Today, I watched some more daytime television. Eight-and-a-half hours of it, to be precise. Because it was time once again to view gavel-to-gavel coverage of an event that has only taken place three (or four, if you count Nixon) times in our nation's history: the impeachment of a sitting U.S. president. The House Intelligence Committee wrapped up its work for now by voting on and making public their report on their findings of fact, and by doing so handed the impeachment inquiry off to the House Judiciary Committee. Which held its first public hearing today by opening with four constitutional scholars as witnesses.

Three of these witnesses were invited by the majority Democrats, and one by the minority Republicans. As with the Intelligence Committee hearings, both Democrats and Republicans were given ample time to question these witnesses, beginning with a 45-minute segment largely devoted to questions from staff lawyers and followed by individual 5-minute question segments from each of the 41 members of the committee. Which is, of course, why it took so long to watch.

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Yes, Virginia, it's that time of year again....

Although every week feels like a month these days (what with the constant firehose of ridiculousness emanating from the White House), we're finally approaching the end of the calendar year. Less than a year from now will be the 2020 election, and a little over a year from now, if things go well, we'll all return to some semblance of sanity. But to get from here to there together, we've got to keep the lights on here at ChrisWeigant.com.

As usual, we are throwing ourselves on the mercy of our readers to raise the necessary money to continue providing reality-based political commentary here on a daily basis. The site has been ad-free for years now, and we really would like to continue that streak (because we hate ads as much as you do). Also as usual, we are softening the blow of our blatant begging by mesmerizing you with the cuteness of Christmas kittens!

Meow!

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We haven't formally taken the pulse of the Democratic campaign for a month now, so we thought it was time to dive back into the numbers.

In the intervening time, we've seen the total Democratic field (everyone who has run, even if they've subsequently dropped out) grow to a record-setting 29 candidates, although, thankfully, the number of active candidates is now down to "only" 16 left in the race. With so many left to still cover, let's just move right along and break them down one by one.

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Some days, the humor just writes itself. Today, our illustrious president proved once again (as if any doubt remained) that he is, in fact, dumber than a bag of hammers. At a signing ceremony to proclaim a new centennial coin for the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment next year (women got the right to vote in 1920), Donald Trump mused aloud why this hadn't happened previously. Previous presidents, according to Trump, just didn't know how to get things done, which is why they hadn't proclaimed this centennial before now.

In other words, Trump was mystified why the 100th anniversary of an event hadn't taken place earlier than the 100th anniversary of that event. At this point, even bags of hammers are laughing at his idiocy.

I considered writing a spoof of other centennials Trump could get ahead of the curve on (such as: "Trump announces that LGBT people shouldn't have to wait another 50 years for the centennial of the 1969 Stonewall Riots, but in trying to make it more inclusive Trump just proved his cluelessness even further, by proclaiming it the bi-centennial"). But that seemed like too much work for not enough return. After all, these jokes just write themselves, and I'm sure we'll see plenty of them on the late-night shows tonight.

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This may be an incredibly naive idea, but at this point it's certainly worth a shot. Call it my offering in the "how to talk to your Republican relatives on Thanksgiving" genre, if you will.

Thanksgiving is a time for family, with all of both the positive and negative connotations that implies. You're supposed to love these folks because they're kin, but at the same time you don't exactly see eye-to-eye on politics -- never have and likely never will. But you don't want to have a big shouting match over the dinner table or around the television, so what do you do when the conversation drifts into politics?

My suggestion: avoid all the Trump drama, and ask your conservative relatives how they see the Republican Party after Trump leaves the stage. Be nice, and concede the possibility of a second term, while pointing out that after eight years, he's going to have to go. What happens then? What would they want to see happen as well as what they think is likely to happen are both areas to explore.

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The biggest remaining question in the impeachment inquiry now is what John Bolton is going to do (or not do, as the case may be). The ball is now squarely in his court, after a federal judge ruled today that Don McGahn can indeed be compelled to testify before a House committee. The judge rightly rejected the "blanket immunity" claim that the White House tried to use to block McGahn's testimony, but of course the case won't be ultimately decided until it gets to the Supreme Court (unless the White House backs down, which seems highly unlikely at this point). Bolton could either use this initial ruling as a reason for deciding to testify, or he could continue to play it coy. This could be a crucial step in the entire impeachment inquiry.

Bolton is a rather odd duck for Democrats to now see as a possible star witness, mostly because most Democrats consider his foreign policy views to be slightly to the right of Attila The Hun. Politics makes for strange bedfellows, but never stranger than this neoconservative warrior being seen as the possible lynchpin to impeaching and removing a Republican president from office. But that's indeed where things stand, at the moment.

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That title comes from Fiona Hill's testimony before the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment hearings this week. When Hill confronted Gordon Sondland over the quid pro quo Trump was forcing Ukraine into, she angrily told him: "This is all going to blow up." To which she added, to the congressmen questioning her: "And here we are."

Here we are indeed. We've had a marathon week of impeachment hearings (which we personally watched from gavel to gavel, meaning also that we're now really looking forward to next week's vacation), and we've only just begun. We've seen all of the Republican excuses collapse one by one (and there have been a whole passel of them, to date). We've seen the best of the civil service this week, which is a world that the public rarely catches a glimpse of. To a person, they all appeared serious-minded and highly intelligent. Well, except for the one political appointee with no diplomatic experience, but he was actually the guy who stated unequivocally:

I know that members of this committee frequently frame these complicated issues in the form of a simple question: Was there a "quid pro quo"? With regard to the requested White House call and the White House meeting, the answer is yes.

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I'm veering away from the impeachment hearings today to write up my reactions to last night's fifth Democratic presidential debate. This morning's testimony was pretty powerful, and Adam Schiff's closing statement was one for the history books, but it'll all have to wait until tomorrow.

The Democratic field now has 18 people in it, as Wayne Messam formally dropped out but Michael Bloomberg formally took his place. Other than Bloomberg, the candidates who are still running but who didn't appear last night are: Deval Patrick, Michael Bennet, Steve Bullock, Julián Castro, John Delaney, Joe Sestak, and Marianne Williamson. The ones who did appear on last night's debate stage: Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, and Tom Steyer. Hopefully, by the next debate, that entire list will have shrunk a bit more, but these days you never know -- maybe it'll even get bigger!

Overall, last night's debate seemed a lot smoother all around. The moderators did a pretty good job of not being too controlling, but also never letting things get completely out of control. The candidates also seem like they've settled into the debating format, and we had a lot less "everyone talks over each other" moments. The answers given seemed a lot smoother, too, with far less "I memorized this quip, so here it is, everyone stand back!" moments as well. This is all to the good, because it made for better television than some of the more-awkward earlier debates. Perhaps this is due to the fact that almost all the gadfly candidates weren't on the stage last night, or perhaps it was because all the moderators were women, but for whatever reason things seemed to flow much better last night.

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You'll have to forgive me, but during this morning's testimony before the House Intelligence Committee by Gordon Sondland, I kept thinking of a few key passages from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. If you watched the hearing, you'll understand what I'm referring to. Here are the quotes that sprang to my mind during this extended math lesson:

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

. . .

"How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four."

"Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”

If you watched this morning, you'll immediately understand why these quotes sprang to mind.

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I'm starting to write this at about 10 hours in to Day 3 of the public impeachment hearings in the House Intelligence Committee. The five minute segments are continuing as I write this, but at this point they could go on all night. Or so it seems -- you'll have to forgive me for being a bit loopy, since I'm not used to sitting and watching 12 straight hours of television at a time, and certainly not beginning at six o'clock in the morning (my time). So today's review is going to be rather choppy, as I type up what seemed to me to be the high and low points of the testimony so far.

Today's testimony has been in two parts. The morning session was with Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman and Vice Presidential staffer Jennifer Williams, and the afternoon session was with Ambassador Kurt Volker and Timothy Morrison. Interestingly enough, the morning witnesses were called by the Democrats on the committee, while the afternoon witnesses were called by the Republicans (with the Democrats' consent).

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