December 19, 2019 --

Thomas L. Friedman, after declaring in his December 11 New York Times column that President must be impeached to keep "America's democracy... intact," and that he wanted Ukraine to investigate the Joseph Biden to "kill" his candidacy, then seemed to go off the deep end.  This is what he wrote:  "Generally speaking, I believe presidents should be elected and removed by the voters at the polls.  But when I hear Trump defenders scream 'Impeachment subverts the will of the people,' I say: 'Really? What the hell do you think Trump was doing in Ukraine?' He was subverting the will of the people by using our tax dollars [for military aid to Ukraine] to knock out his most feared opponent in the coming election -- rather than trusting voters to do that."

The date of the Trump-Zelensky phone conversation was July 25, 2019, one year before the Democratic and Republican national conventions.   And more than 18 months before election day on November 3, 2020.  How could President Trump know who his opponent, "feared" or otherwise would be mid-year 2019?   All President Trump did was ask -- not demand -- that President Zelensky find out about "this whole situation in Ukraine" with "Crowdstrike" and "the server" and, a bit later in the conversation,  ask the Ukraine leader to "look into"  Biden's bragging about stopping "the prosecution."   

Clearly, Joe Biden would have been knocked "out" as presidential candidate only if he had engaged in improper conduct while he was the Obama administration's proconsul for Ukraine, with his son placed on the board of Burisma at lucrative pay.  The rush by Democrats in Congress -- and  media allies  like Thomas L. Friedman  -- to accuse President Trump of seeking "foreign interference" to harm a political rival suggests that Democrats are concerned that the Bidens' conduct in Ukraine was, indeed, improper and thereby subject to disfavor by Democratic voters. 

(And what if, say, Sen. Elizabeth Warren questions the senior Biden's conduct in Ukraine --  will she be denounced for citing a foreign situation for personal political benefit?)