The president of the United States is engaged in open and shameless corruption, defying the plain language of the Constitution and glibly defying the Supreme Court. He has ordered hundreds of people to be deprived of liberty in a foreign gulag, without charge or trial, and his administration is illegally impounding funds authorized by Congress. By year’s end, hundreds of thousands of people are projected to die because of his unilateral cuts to foreign aid, women and children wasting away from a lack of food or treatment for their HIV.

Few Democrats would disagree with that stark assessment of President Donald Trump and his first 100 days in office. Fewer still are willing to act on it.

Impeaching and removing a president from office is the constitutional remedy for a lawless executive. It’s also an inconvenience: Democrats, presented with an opportunity to demonstrate their opposition to a man they have labeled a singular threat to American democracy, elected instead to go nuclear on one of their own.

“Idiotic.” “Unserious.” “Wasting our time.” “The dumbest f***ing thing.”

That’s how leading congressional Democrats described an effort by Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Mich., to force an impeachment vote on the House floor last week.

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“I have zero patience for distractions,” Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., head of the centrist New Democrat coalition, told CNN. “Any Democrat not focused on getting us to 218 is either wasting our time or helping Republicans — and either way, it’s hurting the mission.”

The mission is getting Democrats back in the House majority come 2027. In a two-party system, where the only way to........

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