Lest you have forgotten in the media euphoria (how refreshing!) of the Biden administration, the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump is scheduled to begin tomorrow.

While ABC commissioned – and is now spinning – a poll claiming that people want Donald Trump convicted, the numbers look admittedly a little different in the poll itself.

A slight majority (56%) of Americans support the Senate convicting Donald Trump and barring him from office in the future. However, this falls strongly along party lines with over 9 in 10 Democrats supporting and over 8 in 10 Republicans opposing.”

We can be honest about the outcome of this impeachment trial. The vote has already been taken, thanks to Senator Rand Paul, who forced a vote on a point of order and put the senators on record.

The Senate just voted on my constitutional point of order.

45 Senators agreed that this sham of a “trial” is unconstitutional.

That is more than will be needed to acquit and to eventually end this partisan impeachment process.

This “trial” is dead on arrival in the Senate.

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) January 26, 2021

However, the Democrats are desperate to keep Donald Trump as their own personal boogeyman, having now succeeded in stripping Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments. Democrats must have a designated villian to work against. Winning an election is not enough. There MUST be a bad guy to keep focusing on. With the impeachment trial about to begin, their favorite Bad Orange Man is back. Not that Donald Trump will actually be showing up, of course.

But this isn’t about the election anymore. This is about keeping Trump in the headlines as the Democrats’ number one enemy, and that’s why the impeachment trial is going forward. Yes, it will be a bitter pill when Trump is acquitted yet again – proving yet again that impeachment should be considered a last resort, not a political weapon – but the more that they can make Republicans defend Trump, they can bitch and moan that the entire party is Trump. And that is what they want. Look how quickly they pivoted to Marjorie Taylor Greene. They are desperate to tar the entire party – yes, even YOU, Liz Cheney – as a QAnon freakshow. And that’s only one part of Democratic leadership’s plan to hold on to power.

The other part is the coddling of the socialist left, to make sure that they stay in line and don’t splinter the Democrats straight in two. Oh, and for Chuck Schumer, it means using all his mad politicking skillz to make sure that AOC doesn’t outflank him on the left.

Armed with a sweeping set of policy promises, he is courting the activists, organizers and next-generation elected officials in New York who would likely make up the backbone of an effort to dethrone him, should one ever arise.”

He is facing an extraordinary balancing act in the coming days as he seeks simultaneously to forge a massive relief bill to counter the coronavirus pandemic while managing the impeachment of former President Donald J. Trump. Both tasks are seen as urgent, practical and moral imperatives by the Democratic Party’s electoral base.”

Over the last week, Mr. Schumer has backed a new push to decriminalize cannabis; signed on to Senator Cory Booker’s Baby Bonds proposal, a plan to address the racial wealth gap; and appeared with Senator Elizabeth Warren and other progressives to call on Mr. Biden to cancel student debt.”

On impeachment, too, Mr. Schumer has taken an into-the-breach approach, demanding Mr. Trump’s removal from office the morning after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and casting the upcoming trial as a crucial ritual of accountability even if it is highly improbable that two thirds of the Senate will vote for conviction.”

This impeachment trial is designed to keep the Democrat base focused on Trump, as if he still stands in their way of some great social revolution – and leadership wants to make sure that they stay in power. Schumer is up for reelection in 2022 – and you can tell by this cozying up to the socialist left, and his hard line on impeachment, that he is trying to protect himself.

Ironically, the Democrats’ greatest win – getting Donald Trump removed from Twitter – may now work against them. Reportedly, the former president is quite happy to be off social media, and the lack of commentary from that quarter is not going to help Democrats in their push to keep Trump as their boogeyman. When the alleged boogeyman makes no noise, how do you convince anyone that he is still waiting to jump out of the closet?

And while Trump is being impeached for “incitement of insurrection,” law professor Jonathan Turley – no fan of Trump, but a defender of the Constitution – continues to make the argument that the impeachment case would never hold up in a criminal trial.

The problem is free speech. The remarks of Trump last month would not satisfy the test in Brandenburg when the Supreme Court said “advocacy of the use of force or of law violation” is protected unless it is imminent. Trump did not call for use of force. He told supporters to go “peacefully” and to “cheer on” his allies in Congress. He repeated that after violence erupted and told the crowd to respect and obey the police.”

The former president’s lawyers are going to make the argument that impeachment after leaving office, as they spelled out in their brief, is unconstitutional.

The constitutionality of impeachment after leaving office is a legal knot that never has been fully explored, though when you remove Trump from the equation, as the Washington Post was forced to when Representative Matt Gaetz suggested impeaching Barack Obama in December of 2019. (The archived article can be read here.) When the Trump Derangement Syndrome is stripped away, legal minds are not in one accord in the least, regarding neither the consitutionality of impeachment or the disqualification from holding office again.

With such murky constitutional waters, plus the acknowledgment that no conviction is probable, this really is just a show trial so Democrats can keep propping up Trump as the cause of all their woes who must be punished. Keep that in mind as this dog-and-pony show gets started. No one wins here.

Featured image via Pixabay, cropped, Pixabay license