Democrats were hoping for Eliot Ness. Instead, Robert Mueller was their Grandpa Simpson — feeble, forgetful, confused. Far from hurling thunderbolts at the White House, he seemed like a guy who would need to pause for a few seconds if called upon to distinguish his ass from his elbow. As James Freeman, resident wit of The Wall Street Journal, asked, “Did Robert Mueller read the Mueller Report?”

Hopes could hardly have been higher for Mueller, the mighty matinee idol of justice who was going to rid the nation of Donald Trump. That this would result in the elevation of Mike Pence, who if anything is even more hated by liberals than the boss (at least Trump isn’t religious), seems not to have occurred to anyone. If Trump somehow was able to cancel the coronation of Queen Pantsuit, it must have been a crime and it had to be punished. This was the Dem Dream that would not die.

How short of expectations did Mueller fall? His appearance was the Al Capone’s Vault of political news. Just a few months ago this is how liberals saw him: “Bob Mueller may as well have been Elijah, the prophet for whom Jews reserve an empty chair and cup, whose coming symbolizes the answers to all the world’s remaining questions,” read a dispatch from the Washington dinner-party scene in the Washingtonian. Vogue called him “America’s newest crush.” Portland Monthly said “the hottest gift this holiday season” was a Robert Mueller devotional candle. Old people lamented, with their dying breaths, that the thing they really minded was not getting to hear from Mueller.

Mueller was the Democrats’ prophet-boyfriend. But he turned out to be a dud between the sheets, or rather the political-nerd equivalent of that, the hot seat in front of Congress. Which was the chair where Jerry Nadler inexplicably placed this tired and taciturn old man in the entirely fanciful hope he would turn out to be the Yoda of the Resistance.

He’s some character, my congressman. Nadler is the sweaty guy at the poker table holding a two of clubs, a six of diamonds, a 10 of hearts, a queen of spades and a Domino’s Pizza loyalty card. “Hee, hee,” he thought, “I’ll just bluff my way to the glory!” Everybody at the table tries not to snicker as they clean him out, hand after hand. Putting Mueller on the stand was the equivalent of Nadler suddenly putting his pants on the table, under the mistaken impression that it was now a game of strip poker.

Mueller’s appearance was a nothingburger wrapped in a nadachilada topped with a goose egg. Everything Mueller had to say, he’d already said in the ancient Mueller Report, from way back in the spring, though Mueller seemed only vaguely acquainted with it. The Democrats wanted him to do some sort of Vegas floor-show performance of the report in the mistaken belief that once the American people heard stuff we already knew about one more time, we’d clean Home Depot out of pitchforks and lanterns and march on Washington demanding impeachment, support for which still hasn’t reached the level of half of the Democrats in Congress. Instead of that, Mueller proved to be a human test pattern, Ben Stein in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” Mr. Cellophane. Democrats and the media were famished, and wanted a feast. They got a rice cake. “Mueller? More like Duller,” said a headline in the newsletter of the left-wing site for precocious progs, Vox.

How could President Trump fail to spike the football while dunking the basketball and spraying champagne all over the locker room? The man is only human. They made it too easy. He could hardly resist channeling Willy Wonka’s “You get nothing! You lose! Good day!” Mueller spent two years nosing around, more time than it took to build Disneyland, but all he built for the Dems was a Tragic Kingdom.

The Democrats can impeach if they like, but they are far too chickenspit to do that unless there’s a national clamor to do so, which is why they, and their chyron cronies in the media, keep trying to create a national clamor. Every time they try they fail harder. Democratic-media complex, know when you’ve been owned. Nobody wants to watch Chuck Schumer throw his pants on the table too. You. Got. Nothing.

Kyle Smith is critic-at-large at National Review