Granted, the Democrats' knight in shining armor has arrived in the form of the tentative impeachment they've been dreaming about since 2016.  The tables have turned, and their comeback seems closer than ever.

The good news is, there's a major chink in the armor.  New Jersey Democrat Representative Jeff Van Drew plans to vote against today's resolution to formalize the inquiry.  The reason?  "We spent a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of energy, unable to get an awful lot of things done that I think I would have loved to see because of it[.]"  This grievance nearly hits the nail on the head, but there's just one problem.  The stagnation has naught to do with impeachment fever and everything to do with the inability of Democrats to lay out something that even resembles an agenda for what they stand for in 2020.

With all of their candidates going to pot (one literally, by the name of Buttigieg), anxiety looms in Democratic Party leaders' hearts.  You know that things aren't looking good when even the New York Times will admit this.  Hillary was ruled out, Oprah is but a remote dream, and so the Democratic establishment is reaching for some Prozac — and a helpful distraction in the form of an invigorating inquiry.  It is clear that the advice of Harry Reid was never heeded: "You will not win an election telling everybody how bad Donald Trump is[.] ... They have to run on what they're going to do."  Beyond Elizabeth Warren's pipe dreams to fix every societal malady with imaginary money, Biden's beckoning us back to the Obama era, and the obvious intention of reversing anything Trump ever did, there really is nothing left to be said for Democratic innovation. 

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the only way for Democrats to retain a semblance of meaningful political action is via the cheap substitute of the this-historic-moment-in-American-history storyline.  Heroic portrayals of valiant beings like the "role model" Bill Taylor are hastily drawn up to entertain the masses.  As long as the media can provide Americans with enough reading material on Colonel Vindman, the "productive citizen" who, by dint of delivering a single testimony, is "living up to the American ideals about truth and honor, about patriotism[,]" the Dems can delude themselves with a dose of self-assurance.  The blank state of their blueprint for America is imagined to be overlooked in the thrill of the moment.  This strategy couldn't be foolhardier, especially when polls are showing a lack of popularity for impeachment in swing states nowadays.  Democrats had better serve up something substantial, and fast.  The current shenanigans are just not going to cut it.

As Newt Gingrich points out in Trump's America, "[t]heir battle cry is 'resistance' because, as a coalition, they could never possibly offer a coherent shared vision for the future.  This is their greatest weakness."  And so, the donkey fiddles while its 2020 party platform crashes and burns.  The Democrats will be right about one thing when the smoke clears, though: Trump will step down from office...come January 2025.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.