THE VIEW FROM THE CROUCH

Here was the lead item in this morning's Politico Playbook:

THIS POLITICAL PICKLE has come up in conversations with several Democratic sources over the last few days: If House Democrats impeach President DONALD TRUMP and he loses, they fear they could get blamed for a political hit job. If they don’t impeach him and he wins, they fear being blamed by the Democratic base for not doing enough. Best-case scenario: Dems are left hoping they don’t impeach him and Trump loses on his own.

What?

It's understandable that Democrats might worry about blame if they don't impeach and Trump wins reelection. And I don't think it's completely unreasonable for Democrats to worry that Trump might use an impeachment effort to rally his base, as well as some undecideds, the result being another Trump victory -- after all, polls still show that voters are wary of impeachment.

But we're being told here that some Democrats think impeachment might work as intended, and they think that would be a bad thing.

We all know Trump can't be convicted in the Senate. We know that the point of impeachment is to highlight Trump's crimes, his violations of his oath of office, and his general unfitness to be president. Its purpose is to hold him accountable.

So what some Democrats are saying, according to the Playbook's authors, is that if Democrats do this successfully -- if they make it clear to the American public that Trump should not be president -- and if the voters agree that Trump is unfit and express that opinion at the ballot box, that would be problematic. Remember, this is a president that 60% of the country doesn't want reelected, according to a CNN poll earlier this month. Some Democrats are saying that if an impeachment effort reaffirms this widespread popular disgust with Trump, that's an outcome that should be avoided.

What the hell is wrong with these people?