"Someone had a dirty sense of humor at AP."

A reader named Jake emails, linking to "It’s in and it’s big: Senate unveils $1T infrastructure bill."

"The vote is on a resolution that would set rules for the public phase of an impeachment inquiry that has so far been conducted exclusively behind closed doors."

"It would authorize the House Intelligence Committee — the panel that has been leading the investigation and conducting private depositions — to convene public hearings and produce a report that will guide the Judiciary Committee as it considers whether to draft articles of impeachment against President Trump. The measure would also give the president rights in the Judiciary Committee, allowing his lawyers to participate in hearings and giving Republicans the chance to request subpoenas for witnesses and documents. But the White House says it still does not provide 'basic due process rights,' and Republicans complain that their ability to issue subpoenas is limited. They would need the consent of Democrats, or a vote of a majority of members. That has been standard in previous modern impeachments. The majority has the final say over how the proceedings unfold."

The NYT reports.

This is not the vote the Republicans have been demanding — that is not "a formal vote to authorize the impeachment inquiry," which is what happened in the cases of Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon. So the Democrats are doing some theater of voting out in the open today, but it's not the vote that accords with historical practice. It's not the vote the Republicans have been talking about. It's a vote about what the rules will be.

Of course, the House gets to make its own rules — that's in the Constitution — and the majority will win and get what rules they want and can get away with claiming for themselves. Apparently, the idea is to give the President's supporters nothing until the Intelligence Committee has finished its work. The Democrats apparently want the Intelligence Committee to produce a one-sided report, with any balance on the side of the President to come only after the matter is referred to the Judiciary Committee.

So the Democrats will be out in the open today, explaining to us Americans why that is fair and why that is about getting to the truth? How will that work out? Here's how the NYT puts it:

But Thursday’s vote indicates that Democrats, once wary of holding a vote on the issue, have now united solidly behind the idea.

Or they've heard enough criticism about their partisan, secretive ways and they're yielding to pressure to legitimatize themselves. The NYT's use of the phrase "a vote on the issue" hides the just-admitted reality that it's not a vote on the issue the Republicans demanded — the issue of whether to authorize the impeachment inquiry. It's a vote on procedural rules for continuing the inquiry. The difference in issues is obvious if you think of the consequences of a "no" vote. What would happen if there's a "no" vote on these rules? Things would continue as they've been going, right?

They believe it adds an air of legitimacy to the inquiry and gives them practical tools they will need to effectively — and quickly — make their case to the public. It is also meant to call the bluff of Republicans who have been arguing for weeks that the process lacks legitimacy because the full House hasn’t voted on it.

But it doesn't call the bluff because it's not a vote on authorizing the inquiry. The Democrats are trying to get something while playing it safe. They're trying to get our opinion of their legitimacy.

We'll see how that works out.

ADDED: The NYT gives a lot away in saying "They believe it adds an air of legitimacy..." Democrats are only trying for an air of legitimacy, not actual legitimacy. And right now, they see themselves as lacking even an air of legitimacy.

IN THE COMMENTS: Jake said:

Call the bluff?

How were the republicans bluffing?

What happened to that Democrats-regret-their-gender-politics article that topped the NYT page earlier this morning?

Drudge had it at the top of his page last night even before it was available on the NYT page, and it's still at the top of Drudge's left-hand column, with the teaser "NYT PAGE ONE: Dems second-guessing strategy of focusing on women's issues over economy... "

But try to find it on page 1 now. I had to do a word search on the page to find it in fine print under "more news," with the title "Democrats Count on Edge With Women to Limit Losses," which sounds like the opposite of what Drudge saw in the article.

Let's look at the article — which is by Jackie Calmes — and see what's actually in it.

Democrats are nervously counting on an enduring edge among female voters....

So that's the idea in the NYT headline.

Yet... some are second-guessing the party’s strategy of focusing more on issues like abortion and birth control than on jobs and the economy.

And that's the part Drudge extracted.

We get the opinions of a couple Democratic Party pollsters. Geoff Garin says: "If Democrats weren’t running on [issues like abortion and birth control], the situation would be much worse." And Anna Greenberg says: "It’s certainly true that we’d be doing better if we were doing better with women, but I do not see a disproportionate drop with women relative to men." That seems to mean Democrats are losing men at a faster pace than they are losing women. But Greenberg's comment, unlike Garin's, doesn't purport to know whether, overall, emphasis on the female body is a net benefit to Democrats.

All the way down in the second-to-last paragraph, Greenberg is quoted again. She's complaining that Republicans were "deliberately misconstruing" the Democrats' gender politics. She says the term "war on women" is a Republican term for what the Democrats are saying about Republicans.

Yet [Greenberg] and other Democratic strategists complain their party has not effectively espoused a broader economic agenda, when women tell pollsters their top concern is jobs and the economy.

And there's the Drudge take on the meaning of the article, buried at the bottom of the article, with no direct quotes and no names for the "other Democratic strategists" who, apparently, "complain."

IN THE COMMENTS: After Jake asked "Since when is 'War on Women' a Republican term?," chickelit "What does the venerable Althouse archive say? When did Althouse first pick up the term and in what context?" Back in 2012, I traced the present-day use of the term to a February 2011 NYT editorial, "The War on Women":

These are treacherous times for women’s reproductive rights and access to essential health care. House Republicans mistakenly believe they have a mandate to drastically scale back both even as abortion warfare is accelerating in the states. To stop them, President Obama’s firm leadership will be crucial. So will the rising voices of alarmed Americans.

UPDATE: The "Democrats Count on Edge" story now — at 4 Eastern Time, November 1 — has no link on the front page at all, and when I got to the page of links on "U.S. Politics," I have to scroll down the space of 2 screens before I see the story. 

"President Barack Obama is warning Russia there will be costs if Russia intervenes militarily in Ukraine."

"Obama says the U.S. is deeply concerned by reports of military movements by Russia inside Ukraine."

IN THE COMMENTS: Jake quotes text that appears at the linked AP article...

"Any violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity would be deeply stabilizing," Obama said in a hastily arranged statement.

He snarks:

Deeply stabilizing?

Hastily arranged indeed.

ADDED: Here's video of Obama's statement. He said "Any violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity would be deeply destabilizing."