Family ties

The legitimacy of the newly initiated impeachment inquiry depends on your take on Hunter Biden.

If you think that because no criminal charges were brought, that while Biden Jr.'s actions were unseemly and arguably improper, nothing criminal took place. But of course that's a difficult position for Democrats who are up in arms about improper behavior which did not involve criminal culpability (see the Meuller Report).

On the other hand, if you believe that he and/or his father engaged in criminal wrong doing then Trump's attempt to shed light on it seems legitimate. Of course, threatening to withdraw financial life support from a country to do this is at the very least egregiously heavy handed, but sausage making is not a pretty sight. Republicans will argue that the only reason charges weren't filed was because no one was looking hard enough. That in turn was because Biden Sr. was VP and helped oust Ukraine's chief prosecutor.  (The fact that almost every European country was also calling for his ouster doesn't make it into their narrative). And on which side of that divide Republican senators fall will determine the fate the country's 45th president.

If there is one common theme to both these narratives and one the Dems need to get out ahead of it's the appearance of corruption, whether its Biden Sr.'s  children, or Trump's. Governing and public service is not an adjunct to the family business; it is a sacred trust; leveraging ones family's position of power an influence for financial gain, while not strictly (in the sense defined by the supreme court) corrupt, sure as heck looks pretty darn close. And its the kind of sleaze that helps fuel distrust of powerful office holders and contributed to the populist surge that helped put Trump (with assistance from Putin) into the White House.

As painful as it may be, Democrats need to distance themselves from Joe Biden if for no other reason than to signal that they will no longer  tolerate the kind of turning a blind eye that apparently went on when he was advised that his son's activities looks unseemly.