I'll boil it down to the essential point from the get-go: It's transparently obvious that the Demo rats are going after Trump for his phone call with the Ukrianian leader because he is a Republican. Let's hypothesize that Trump or another Republican president clearly lied in a deposition and obstructed a grand jury inquiry. The Demo rats would be calling for impeachment right off the bat. But when a Demo rat president does (and did) what I've just described, they refuse to impeach.
The Demo rats must think we've forgotten about all that. Perhaps they think the rest of us think the way they do, and hence they think that we are as intellectually and morally bankrupt as they, in fact, are (as I've documented exhaustively, overwhelmingly, and incontrovertibly at this blog, under the democrats and leftist losers tags).
To Demo rats, the Republicans went after President Clinton not for perjury and obstruction of justice, but "for sex" and "for lying about sex." That's all their defense ever amounted to, and it's transparently pathetic.
When Mrs. Clinton, as Secretary of State, set up a private server without so much as seeking approval (which she would not have gotten) from the State Department, and mishandled 110 classified documents, and erased over 30,000 emails under subpoena, the Demo rats made every effort not to understand what all this entails (i.e., that she should have been stripped of her security clearance if not also be subject to legal consequences). Instead, it was all about "her emails." Had it been a Republican doing this, they would have screamed bloody murder (as they're doing now, even though they're the boy who screamed bloody murder and lost all credibility as a result).
So we should dispense with any pretense that the Demo rats are approaching their impeachment inquiry of Trump in good faith, or with any more solid understanding of the law than their opponents have. Demo rat politicians in particular are not very bright people, and they obviously don't give a damn about consistency or principle. But suppose we come to expect that from politician-creatures. That doesn't explain the intellectual and moral meltdown of the rest of the American left (in particular academia and the media), as documented exhaustively on this blog.
Being the unimpressive bunch of hubristic fools that they are, they will find a way to screw up their impeachment moves. Their calls for the impeachment of Justice Kavanaugh are evidence enough that they don't pursue such things in good faith, or in even a remotely solid grasp of principles of justice. If ever you wanted to see Demo rats reveal their true colors when the chips are down, look at their completely discreditable (and discredited) treatment of Kavanaugh. (On a more intellectually demanding level, see how they treat Rand: nothing but misrepresentations, distortions, and outright smears, when they aren't culpably ignoring her.)
This is the group of creatures, remember, whose standards for impeachment (of their political opponents, that is) is such that they were rushing to call for impeachment of Kavanaugh on no good evidence whatsoever (all the while letting a Demo rat president get away with obvious perjury - how intellectually and morally perverted is that?). They can't be trusted.
The Demo rats in Congress are desperate. They don't have a solid candidate to put up against Trump in 2020, and they're not guaranteed a recession. Their media interference-runners spent upwards of 2.5 years peddling useless speculation about a Trump-Russia collusion narrative. We still don't have so much as a hint from Demo rats as to how Trump's supposed obstruction of the Mueller investigation is any worse than what President Clinton did. Again, Clinton clearly lied under oath, dead to rights and everything, when asked whether he was ever alone with Lewinsky. Where is that with Trump, with the Ukraine phone call or anything else? The Demo rats don't care. All they care about is that Trump is some malevolent force that has to be opposed and destroyed by any means they think they can get away with (that don't also destroy themselves in the process . . . and good luck with that, 'Rats).
Demo rats have intoned time and time again that "our democracy is under threat." It tells you a lot about the mindset of the 'rats that they keep characterizing our political system as a democracy when it is in fact a republic. Individual rights, separation of powers, the unalterable 2-senators-per-state rule reflecting the fact that it's the United States of America and not some People's Republic, and all that. You won't hear these ignorant clowns these days talking about the primacy and centrality of freedom to what makes America what it is.
(Sen. Warren "has a plan for that," eh? Well, I've got a link for that. Every which way you look I have a link showing how pathetic and loathsome these Demo rats have become. You want dozens of links in one paragraph? I've got that, too, with so many "etc" points linked one loses count just of the "etc"s.)
The nature and quality of today's Demo rats is such that they will screw up this impeachment effort in a way that will only further reveal how loathsome, vicious, willfully inept, etc. they are, and they will repulse the American people all that much more. The question will inevitably come up, over and over, as to how they let President Clinton get away with what he did, how that is any less worse than what Trump did, and similar questions, and they will have no honest answer. They must think we are not merely stupid, but dishonest (like them) as well.
They will screw this up, mark my words. From a diseased tree, you will get diseased fruits. Left-wing academia and media will degrade themselves further than they already have, as well. There is no winning by them to be had here when they are losers (on the merits) by nature. They are a bunch of people made most unhappy by their having replaced religion with politics as their source of meaning, their utmost confidence that they are intellectually and morally superior to the irredeemable deplorables clinging bitterly to their guns and religion, and yet they face what they take to be a racist president (Oh, I've got links for that, too; as any ultimate philosopher who is a staunch enthusiast for context and integration would have at the ready) who must be more corrupt than the Clintons ever were (lol!).
I anticipate posting, in the not distant future, with the following post title: "Demo rats shit the bed, yet again." Because that's all they quite-predictably do nowadays, just like Rand-bashers always do whenever they think they've finally got their "gotcha" goods on Rand. [Aside: What if I told you (holding out red & blue pills) that pretty much every negative story you've ever heard about Rand is a misrepresentation, distortion, or outright smear, starting with the roundly discredited Brandens and those who were and are all too eager to take the Brandens' portrayals at face value? (Barbara Branden describes this exchange as one in which Rand got angry and shouted at "the girl" who had nonetheless professed that she was now all grown up intellectually. With the visual evidence of the exchange right in front of us, how credible are Ms. Branden's summary account of countless other relevantly similar interactions? And Ms. Branden is easily the less dishonest of the two Brandens....) What if the author of "The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult" acknowledged in private that it was fictionalized (although it's clearly not represented in print as such)? At some point the examples of this sort of thing become countless and redundant, at which point induction against Rand's critics is warranted, just as my inductive generalization about the overall intellectual condition of the left/Dems/"progressives" is warranted based on countless and increasingly redundant examples.]
As always, clues as to the philosophical antidote to all this intellectual and moral bankruptcy can be found all over this blog. It's not that I even mind having left-wingers and Democrats (as well as right-wingers and Republicans) around to disagree with; rather, I'd rather that we have Much Better Things to Disagree About . . . Through Philosophy. If we're going to be arguing about who is the more corrupt weasel, Trump or the Clintons, or whether it's Demo rats or Republicans who are more intellectually and morally bankrupt, shouldn't it be as a means to arriving at a better grasp of the preconditions for an (Aristotelian) end of history? How about we put all this childish crap behind us and discuss/debate how to teleologically measure the value of artworks, and/or the role art plays in eudaimonia and/or the meaning of life, instead?
(Silly me, upon visiting the SEP's "meaning of life" entry this time around, I immediately went to the bottom of the page to see the "related entries" section, and those are: afterlife | death | ethics: ancient | existentialism | friendship | love | perfectionism, in moral and political philosophy | value: intrinsic vs. extrinsic | well-being . What led me to do so this time? Well, to see what connection there might be between eudaimonia and the meaning of life. And ancient ethics, perfectionism and well-being (as well as, subordinately, friendship, love and, yes, death) bear on the topic of eudaimonia, pretty much under different names. Norton develops these connections at great length and beauty of exposition. Internet hyperlinks are there to facilitate mental integration, but philosophy can and does optimize that integration process. Like, duh? I don't like seeing potentialities going to waste, see. So, while today's Demo rats are particularly shitty at mental integration, being the solutions-oriented soul that I am, my solution to their current situation speaks for itself. For one thing, they're really going to love Rand's ideas once they actually get to know them. ^_^ )
[Addendum: I comment in the context of Prof. Huemer's facebook post on this, thusly: "Indeed, if impeachment is the correct way to go, and if Demo rats' blatant hypocrisy over matters of impeachment is exposed as a result, then I'd have no problems with that. The morally correct and just outcome in that event is that Dems are discredited, along with Trump's removal from office. What I don't care to witness is the 'rats somehow getting away with their obvious partisan double standards."]
