First rule of the con game: NEVER BUY YOUR OWN BULLSHIT.

Yesterday the Democrats learned how dangerous it it can be when you’ve lived your lies so long you’ve actually come to believe them. It’s one thing to spout your bullshit in a controlled setting where dissent is stifled and your carefully redacted version of reality is reflected back to you through the media matrix and proclaimed truth. It’s quite another to step outside your bubble into the real world and discover how badly your distorted version of the world compares to reality.

It has to be a pathological level of delusion. How else to explain Nadler standing alone, with no media to spin for him, and once again digging up that corpse of a claim that President Trump asserted monarchical powers for himself when he said, “I can do anything I want,” when he clearly referred to his power to fire Mueller (which was true, and which, by the way, he did not exercise.) Even a liar recognizes when he’s been exposed, and will change tactics. And yet, there was Nadler, before the Senate, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and the world, blathering on about something not only demonstrably false, it was settled months ago in the realm of objective truth.

That’s no longer a realm inhabited by the left. Like a feeble idiot trying to pay bills with Monopoly money, there was Schiff arguing that allowing witnesses to have lawyers present during testimony before his committee would amount to “witness intimidation.” There was Nadler again lecturing the Senate that if they voted against the Democratic amendments, they’d be “voting against the United States.” Really? Is Maxine Waters directing their presentation, behind the scenes? And who can forget Schiff’s memorable claim that the House process granted President Trump more protections than were given Bill Clinton?

This isn’t the place to dismember the left’s pathetic accusations and their grubby little impeachment. After opening presentations yesterday, I’ve no doubt the Senate and the President’s team will do just that, without hyperbole or cynical reality warping. But I’m still asking myself the same question that I’ve wondered since 2015, when Trump came down the escalator: what’s their long game?

The left always has a long game, and they’re willing to suffer any number of short-term defeats in the furtherance of their agenda. It’s happening right now. AOC will most likely be defeated in her own primary. Ilhan Omar may well go to jail. Bernie will be blocked again. The Green New Deal will die a deserved death, but not before choking Warren’s chances for first embracing it, then backing off, then lying about it. But these dramas used to play out on the front page of The Daily Worker and in the back room machinations at the Communist Party conventions, ignored by all but the true believers. Now they’re playing out in Congress, and in Presidential debates. They’ve come a long way, baby. That’s the long game.

So what’s the long game with Trump? One could almost admire the elegance and complexity of the original Spygate frame-up. It failed to stop Trump, but it was a brilliant plot and would likely have run a mere politician out of town.

But why this current farce? Short game: big time fail. Just look at the rallies, the independents and Democrats showing up in MAGA hats, the growing list of real accomplishments this administration can claim. Long game? Ya got me. Trump’s built a massive campaign chest in advance of the coming battle. The Democrats have provided him with a seemingly endless stream of insane sound bites around which killer ads can be produced.

Here’s one: Pelosi fist bumping Bill Maher while giddily proclaiming “Impeachment is forever.” Cut to Ted Cruz: “So is acquittal.”