Impeach watch: The World-Historical Dud 

At The Hill, Liz Peek snarks: “Is there a law against boring people to death?” If there were, Democrats could be indicted for initiating “such a profound undertaking, the overturning of an American election,” only to yield such a “dramatic dud.” Why do the proceedings make for such lame TV? Because House Democrats engineered the whole thing “in such a way as to render the partisan outcome predictable.” Along the way, they also undercut their “own effectiveness by leaking every interesting snippet that was damaging to the president.” The result: “By the time the full House and the country got to hear the charges against the president, during endless hours of debate, most Americans had already heard the flimsy facts of the case and were becoming less impressed by the day.” And that was all before the repeat act in the upper chamber left most senators “insensate.”

From the right: Revering a Mediocrity 

On Twitter, law professor Jonathan Adler recently wondered “whom [Rep. Adam] Schiff, et al., think their audience is.” National Review’s ­David Harsanyi answers: “the media.” Last week, the establishment media fawned over Schiff, a “middling congressman” who gave a “middling” ­impeachment speech. From CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, who called Schiff’s performance “dazzling,” to The Washington Post correspondent Greg Miller, who effused that the California representative “will leave a mark on history, exceeding nearly all his contemporaries,” the ­media’s desire to make Schiff “a modern-day Cicero” was “insufferable,” Harsanyi scoffs. It just points to the establishment’s “bizarre impulse to revere anyone who ­declares himself an enemy of the president.” Recall the media’s last favorite: “Where have you gone, Michael Avenatti?”

2020 desk: Trump’s Winning the Donor Wars 

President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina told The Washington Post that Democrats’ 2020 nominee “will be broke.” For Democrats, Issues & Insights’ Thomas McArdle asks, could there be “anything more horrifying?” It’s an especially daunting financial picture for the left, since, like Obama, President Trump has “unique abilities to electrify voters who were uninvolved” before he came on the scene. In fact, Washington Post reporters “tracked down ‘at least 220 big donors to Trump’s reelection who are either new to major political giving or sat out the last presidential general election’ ” — people like Raul Esqueda, who likes how “business is booming under Trump,” or Nigerian-American Ejike Okpa, who likes that Trump is a “fighter and disrupter.” Both also like his conservative agenda, showing that down-ballot Republicans can reap the rewards along with Trump — if they honor the same values.

From the left: Shrewdly Sleepy Joe 

Joe Biden has run an “unremarkable” primary campaign, “avoided interviews” and faced attacks from more progressive ­rivals — yet, Slate’s Lili Loofbourow notes, he’s “still the frontrunner,” with poll numbers “as solid as ever.” That just points to how Biden has flipped the “conventional wisdom” in primaries: “Normally, a candidate’s success depends on energy,” yet Biden has used his “passivity” almost “like a ­superpower.” For Dem voters “tired” of the “petty, personalized, poisonous dreck” that makes up politics, Biden’s passivity comes across as “a capacity to float above the noise.” That’s why Biden’s living up to Trump’s “Sleepy Joe” nickname — because he knows he may be the candidate for the “many Americans” who “just want to go back to sleep.”

Culture critic: In Defense of the ‘Trad Wife’ 

The so-called “trad-wife” phenomenon — extremely online young women who gravitate to traditional feminine looks and activities — has drawn the ire of woke feminists. But at Spectator USA, Marlo Safi says she is “now dreaming of becoming a trad wife” and sees “the house” as her primary domain. It works “if you don’t marry a complete tool. Sure, husband, you can go spend eight hours a day under the thumb of a money grubber!” Meanwhile, “I’ll stay at home, enjoying my fully subsidized existence, perhaps homeschooling my children and cooking them meals I’ve vetted of the poison I was fed in public school.” Bottom line: “Perhaps other women belong in the Senate, but I belong in the kitchen.”

— Compiled by Karl Salzmann & Sohrab Ahmari