Impeachment - An exercise in futility for 160 years...

You know who was the last American president to be impeached?  Nixon... no he actually resigned before he could be impeached.  Andrew Johnson... sort of.  Actually it was Bill Clinton.  Now I know what you are thinking, but he didn't get impeached he served 2 full terms.  Yes he did.  But he was impeached by the house of representatives in the late 90's, before having the impeachment process fail in the senate and allowing him to finish his final term.  Actually this is what happened to Johnson as well, as the senate could not reach the 2/3rds vote to get him out.  By one vote.  Regardless, if you look at it through this spectrum then the United States has never impeached a sitting president.  Nixon probably would have been impeached had he tried to stay in office, but obviously didn't think the risk of fighting the impeachment was worth staying as president, especially since he had already endured a year in office after the Watergate scandal.  So why is it a waste of time.  Essentially you have a partisan Congress that wants to oust the president and even when the Senate may be agreeable to an impeachment it is essentially an impossible task.  You see Nixon did something really bad, by spying on the opposition, then lying and trying to use the office of the president to cover it up.  This is really bad and yes it should be an impeachable offense.  So what did Johnson do - he fired one of his cabinet members... that he appointed.  "Don't they do that all the time?"  Yes. But in the 1860's the congress actually passed a law that it was illegal for the president to fire a cabinet member without congressional approval.  That law was later overturned by the Supreme Court, because really it makes no sense.  Clinton, well he lied under oath... about who he had sex with.  Not the most world shattering revelation, and certainly not something that put the country in jeopardy either.  So why did he get impeached?  Because the congress was under rule by the opposition party at the time.  You see the Congress is kind of like the kids that want to be loud and unruly and the senate is kind of like the adults.  The kids get to do whatever they want and if there are enough kids they can impeach the president.  Then it goes to the Senate, where they have to have a hearing.  Mostly no matter how outrageous the kids are the Senate won't let them screw up too badly and make the country look stupid.  Thank goodness.
So the partisan house has started an impeachment inquiry.  Which from what I understand isn't an actual inquiry because it hasn't gone through the courts, but I honestly don't care that much.  The reason is because no matter what they come up with, it won't go through the Senate.  Remember, it isn't enough that people just don't like the president, or that he did something questionable, he literally has to do something that is impeachable.  Did Trump do that?  Well they are saying that he was with holding aid to a foreign country until the country agreed to investigate a potential corrupt power grab by a former U.S. Vice President.  Who happened to be a democrat.  Yeah, that should pass a republican senate... Plus did he actually threaten to withhold the money?  Because it is actually never shown on the phone records (which I'll agree are a little suspect), so to me this is a complete waste of time.  But because the Democrats have painted themselves in a corner by wanting to impeach Trump ever since he got in office, they now have to pretend to be going after him.  And you know who it will hurt if they don't impeach him?  The Democrats.  So it is actually in their best interest to keep the inquiry going as long as possible, because if it ever goes beyond that it will fail miserably.  And the people who have been misinformed or underinformed will look at these democrats and not understand why they couldn't impeach him when it was soooooo black and white.  Honestly they should have let this die, and never even broached the subject of impeachment, because this will ultimately end badly for them.  And you know who will learn the lesson from this?  My guess is no one.  And we will have to repeat the process in about 20 years, when some people who know better come along...