House Democrats insisted they had to rush to vote out articles of impeachment, supposedly to keep President Trump from tainting the 2020 election. Yet now Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she may delay sending them to the Senate, maybe indefinitely. Huh?

The House will sit on the articles “for as long as it takes” to ensure a fair trial, the speaker says. On Thursday, she even bristled when reporters kept querying her about it. “Don’t you have any questions on anything else?” she asked — when the House just spent 12 weeks to produce only the third impeachment in US history.

Is there any better proof of how political this has been from the start? Pelosi has long known Democrats don’t have the Senate votes to remove Trump — and opted not to take more time to build a case that might turn the tide.

So now she’s trying to find the best way to play it — and putting the Senate trial on hold in the meantime.

Pelosi knows the House doesn’t get to control the Senate trial — just as the Senate didn’t run her “inquiry.”

An inquiry where Democrats dictated all the rules, held secret meetings, leaked “news” spun to tar Trump and unilaterally chose witnesses. What a joke that they now demand “fairness” (as they see it) from the Senate.

As Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell notes, if the House realizes its case is “deficient,” it shouldn’t expect the Senate to find new ways “to get to guilty” — it shouldn’t have impeached in the first place.

It was a frivolous, irresponsible abuse of power to hurry to impeach on such flimsy grounds — but it’s even more transparently cynical to now stall the process.

Why is it suddenly not urgent at all?

Clearly because Pelosi is simply using the solemn constitutional process for short-term political ends — to damage the president. Impeachment’s done that; acquittal in the Senate will only help him.

Even for 2019 Washington, this is low.