Democrats wanted impeachment in the worst way possible. It turned out that was just what they got. They announced that they planned to impeach President Trump before he had even taken office. That breaks the unofficial first rule of impeachment — always act as if it were a painful necessity, not something you are doing for fun or out of spite.

When President Richard Nixon faced impeachment in 1974, everyone understood that it was a necessity. It was only the second impeachment in history, and it was being done more than a century after the first; when President Bill Clinton was impeached in 1999, it was rather more frivolous and a great deal more partisan. When Trump was impeached, it was entirely partisan, and it had been planned before the events that supposedly required it had even taken place.