The New York Times, the Democrats, and some others would have you believe that this impeachment is making history. It isn't.

Even a huge, screaming headline in the biggest type possible cannot lend suspense or importance to an event that began three years ago and whose outcome was never in doubt. The war to impeach President Trump has been waged at full throttle since 2016. And so, an inflection point in late 2019 is not all that striking, especially since the next stage in the drama will be to return the whole thing to the status quo ante.

The impeachment proceedings against Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton had been genuine digressions from the traditional politics that had marked their first terms in office, and to which the country would later return. In contrast, our politics has been dialed up to 13 on a 1-to-10 scale since Trump was elected.

No, Jennifer Rubin, "Impeachment Day" will not soon rival Independence Day or Memorial Day in the nation’s affections. This will not be remembered like Saint Crispin's Day. The articles of impeachment will not be read aloud in the public squares of the nation, as children stand awestruck and grown people weep. As with the Clinton impeachment in the late 1990s, people who thought the president had done some good things understand that his moral sense is, in some sense, deficient. Now, as then, they have made their peace with it. Save for the partisans on both sides of the spectrum; they are not deeply invested now, just as they were not then.

People knew Clinton had committed a crime, but the crime in itself hadn’t involved his professional duties. Trump’s talk about people and things could be truly abhorrent, but it’s sticks and stones that break bones, not petulant nicknames, insults, and chatter that fail to rise to a criminal level. Nineteen years ago, people calmly accepted another partisan impeachment in the House. They have accepted this one, too, and they will accept the equally partisan acquittal in the Senate that is sure to follow. Both are predictable exercises in party-line voting, and everyone recognizes this except for the blindest partisans who are caught up in the moment.

The New York Times, the Democrats, and Jennifer Rubin want you to think this is Agincourt, and impeachment is history being made before our eyes. But Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff of California and Jerry Nadler of New York are not the Plantagenets; they are not an outnumbered army (except in the Senate), and they are not facing the fight of their lives for themselves and their country. Rather, they are partisan functionaries involved in a predictable effort to fulfill the demands of Democratic primary voters and small-dollar online donors.

What's more, as they did the work of holding hearings and entertaining journalists, the public's opinion of their impeachment actually declined in the polls. "History’s going to forget this," Peggy Noonan said on Meet the Press Sunday. She’s right.