On its face, the fiasco that occurred in the waning hours of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial was more or less a classic Democratic Party self-own. For those fortunate enough to have not been paying close attention: on Saturday, following an announcement by Democratic impeachment front man Rep. Jamie Raskin that he wanted to subpoena Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler to testify, the Senate voted to hear witnesses — a move that promised to extend the proceedings and strengthen the case against the accused.

Having dramatically raised the stakes, Democrats then almost immediately backed down and decided not to seek witness testimony after all. The conclusion of Trump’s impeachment thus found prominent liberals arguing, simultaneously, that 1) the trial was, and had been, vitally important; 2) that continuing it would have been a needless distraction from more salient matters; 3) and that its outcome had been a foregone conclusion all along.

The spin that followed was therefore every bit as confused and tortured as you would expect.