Consider:

Next to the compulsive confessor, every single Democrat will seem more fit for the presidency. (“Electability” problem solved for all candidates!) Provided none has solicited election help from a foreign power, obstructed an investigation into the same or threatened a whistleblower, the Democratic nominee should be able to beat Trump “like a drum,” as Biden put it.

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Not a single Republican member of Congress will be able to claim, “Hey, when Trump stood on the White House grounds and betrayed our democracy, I immediately took a principled stand to defend our Constitution and condemn the president’s attempt to subvert our elections by inviting foreign interference.” No Republican who remains silent as this unfolds will be able to say with a straight face that he or she is a defender of the rule of law or a constitutional conservative.

The “But Gorsuch” and “But taxes” pundit crowd (and the fleet of rationalizers, apologists and conspiracy-mongers in Congress, and the media trying to justify support for Trump) will be discredited, if not humiliated. Nothing justifies Trump’s betrayal of American democracy and crime spree, and yet justify is what many continue to try to do.

Progressives who insisted that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was somehow betraying democracy by waiting for the best possible moment to leap might be just a tad chastened.

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Republicans on the ballot in 2020 who have played dumb and hidden will have to answer to voters for their willful blindness. Having killed virtually all legislation (on guns, political reform, health care, drug prices, etc.) sent over by the House, Republicans will not be able to fall back on any accomplishment since the midterms. Loss of the GOP’s Senate majority is entirely within the realm of possibility.

In case their performances to date have not done the trick, Attorney General William Barr (who took Trump’s plea for electoral help on an around-the-world shopping trip on taxpayers’ dime and whose department allegedly tried to suppress the whistleblower complaint) and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (who listened to the July 25 call, knew Rudy Giuliani was conducting a shadow foreign policy and recalled an ambassador who objected to strong-arming Ukraine) will go down as the worst Cabinet heads of their respective departments in modern history and, unless pardoned, will face criminal investigation for conspiracy, violation of campaign finance laws and obstruction of justice.

Vice President Pence, who fed his family at the Trump trough (in Ireland) and slavishly defended Trump’s conduct, will be forever implicated in Trump’s impeachable conduct. He will serve as a generic reminder of the moral debasement of evangelical Republicans during this time.