor in the Final Four. Now, I'm up at 3 this morning, scanning headlines over my coffee and crackers, and I balk at reading things like "Trump Impeachment Trial in Doubt as Democrats Weigh Withholding Articles/Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would wait to see what the trial in the Senate would look like before sending the two charges there" (the top story in the NYT). I'm afraid the NYT is going to try to con me into buying the notion that Nancy Pelosi has got this, that she's a wise strategist and an inspiration to all.

But I'll read it:

The day after the House cast historic votes to impeach President Trump, Speaker Nancy Pelosi put an abrupt halt on the proceedings, holding back from sending the charges to the Republican-led Senate in a politically risky bid to exert influence over the contours of an election-year trial....

A politically risky bid to exert influence... The holding back of the impeachment is another power tool to pick up and just go ahead and see if you can use to your political advantage, but the NYT is portraying this move as courageous, doing the right thing, in spite of the risk of political damage. But I know damned well that if there were more political advantage in just sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate immediately, she'd have done that.

[T]he speaker’s strategy is... a gamble. Having toiled to present the House impeachment inquiry and the votes on Wednesday as a somber duty rooted in the Constitution, Ms. Pelosi risks appearing to politicize the matter if she withholds the charges for negotiating leverage.

Risks appearing to politicize.... oh, come on! Impeachment was politicized all along. That's why it had to be denied over and over again with all that "somber duty" talk. This isn't a "risk." It's a certainty. Pelosi originally knew that impeachment was a political mistake, but she yielded to pressure from her left, where less politically insightful members of her party clamored for that mistake, and she was, apparently, afraid that not giving them what they demanded would cause more political damage. There were mistakes all around, and she chose her mistake. She got the impeachment vote, and now she doesn't know what to do with it, so she's freezing in place.

“I admit, I am not sure what leverage there is in refraining from sending us something we do not want,” [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell said with a wry smile from the Senate floor. “But alas, if they can figure that out, they can explain it. Meanwhile, other House Democrats say they would prefer never to transmit the articles. Fine with me!”

The Senate trial is the next step, as dictated by the Constitution. But to prompt that proceeding...

Wait. If it's "dictated by the Constitution," then the Senate must act. If some other step is required first, then it's not "dictated." It's contingent. Pick one!

... Ms. Pelosi must transmit the articles and name impeachment managers who will make the case in the Senate. And for now, the two parties are at loggerheads.

It seems to me that if there is a case in the Senate — dictated by the Constitution — and one party fails to show up at the time the trier of law and fact announces, they have defaulted. Failing to show up for a trial is not a way to prevent a trial from occurring. But let's assume the Senate will do nothing until the House managers come forward to present their case. If they never do so, what happens? Do the people care? Is "impeachment" degraded into weird futile swatting at the President? We've been seeing that nonstop since before he won the election.