Can Democrats balance obsessions: legislating, impeaching?

Get ready for the Walk’n’chew Choo-Choo. It’s due to arrive at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 3, loaded with eager Democrats.

Their mission? To squash President Pumpkinhead, of course. Oh, and since you asked, to bring back Truth, Justice and the American Way. Bringing back Michigan and Ohio would be nice too.

The debate since Nov. 6 has revolved around priorities. For grassroots progressives who kept the boiler stoked these past two years, it’s a no-brainer: (1) impeachment, (2) impeachment and (3) impeachment.

Yet the question is more nuanced for the new House majority. With no chance of a conviction in the Senate, they must weigh the risks and rewards of a base-pleasing but empty political gesture.

While the Democrats’ senior leadership is too young (if barely) to remember the 1868 impeachment of Andrew Johnson, they vividly recall the more recent case of Bill Clinton. House Republicans went after Clinton in 1998 for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. They expected, at the least, to capitalize on voter disgust in the midterms.

Instead, voters punished Republicans for dwelling on a sex scandal in the midst of peace and prosperity. Once the impeachment effort was perceived as a partisan witch hunt, the hunters became the hunted.

So what to do come January? The economy is humming and Little Rocket Man has quit talking war (he builds his nukes quietly now, which satisfies most of us). Americans seem unmoved by the left’s various crusades to delegitimize the president.

Without the proverbial “smoking gun,” impeachment could play like a movie that everyone was tired of two sequels ago. It could even become — gulp — the Democrats’ equivalent of Obamacare repeal, i.e., an unpopular project that endures because those who bellowed about it for years are too embarrassed to pull the plug.

Torn between the urge to investigate Trump until his nose bleeds and the need to advance a positive agenda for 2020, farsighted Democrats are planning a remarkable feat of agility. Says Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette: “The role of Congress is to both investigate and to be the check and balance — but it’s also to legislate. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

And Pennsylvania Rep. Brendan Boyle: “I’ve been very firm and aggressive in talking about the sanctity of this investigation, but…I get asked about a wide variety of issues, and in my view you shouldn’t just talk about one…You can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

And California Rep. Maxine Waters: “My party has not made (impeachment) their central issue. They have insisted that they need to talk about the issues that they believe are central to the concern of the American people… I’ve been saying we can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

And Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders: “If all they’re going to do is investigate Trump, that would be in my view a very, very serious mistake. This is the Democrat agenda: health care, pensions, retirement, increased wages. But we can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

There you have it. The Walk’n’chew caucus of the 116th Congress will blend equal parts investigation and legislation. If the progressive wing loses patience with the former, party elders no doubt will add sweeteners to the latter.

By 2020 they may offer voters a taste-tempting smorgasbord of free health care, free college and free babysitting — yes, the latter two could be combined at some Ivy League schools — as well as guaranteed government jobs for all and sanctuary cities from sea to shining sea.

Chew on that, Republicans.