Democrats have tried to impeach every elected Republican president since Dwight D. Eisenhower.

They’ve never succeeded and there’s no reason to believe this time is different. As Bill Mitchell tweeted:

“If China thought there were any real chance of Trump’s impeachment ofrloss in 2020, they wouldn’t be negotiating and making trade deals now. The stock market and China know the same thing. Trump won’t be impeached and he wins in 2020.”

Why this practice persists is that they are continually reluctant to accept political outcomes they don’t like. David Hirsanyi argues this point well as well as illustrating perfectly the left’s projection of their actions onto their opponents: 

“Can Republicans relearn how to accept political outcomes they don’t like?” What in holy hell is the Washington Post’s Paul Waldman talking about? According to the piece, Matt Bevin’s (completely legal) request to re-canvass the Kentucky election portends unwillingness by the GOP to accept the results of the democratic process. Talk about projection.

We shouldn’t have to say more than “Stacey Abrams.” And it’s not just that the Democrat is a full-blown conspiracy theorist, it’s that leading members of her party enable her attacks on the veracity of elections. Joe Biden claimed, without any evidence, that “voter suppression is the reason why Stacey Abrams isn’t governor right now.” Pete Buttigieg said suppression “racially motivated” in his remarks to the group that Abrams “ought to be governor.” And they’re not alone.

Abrams lost by 54,723 votes.

Waldman gives Abrams a pass for her recalcitrance, because, he notes, she “ended her campaign for governor of Georgia but pointedly refused to call it a ‘concession’ because, she said, it would grant the election, in which her opponent engaged in various forms of voter suppression, a legitimacy it did not deserve.” Well, yes, that’s the point, isn’t it? Everyone has a reason for why they don’t accept results. Democrats tend to rely on nebulous claims of “voter suppression.” But Abrams had legal avenues available to her, and they turned up nothing. 

The incomparable Sharyl Attkisson has done a streamlined timeline of the actions to drive President Trump from office.

It began August 15, 2016, before he was even elected when Peter Strzok FBI counterintelligence chief and his lover FBI attorney Lisa Page met with FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe about creating an “insurance policy” in case Trump were elected. She marks the dates and the players and ends with this:

Oct. 31, 2019: The House approves impeachment process rules. The vote is largely along party lines, with two Democrats siding with Republicans.

It could be a coincidence that so many key names in this timeline -- from John Brennan and James Comey, to Ukraine and CNN -- factor into the Trump impeachment push. And, further, it could be a coincidence that we have ended up where some Trump critics said they hoped to be, even before he was sworn in.

On the other hand, in retrospect, the biggest surprise might be that, all things considered, it took them so long to get to this point. 

Despite the countless headers, amounting to little more than leaks from Adam Schiff and anonymous “insiders,” once the Schiff hearings got underway it was clear the factual basis for claiming Trump’s call to Ukraine’s president  was improper bore the same relationship to the contents of the call as Schiff’s “parody” of it.

The Department of State “star witnesses” in their secret basement hearings proved disastrous for him and the impeachment effort. As the rolled-out transcripts this week reveal. William B Taylor, Jr., was the senior American diplomat in Ukraine. He “admitted in congressional testimony last month that he was not part of the July 25 phone call between the U.S. and Ukrainian presidents, that he didn’t see a transcript or readout of it until late September when it was declassified and released, and that he has never even spoken to President Donald Trump.” His source for the president’s intentions was the New York Times. 

If the Times had somehow read into the anodyne Trump-Zelensky conversation Trump’s mind, it was clear that there was no evidence their mind-reading was accurate. Not only did Ukraine’s president deny any pressure, but the timeline of military aid doesn’t follow the Times’ fable:

Under questioning from Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, Taylor also testified that the Ukrainian government wasn’t aware U.S. military funding had been temporarily suspended until late August, and then only after the information was leaked to the news media, meaning an alleged quid pro quo would have been impossible.

“So, if nobody in the Ukrainian government is aware of a military hold at the time of the Trump-Zelensky call, then, as a matter of law and as a matter of fact, there can be no quid pro quo, based on military aid,” Ratcliffe, a former federal prosecutor, said. “I just want to be real clear that, again, as of July 25th, you have no knowledge of a quid pro quo involving military aid.”

“July 25th is a week after the hold was put on the security assistance,” Taylor testified. “And July 25th, they had a conversation between the two presidents, where it was not discussed.”

“And to your knowledge, nobody in the Ukrainian government was aware of the hold?” Ratcliffe asked.

“That is correct,” Taylor responded.

Taylor also testified that he didn’t see any official readout of the July 25 phone call until it was declassified and released by Trump in late September.

“I did not see any official readout of the call until it was publicly released on September 25th,” he said.

Taylor also admitted that U.S. Ambassador to the EU, Ambassador Gordon Sondland, “told me many times that President Trump said it was not a quid pro quo.” He also admitted that Ukraine’s president never committed to conduct the investigations that the President asked for before military aid was released to Ukraine.

Lost in all this is an even more serious reason to question the wisdom the bureaucrats' in the foreign policy and national security establishments rush to provide military assistance to Ukraine -- evidence of “Chinese attempts to buying up some Ukrainian technology.” Something about which the administration rightfully had serious concerns.

"[T]here is substantial reason to question a key underlying assumption of the House Democratic narrative that Ukraine is such a reliable friend of the United States, deserving of our unquestioned support to combat Russian aggression, that President Trump’s hesitancy in immediately releasing the military aid jeopardized vital U.S. national security interests. Combating Chinese military ambitions is certainly vital to U.S. national security.”

A second witness, former State Department official George Kent, did no more to advance Schiff’s case for impeachment than did Taylor.  Kent raised concerns about the “appearance of conflict of interest stemming from [Hunter] Biden’s position on Burisma’s board and testified “that former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich was prepared by the Obama State Department to address questions about Mr. Biden’s position during her Senate confirmation process.” As this was during the time Hunter’s father, Joe Biden, then Obama’s vice  president, was running Ukraine policy, it means the Obama administration was well aware of the problem.

Well, the hearings are about to start publicly this week under terms that seriously restrict the President’s defenders who, among other things, cannot subpoena witnesses nor question them without Schiff’s approval of the questions.

Still, they announced they plan to call Hunter Biden’s partner on Burisma, Archer Devon, Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American activist who in 2016 reportedly funneled incriminating information about Trump campaign officials in 2016. Also on the list of witnesses they wish to call is Nellie Ohr, who worked for Fusion GPS and funneled nonsense peddled in the Dossier to her husband, Bruce, a DoJ official. She had previously told Congressional investigators that GPS was getting their information from Ukrainians. “Including Serhiy Leschchenko who recently lost his post from the Ukrainian parliament.”

The list of those they wish to question also includes those who already have testified to Democrats on the committee in closed sessions: “including ex-National security Council official Tim Morrison, former Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker, and high-ranking State Department official David Hale.

Even Adam Schiff is not immune from facing the music. A House Intelligence Committee ranking member demanded Schiff appear for a deposition behind closed doors. 

Schiff’s “whistleblower” reportedly is still demanding anonymity and refusing publicly to testify, although the most likely suspect has been named by numerous sources. His hearsay account, substantially at variance with the transcript and his reluctance to shed his cloak of secrecy, makes it more likely than not that he was part of the plot to undo the 2016 election of President Trump.

The accounts I cite are from the released transcripts, not from gossip by interested parties on the Hill to cooperating journalists.