If you're still awake after just one day of the awfully boring Senate impeachment trial, you may have heard in passing from Democrats that in fact, they don't need to have found a crime to impeach President Trump and remove him from office.

True, but wouldn't their case against Trump be a lot easier to understand if they had?

Here's how the trial is going right now.

Democrats: Trump abused his power in his conduct with Ukraine and obstructed Congress.

Trump's legal defense: The Constitution explicitly gives him power to do what he did with Ukraine, and the obstruction of Congress claim violates the separation of powers, also explicitly found in the Constitution. Also, neither abuse of power nor obstruction of Congress is a crime.

Democrats: They don't have to be crimes for us to remove him from office.

Trump's legal defense: Where is the crime you're trying to convict him of?

Democrats: We don't need one.

But this is why the attempt to remove Trump from office is so weak. First of all, the fact that the thing Democrats are most upset about, the president asking Ukraine for an investigation into Joe Biden, is really obscure, and it's hard to explain why it's a bad thing. It's also a fact that the last two attempts to remove a president from office involved clear criminal activity.

President Bill Clinton lied under oath to a grand jury. That's a crime.

President Richard Nixon engaged in the cover-up of a burglary, which is a crime. He resigned before he even had to be impeached.

Trump? Abuse of power, a term that means whatever Democrats decide it wants to mean today or tomorrow. And then there's obstruction of Congress, which centers on Trump's refusal to turn over documents immediately that Democrats had every right to sue for but declined to pursue through the courts. (Because, they said, it would take too long — wah!)

Yes, House Democrats could have impeached Trump for literally anything — up to and including the time he boarded Air Force One with what looked like toilet paper stuck to his shoe.

But as they have to know, they would have to prove why that's worthy of removing him from office. They'd be having a much easier time if there were an actual crime they could point to.