Is it better to impeach and lose or never to impeach at all?

AFTER A COUPLE of false alarms, Donald Trump’s “Watergate” moment has arrived. On December 4th the House Judiciary Committee will begin a process of deliberation that will probably lead to it drafting articles of impeachment against the president by the end of the year. Whether a hot-button charge of bribery—the most specific ground for presidential dismissal described in the constitution—will make the list is unclear: Democratic leaders say it might. Yet the case against Mr Trump, that he sought to shake down a foreign leader for political favours using military aid and other state resources as leverage, is essentially already proven.

The White House record of Mr Trump’s “Do us a favour” call to President Volodymyr Zelensky was the smoking gun. The public hearings House Democrats conducted in November mostly underlined that. They also revealed how many of those around Mr Trump—including Mike Pence, Mick Mulvaney and Mike Pompeo—knew of or facilitated his scheme. Having conceded their original defence (that there was no shakedown), Mr Trump and his supporters have therefore fallen back on a line that takes less account of the Ukrainian matter in hand: the president is the victim of a vast left-wing conspiracy. This is nothing less, writes a columnist in American Greatness, a pro-Trump publication, than a “de...