The New York Times issued a vague and meandering editorial on the latest developments in the ever escalating crisis.

“No simple resolution is available” – and then conspicuously fails to mention some simple resolutions.

“Congress … can’t very well send its sergeant-at-arms to the White House to enforce its subpoenas.”

Why not, you ask? What is unsaid is that Congress attempting to enforce its will against the President without going through the impeachment process would be the first step into Civil War II, which would probably end with Trump as King.

The younger, browner, and dumber Democrats may well snatch power from the frail and failing hands of the elderly white Democrats, and if they do, are dumb enough to start Civil War II, but they are probably not going to snatch power tomorrow morning.

“Impeaching a president for refusing to participate in an impeachment inquiry is a kind of meta-impeachment. It would allow Mr. Trump to argue that the meta-impeachment is illegitimate because it isn’t based on an investigation.” Why not hold the impeachment inquiry without Trump’s cooperation, as they did with Nixon on Watergate, and then impeach Trump both for the Ukraine and for failure to cooperate as they impeached Nixon both for Watergate and for failure to cooperate? Why not follow long established precedent? It is not as if there is any genuine doubt about what happened in the Ukraine. The purpose of the proposed inquiry is not resolve doubt, but to manufacture doubt where there is no genuinely doubt, to manufacture smoke regardless of the existence of fire, to obfuscate Democratic crimes in the Ukraine with much shouting, posturing, and vague accusation.

Because long established precedent is the briar patch that Brer Rabbit wants to be thrown into. Trump wants a full blown trial in the Senate with the power to call witnesses and compel testimony on what happened in the Ukraine.

By calling an impeachment on failure to cooperate without impeachment on the underlying charges “a kind of meta impeachment” the New York Times implicitly admits that such an impeachment would be unprecedented and arguably unconstitutional, like finding someone guilty of obstructing justice without finding that there was some underlying wrongful conduct for him to obstruct justice in

If the House impeaches for non cooperation, without impeaching on the matter that cooperation is being demanded upon, then the Senate cannot investigate the matter that cooperation is demanded upon, so cannot investigate whether the cooperation was reasonable, so it would be flagrantly outrageous and unjust for any Senator to vote for impeachment, and that would bite them in the next election.

What is unsaid is that full court dress trial in the Senate inquiring into the Ukraine would be a catastrophe for the Democrats, a catastrophe that Trump is trying to maneuver them into, and a catastrophe that the whiter, smarter, elderly, and frail Democrats are trying desperately to avoid.