The new year brings new questions about the Democratic Party and its impeachment obsession. After urgent demands for Trump’s immediate removal, Democrats suddenly slowed down the impeachment process—delaying a Senate trial and hoping to stretch out that proceeding to the beginning of 2020’s primary season.

The Dems mean to focus relentlessly on Trump’s alleged unfitness for office, to keep attention away from their own radical agenda. They know public opinion may be closely divided on the president himself, but big majorities oppose such Democratic priorities as outlawing private health insurance, racial reparations for slavery, tax hikes, open borders, canceled college debt, and the job-killing Green New Deal.

The Democrats know that if they make the election a referendum on Trump’s polarizing personality they could possibly win, but a pitch for votes based on their stridently progressive platform would lose in a landslide.