Well, this was my take all along. I never felt that what Trump was accused of merited removal from office, and if you read into the House impeachment documents…..neither did they. Those documents are loaded with material that had little to do with Ukraine.

Apparently the strategy was “provide a boatload of evidence proving that Trump is a jerk, such that the weight of all the jerkiness makes him toxic.”

Well, everyone pretty much knew he was a jerk beforehand, so that was not new news.

If the House had gone through the same exercise but passed a censure instead of an impeachment, they might have gotten enough GOP votes to put it on the record. But because they went for the long, “hail mary” touchdown pass instead of throwing underneath, Trump ends up in the same category as Bill Clinton: impeached, not removed.