It shouldn’t be news to anyone that the move by House Democrats to impeach President Trump has never been a serious exercise in loyalty to the Constitution. But it’s nice to see that some liberals are admitting it openly.

The New York Times on Thursday published an op-ed by Cornell law professor Josh Chafetz about the measures Democrats should take to force the White House to play along with its own political homicide. But perhaps inadvertently, Chafetz blurted out that the process will have been a waste if it isn’t done before the 2020 election.

“Courts could expedite proceedings to an extent, but thus far they have shown themselves in no hurry to render final judgments in these disputes,” he wrote. “And a court ‘victory’ coming in 2021 or 2022 is no victory at all for the House.”

That’s interesting. I thought this was about checks and balances, abuse of power, and, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it, Trump’s “betrayal of our democracy.” Do liberals still believe that or is there an expiration date on those ideals, and that just happens to coincide with the 2020 election?

On CNN, lawyer and impeachment expert Ross Garber stated the obvious. “Impeachment is a big deal,” he said Thursday. “It is about sort of undoing an election.” Anchor John Berman made sure to put a stop to that kind of talk, though. “I don’t think so. I think that phrase in and of itself is misleading,” he said, before informing viewers how elections really work. “The election chooses the vice president, definitionally, in the Constitution they make sure there’s continuation of power as was decided in the election.”

Yeah, I don’t know what that means either. But as fate would have it, loud CNN liberal Angela Rye had just said the previous evening that in fact, everything about the impeachment proceeding was for the purposes of correcting the results of 2016.

“The 2016 election wasn’t fair,” she blurted out.

None of this is to say that it wasn’t obvious all along that impeachment would be the natural course of action for Democrats still upset that Trump is president. But at least many liberals are willing to say it aloud.