Holdovers strike again.

It turns out, as Rush Limbaugh noted in a recent broadcast, that the “whistleblower” is a CIA person detailed to the White House. Likely a holdover from Obama, he is John Brennan’s man.

When Obama left office, he left in place a mechanism designed to lead to Trump’s impeachment: The revelations of the intel community about Russian collusion with the incoming president.

Now that those are debunked by the very prosecutor hired to prove them, this same crowd, these same folks, have shifted their emphasis to the Ukraine scandal.

The allegation is that Trump used his official power to induce Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s son. But the fact — caught on tape — is that Biden used his power as VP to get Ukraine to fire the prosecutor who was after his son!

Trump does not deserve impeachment for bringing Biden to justice. Biden deserves our condemnation for trying to impede it.

The impeachment drama, begun suddenly by the whistleblower complaint, probably will play out this way:

House Democrats, driven by their blood thirsty base, will vote to impeach. All but their dedicated partisans will see them as over-reaching and ignoring the agenda they were elected to legislate. Party discipline will assure a unanimous Democratic vote to impeach but few if any Republicans will join them. Impeachment will be seen as a partisan ploy rather than the outcome of a real investigation.

Senate Republicans will stand firm and united behind Trump and against impeachment. With the GOP base solid and enraged by impeachment, any who waiver will be harshly disciplined by the threat of primary fights. Only Mitt Romney might break ranks. The House Democratic impeachment trial managers will fall far short of the two-thirds needed to oust Trump. The drama will consume the remainder of 2019 and last well into the primary season of 2020.

Voters will see the Democrats as taking the election out of their hands and trying to remove Trump even as his first term nears its end. Impeachment will hurt the Democrats in 2020 just as it injured the Republicans when they tried to throw out Clinton in 1998.

In the meantime, all the focus on Biden’s son’s role in Ukraine and China will further weaken and eventually destroy Joe Biden’s presidential chances. With Biden out of the way, the Party’s left wing will be triumphant and will nominate Elizabeth Warren.

With the Democrats hurt by impeachment, the economy purring along, and the radical Warren leading them, Trump will likely win re-election, perhaps massively.

Democrats are being forced into a strategic dead end by the exuberant media and their frothing base. But it will not end well for them.