A lot of people wondered what the Left would do without Donald Trump to kick around. Now we know: they’ll follow him into private life and try to keep kicking him around. Now, like a bad habit they can’t quit, Democrats are tossing aside every real issue facing America to take a second crack at impeaching a man who isn’t even president. This time, though, their pathetic obsession with destroying Trump comes at a steeper price.

“I have no idea what they think they’re going to accomplish,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said. With 44 Republicans on the record and no chance of conviction in sight, this can only be about one thing, Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) insisted: political theater. “This is an unconstitutional impeachment,” she argued on “Washington Watch.” “And I have to tell you, I think Democrats [have] opened a Pandora’s box. If you start impeaching former members, then there’s a long list of former presidents and former civil officers who could be impeached — maybe Hillary Clinton for Benghazi or James Comey. The list goes on and on.”

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) are too blinded by hatred to see the reality of what they are doing. This isn’t about the facts or a fair trial. “You can’t get a traffic ticket based on the [House case] they used to impeach President Trump,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) scoffed. “What Democrats have done is basically declared war on the presidency itself. The impeachment in the House took place without a hearing, without one witness being called, and without a lawyer for the president of the United States… When you combine a snap impeachment with an impeachment of a president who’s out of office, you’re going to destroy the presidency itself. I know you hate Trump but please… knock it off!”

Joe Biden, meanwhile, is back at the White House, adding to his pile of executive orders. Thanks to this pointless drama, his whole agenda is on hold while House and Senate Democrats eat up the clock with their ridiculous political vendettas. But instead of urging his party to move on, the new president seems quite content to put America’s priorities on the backburner while this witch-hunt redux sucks all of the oxygen from the room. If this is Biden’s idea of “a new day for America,” he must have forgotten the last four years.

“You cannot [work on] legislation during impeachment,” Blackburn pointed out. “Remember last year when they impeached President Trump? Everything came to a standstill. Why were we not focused on COVID? Because the Democrats were focused on [destroying the president].” Back then, she and other Republicans watched helplessly as Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) tried to get Congress’s attention on the coronavirus making its way to the U.S. from China — and the Left ignored him. Now, a year and 465,000 deaths later, they still haven’t learned.

“There isn’t a single American that’s going to get a vaccine because of this impeachment trial,” Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) argued. “There isn’t a single American that’s going to find a job because of this impeachment trial. There isn’t a single thing that’s going to happen to make us safer from the threat of China from this impeachment trial. And these are the things I wish we were focused on… getting the economy growing again and getting people back to work, and focused on confronting the challenges before our country. We should be spending every second we’re up here working on those things — not on a trial to impeach a president who’s no longer in office.”

Good luck persuading Democrats. They won the White House, they won Congress — but they’re losing their grip on what matters. And the country they promised to heal will notice.

Originally published here.

This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.