Impeachment if Dems win House next year?

"If Dems win the House" is much like saying "if Hell freezes over." But let's work within the scenario. From Mort Kondracke:

The 2006 election is shaping up to be a bitterly fought referendum on President Bush - to the point where, if Democrats win, they just might impeach him.

The "I-word" so far is mainly tossed around in the left-wing blogosphere: Barbra Streisand is calling for impeachment on her Web site, for example, as is an unofficial "progressive" site called Democrats.com. But Democratic accusations that Bush lied to get the United States into the Iraq war would seem to lead logically to demands for his removal from office.

I like and respect Mort, but I lost a bit of that respect when he used the words "Democrats" and "logically" in the same sentence. Anyway, continuing:

On Monday, for example, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) charged that Bush "dishonored America's veterans and those serving today" by playing "attack politics" in a Veterans Day speech.

Such shameful tactics by Bush are even worse than, say, lying about what your fellow soldiers did in Vietnam in order to curry favor with the left and the media (pardon the redundancy); giving aid and comfort to the VC; throwing someone else's your metals over the White House wall, only to have them mysteriously reappear in your Senate office; and decades of a demonstrably anti-military voting record. But hey...he was there, right?

What about history's indicators? Well, aside from the ones that Bush has already broken (e.g. no president losing the popular vote has ever been re-elected, no president since FDR has had his party add Congressional seats to their majority in mid-terms or re-elections, etc.), how about this one?

In 1994, Republicans capitalized on the collapse of Clinton's health care agenda to win a net 52 House seats and regain control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. But in 1998, even though Clinton's approval rating descended as low as 39 percent after disclosures that he lied about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, Democrats gained five House seats after Republicans forecast that they would impeach him after the election - as they did.

"We overplayed our hand," said Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), who later became chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. "The Democrats had better watch out that they don't do the same."

If anyone can screw up a slam dunk, it's the Democratic Party.

Plus, see prior post. Political eternity, people.