If you wanted to convince voters that impeachment was just a partisan box checking exercise for Trump's most stubborn opponents, a brief distraction from the earlier plan, you could hardly do better.
This deal comes after the decision to advance the narrowest case for impeachment, while Trump obstructs the inquiry unrepentantly, and before ceding most control of the process to Mitch McConnell.
We could be in a world where House Democrats investigated Trump as aggressively as possible across all fronts and used the allure of things like USMCA to secure cooperation from the White House or at least the guarantee of a serious Senate trial. Instead we are in this world.
We could live in a world where Gardner and Collins and Ernst had to explain why they intended to acquit Trump of every obscene abuse of power he's committed, and decided whether to pass USMCA based on how Republicans conducted themselves through impeachment. But we live in hell.
