One of my favorite comedy and trivia podcasts is called No Such Thing as a Fish. Every week, along with other interesting facts, they work in a declaration of something that doesn’t exist. (Last week’s episode was No Such Thing as a Banana with Wifi.) Perhaps they could look into the current activities of the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee for an upcoming show. They could call it No Such Thing as an Impeachment Investigation.

And yet that’s exactly what the committee claims to be kicking off this week. Their first guest star will be Corey Lewandowski.

As they investigate President Donald Trump, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee will hold their first official hearing in what they are calling an impeachment investigation. Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s outspoken former campaign manager, is scheduled to appear Tuesday to discuss former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. But it’s unlikely that Democrats will get much new information. A devoted friend and supporter of the president, Lewandowski isn’t expected to elaborate much beyond what he told Mueller’s investigators last year. Mueller himself testified this summer, with no bombshells.

Lewandowski is showing up because he’s legally obligated to do so but it’s already been made clear that he doesn’t have much to say beyond what he already told Mueller last year. (And we all know how that ended.)

The Democrats also wanted two former Trump aides, Rick Dearborn and Rob Porter, to come testify, but they’re not going to show up. They have immunity from congressional investigations due to their former positions. Unless they’re just planning their own do-over of the Mueller probe, what precisely do they hope to achieve here?

I’ve got a possible answer to that question. First of all, as noted above, there’s no such thing as an “impeachment investigation.” You’re either moving forward with impeachment or your not. This is just an investigation, and a rather dubious looking one at that.

But the name is really the important bit here, isn’t it? They need to get the networks and the newspapers talking about this. You see, the Democrats spent more than two years talking about Russia, Russia, Russia seven days per week. It was their way of keeping the story in the news in the hopes that it would eventually bring down Trump. Now that the Russia thing has blown up in their faces, they need to trot out a new totem to raise against the President and the magic word is impeachment.

Nevermind the fact that they don’t even have enough Democrats to move forward with any attempt at impeachment. And ignore the reality that the Senate would quickly find in the President’s favor if they managed to somehow get that far. This isn’t about actually impeaching Donald Trump. This is a strategy to have people hearing the word impeachment associated with Trump on a daily basis to give the impression that he’s going to crumble any day now. And they need to keep that going until next November.

This dog and pony show is for the cable news networks and most of them will eat it up. As far as I’m concerned, they should just move forward and try to impeach the president right now if they’re serious about it. But they won’t, because they know it would blow up in their faces and they’d be left looking like Wile E. Coyote yet again.