There's a fine line between analyzing news and nakedly offering advice to one side and now Peggy Noonan has crossed it.

Far from being one of her interesting and sometimes very very good touchy-feely analyses -- I've been willing to give her the benefit of the doubt on much despite her record of hating President Trump -- her latest on the impeachment sham is all about helping the Democrats get it done. She's not even pretending to be the objective observer of American politics and its voters. In this piece, she's cheerleading and offering advice -- for Team Schiff.

To impeachment itself. It received a powerful push forward when the House voted Thursday for a new, public phase in the inquiry. This means among other things that the Democrats think they have the goods. They wouldn’t go live unless they did.

Really? The same Democrats who tried to impeach the great Ronald Reagan over the Iran-Contra Ollie-North thing, with Sen. Ted Kennedy on the Senate side a sitting KGB agent? The same people who rammed Obamacare through on a one-party vote and lots of arm-twisting? The same people who plotted together to overturn the results of the 2016 election, which is what this impeachment imbroglio on cooperation from Ukraine is derived from? Ummmmm...these are people who are capable of anything, and facts be damned.

Facts in fact are so damned, in fact, that these people are keeping their hearings secret, selectively leaking only the politically advantageous parts without context, silencing Republicans from calling witnesses, preventing Republicans from issuing subpoenas, or cripes, even allowing Republicans from attending, and for the ones who are attending, not allowing them to ask questions. As for the president's rights to due process, he's SOL. As Noonan argued earlier, it's got to be fair to work, and this is still 6,000 miles from fair. 

Who needs 'fair' when it's a done deal? First, she argues hard that President Trump is guilty of quid pro quo and everyone knows it. No need to argue, no need to get context. Get a load of this:

The president’s defenders have argued that in the transcripts of the phone call the White House released, he never clearly lays out a quid pro quo. I suppose it depends how you read it, but in a book I wrote long ago I noted that in government and journalism people don’t say “Do it my way or I’ll blow you up.” Their language and approach are more rounded. They imitate 1930s gangster movies in which the suave mobster tells the saloon keeper from whom he’s demanding protection money, “Nice place you have here, shame if anything happened to it.”

It's a flawed premise and it reflects her inability to admit that the Democrats are in deep trouble for this stunt, and President Trump is very likely to win. It also reveals her astonishingly bad understanding of President Trump. Trump, remember, is the guy who directly told Turkey's leader in a letter released to the public that one shot at the Kurds and he trashes Turkey's economy. That's not a guy who does 'nice place you have here...' Trump is direct as hell and everyone sees it.

He's always the barking hotel manager who puts out fires and minces no words. 

But for Noonan, Trump is guilty of Democrat-style sneaky-pete, the kind the Obamatons performed as they directed JournoList, spied on reporters, sicced the IRS on political dissidents or went through the trash of Republican donors to intimidate them. Democrats practice this kind of politics all the time which is why they're the Evil Party and Republicans are the Stupid Party. But now Noonan says Trump acts like Democrats do, when it's very obvious that they are polar opposites. For Noonan, that's end of subject, Trump's guilty, and never mind that no, doing Godfather stuff is not what people are thinking. Just read this terrific essay by American Thinker contributor Eric Georgatos on what people really are thinking.

Then the mask comes off and she starts offing actual advice to the Democrats on deplorables-control. How to fool them. If you thought Noonan's premise was bad, this stuff gets really bad. She crosses the line from analysis to consulting after her first nonsense argument. 

I'll highlight the most naked examples:

In the past I’ve said the leaders of the inquiry will have to satisfy the American people that they’re trying to be fair, and not just partisan fools. So far that score is mixed. Republicans charge with some justice that it’s been secretive, the process loaded and marked by partisan creepiness. If I were Adam Schiff now I wouldn’t be fair, I’d be generous—providing all materials, information, dully inviting the Republicans in. That would be a deadly move—to show respect and rob Republicans of a talking point.

...and...

It should be communicated to the president’s supporters that they must at some point ask themselves this question: Is it acceptable that an American president muscle an ally in this way for personal political gain?

Fine and dandy except that's not what's going on. Obama did that sort of thing, and worse -- just ask the Israelis about their election -- and Trump did not. Trump's phone inquiry of Ukraine was a legitimate government function, and it had no quid pro quo, the Ukrainians didn't even know their arms aid was held up on allied concerns about corruption rather than Hunter Biden's doings. Trump didn't tell them, and he sure as heck didn't get anything, though the Ukrainians certainly got their arms. The whole inquiry was derived from the need to get to the bottom of the Russian-collusion lie, something that has yet to be resolved with guilty parties there who have abused power for personal gain (or 'a higher loyalty') duly punished. 

Then there's this, on how the Democrats (and lockstep Democrats are the only ones with power here) should handle former National Security Advisor John Bolton:

But what if he was asked to think aloud about what he saw of the way Mr. Trump operates, of what he learned about the president after he came to work for him, of what illusions, if any, might have been dispelled? To reflect (as the generals who used to work for the president reflect, off the record)? What if he is questioned imaginatively, even sympathetically, with a long view as to what history needs to be told?

If he did this under oath and answered as he thought right, honest and helpful, if he was asked the question, “After all you’ve seen, is it good for America that Donald Trump is president?” “Tell us about what you’ve observed about the nature and mind and character of Donald Trump.” “Share your thoughts as a respected professional who has worked with presidents and who knows what the presidency is.”

Public candor would take plenty of guts and could have reputational repercussions.

But it would not just be powerful, it could be explosive. History, at least, would appreciate it.

Who's side is she on? Why is she offering tips to Adam Schiff as if to implicitly recognize that his Robespierrean impeachment bid is floundering? Why is she trying to save that sinking ship?

Why does she want this morally tainted, Ed Buck-coddling freak to win, to expel President Trump from office, to the point of offering him advice the best course of impeachment action, as well as the best course of deplorables-control, as if that's something he actually needs because it's oh so important that his politicized attack on the presidency succeed?

She's offering him a public tip sheet now, and who knows, maybe more behind the scenes. This is a disgusting use of her talents, for the advancement of some very ignoble skulduggery in the name of helping the far left triumph. Who's side is she on and why is she directing her formidable talents against an outsider president who has done nothing wrong and who has been the target of the Trump-maddened left from day one? She's not going to win here and she ought to be embarrassed. 

Image credit: Gage Skidmore, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0