As a Democratic congressman, Adam Schiff, put it: “The reality is that after 17 months, we have nothing new to tell the families. We have nothing new to tell the American people. We have discovered nothing that alters the core conclusions of the eight investigations that went on before.”

A CNN/ORC poll released last week found that:

“Seventy-two percent of all Americans say they see the Benghazi committee as mostly using its investigative mission for political gain, just 23 percent think it is conducting an objective investigation. Even Republicans are skeptical on this measure, with 49 percent saying the committee is trying to score political points vs. 47 percent who say it is conducting an objective investigation.”

Last week, four top Senate Democrats even demanded in a letter to the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, that it pay for the nearly $5 million price tag of the committee, writing “that the Select Committee has conducted a political inquisition aimed at former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.” This of course was political theory, and will never happen, but needed to be said.

But the spectacle of the hearing itself was an injury different and apart from the motive. Clinton was more composed and commanding, while her Republican questioners vacillated from condescending to pugnacious.

They embarrassed themselves.

And in Clinton’s corner were the Democratic members of the committee, including ranking member Elijah Cummings, who all day delivered blistering repudiations to the committee itself.

Toward the end of the 11-hour hearing, Cummings said to Clinton:

“You have laid it out. I think — you’ve said — this has not been done perfectly. You wish you could do it another way, and then the statement you made a few minutes ago when you said, you know, I have given more thought to this than all of you combined. So I don’t know what we want from you. Do we want to badger you over and over again until you get tired, until we do get the gotcha moment he’s talking about?”