Tonight, the most likely scenario is that the Senate will vote not to accept witnesses in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. As a consequence, Moscow Mitch will have his victory but it is up to Democrats to ensure that it is a short-lived pyrrhic victory.
Democrats must be laser focused on the shortcomings of the Trump presidency. He did not replace Obamacare with something better and more beautiful, he did not build his wall, he did not improve on NAFTA with something bigger and better, he did not improve the economy, and he did not negotiate a better trade deal with China.
Additionally, he did not bring peace in the Middle East, and a host of other promises were broken (increase coal jobs, keep Harley Davidson in the US, etc.), but the five domestic issues listed above are signature Trump promises which he failed to keep.
This is important because independent voters will decide the 2020 election in November. Thus, by focusing on his ineffectiveness as a leader, the Democrats can woo independent voters while skirting the whole issue of Trump’s criminality vis-a-vis the Ukraine call.
The message to independent voters should not be that Trump evaded conviction in the Senate, but rather that Trump is a bad leader because he did not keep his campaign promises and rewarding him with another four years will not solve any of these promises. There will be no replacement for Obamacare, the wall will not be funded, the USMCA is just a vanity project to put the letters U and S in front of the treaty name, the economy will continue as it did under Obama’s recovery, and the Chinese government is never going to lose face to an American demand for more favorable terms for the US.
Therefore, even though the battle may be lost tonight, the war to get Trump out of office continues.