The funny part is, it’s not a punch line. In their opening impeachment argument before the Senate, Democrats claim they believe in a "fundamental principle that Americans should decide American elections."

The 63 million Americans whose votes they are trying to invalidate don’t believe them.

Democrats lost an election in 2016. Rather than gracefully accept defeat, they decided to become the worst sore losers in history. Three years after President Donald Trump was sworn in, they still are incapable of calling his election legitimate.

The Democrats accuse him of soliciting Ukraine to “bolster the perceived legitimacy of his presidency.”

“Perceived”? Democrats need a long overdue lesson in reality: Donald Trump is your duly elected president. No amount of clamoring about “Russia” can ever change that.

Yet that won’t stop them from trying. During the first four hours laying out their case, Democrats mentioned “Russia” 102 times. It’s as if we never had a special counsel, whose team of former Clinton Foundation attorneys and future MSNBC contributors scoured the earth looking for “collusion” for two years and never found it. It’s as if countless other congressional investigations that found “no evidence that any votes were changed” in 2016, never happened. It’s as if we are stuck in the Obama-Biden years, and Ukraine is still waiting for tank-busting Javelins, while Russia exercises its “flexibility” in Crimea.

It’s as if millions of Americans never told Washington we were sick and tired of its corrupt ways and raised our voices loudly and clearly on Nov. 8, 2016.

But that’s the world only Democrats live in. It’s not enough that they accuse us of stealing the last election, as they shriek about “Russia,” dredge up the Mueller report, and talk about “quid pro quos,” none of which made it into the actual articles of impeachment. Democrats are preemptively accusing us of “cheating” in the next one. The only people trying to steal elections are Democrats, through a manufactured impeachment that seeks to damage their opponents and/or take away the choice the American people have when they cast their ballots in 10 months. As Chuck Schumer says, it’s a “win-win.”

Adam Schiff -- who, after playing fact witness, SCIF keeper, and “independent counsel,” is now in his fourth starring role in this impeachment sham -- couldn’t get 10 minutes into his argument as lead impeacher without slandering the president as a “cheat,” while referencing Russia, of course.

“President Trump withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to a strategic partner at war with Russia to secure foreign help with his reelection,” he said. “In other words, to cheat.”

For starters, President Trump has given military aid to Ukraine – three times. Ukraine did not even know the aid was withheld at the time of the phone call with President Zelensky, and it was never brought up in subsequent meetings with Vice President Mike Pence and others. Some “pressure” campaign.

Now it’s considered “cheating” in the next election to ask about the last one? In that case, Mueller, Schiff (with his “more than circumstantial evidence” of collusion), and the mainstream media have been cheating a lot by obsessing over election meddling in 2016. Unless it has to do with Democrats and Ukraine. It was a lie that President Trump colluded with Russia, yet that seeped throughout our internal politics for years. We deserve to know how that happened, and that’s all the president asked for, because the country has been through a lot. If it’s “cheating” to raise red flags about the Bidens and Burisma, then President Trump is only as guilty as the Democrats’ star witnesses, and the New York Times. The conflicts and corruption are obvious to anyone who dares to look.

And so, while they claim Americans should decide our elections, Democrats conclude they just can’t take that chance.

“The president's misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box,” Schiff said, “for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won.”

Or perhaps with 7.3 million new jobs, the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years, a historic trade deal with China, the USMCA, ISIS caliphate destroyed, top terrorists taken out, 187 judges to the federal bench, and more, Democrats perceived a problem coming in November. Competing with these accomplishments isn’t fair.

Perception, meet reality.