KYLE SMITH: Trump impeachment saga is pointless reboot of 1999 Bill Clinton effort.

If Trump is impeached, he will follow the precedent set by Bill Clinton and ignore calls to resign. Then he’ll follow the second precedent set by Clinton and win in the Senate, which will set up the third precedent, a claim that his tormentors wasted the people’s time and money. Clinton’s approval rating rose by double digits as the process played out and Americans decided he was being needlessly put through a wringer. The lesson we all should have learned is: If you can’t make your impeachment bipartisan, don’t bother.

One doesn’t normally look to The New York Times for pushback to the Resistance, but this week the Paper of Record made an honest attempt to break outside the Acela corridor and ask Americans outside the political class what they think of impeaching the president. What they found was very little interest in impeachment. A recent poll showed 57 percent opposition to impeachment, and the Times’ reporting suggests that figure isn’t going to shift much.

The kindest explanation I have is that the Democrats have been trying to get payback for more than 20 years, finally ran out of patience, and decided to go all in on a weak hand. Voters ought to punish them at the polls next November for it, but we’ll see.