For only the third time in our history, a President of the United States has been impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives. The U.S. Senate will conduct a trial some time next month. Like Presidents Johnson and Clinton, President Trump will almost certainly be acquitted in the Senate, but his presidency will be defined, at least in part, by what happened yesterday.

President Trump’s impeachment has many elements that will need to be pulled apart over the coming months and years. It will be impossible to avoid the impression that Democrats were driven mostly by rank partisanship as they sought to undermine and impeach the president since his inauguration. The unhinged #Resistance movement paved the road to impeachment, with the party in search of the House majority and something resembling an offense. Ideally, the impeachment of a president should be so obvious that a consensus between the two parties emerges. The vote last night was almost fully along party lines. One Democrat voted “present” and two voted against impeachment. The Republicans voted as a bloc against the articles. All the retiring Republicans voted against impeachment, as did the Republicans serving districts Hillary Clinton won in 2016. If we were conducting a formal analysis, we would conclude only one “variable” mattered for this vote–partisan attachment.

Even though impeachment felt almost predestined since 2018, President Trump still played his own role. Neither the President nor his supporters can credibly claim Mr. Trump was merely a blameless victim, or that the critical phone call was “perfect.” Whether or not it rises to the level of an impeachable offense, it is difficult to view Trump’s actions as anything except an abuse of power. President Trump used his personal lawyer to operate outside the normal policy channels to pressure Ukraine into investigating his chief political rival for the presidency, all while withholding important foreign aid. In doing so, he clung to discredited conspiracy theories and minimized Russian involvement in the 2016 election. Trump gave the Democrats live ammunition for their impeachment hunt.

Politically, I think impeachment will have little impact on how the country views President Trump. Democrats will still vote against him and Republicans show no signs of leaving him. Without a monumental piece of evidence emerging, it is difficult to see how President Trump gets removed from office. If anything, it probably makes Trump stronger. The Democrats will have taken their best shot and missed. Instead of making the President contrite, it is possible a Senate acquittal might liberate him from the few constraints he currently feels.