It’s a cliché, but in this case it might apply — when you’ve lost CNN … Last night’s panel summed up succinctly not just what Democrats accomplished yesterday with their Robert Mueller stunt. Jeffrey Toobin summed up their entire, Donald-Trump-obsessed 2019 by calling it a “wall to wall failure”:

.@JeffreyToobin: Dems investigations into Trump have been a "wall-to-wall failure" pic.twitter.com/AaBOANMoVx

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 25, 2019

That’s our friend Kirsten Powers chiming in to agree with Toobin at the end. Neither of them are Trump apologists by any stretch of the imagination. What they are, however, is awake. Democrats have now wasted six months on impeachment efforts and have absolutely nothing to show for it. The observation amuses the rest of the panel, but at least in this short clip no one seems ready to dispute it either. When you’ve lost CNN …

Not that Democrats aren’t trying to keep the dream alive. Last night and into this morning, House Democrats are still making their best efforts to spin yesterday’s disaster as some sort of introduction to Mueller’s report for American voters:

Publicly, Democrats called the Mueller hearings an important step on Wednesday, where the special counsel explained that his investigation did not exonerate the President, detailed how his actions toward Russia and WikiLeaks were problematic, and outlined what they see is a clear case of obstruction of justice, even if Mueller would not say so explicitly.

“For people who are not (familiar with the report), this should have blown their minds,” said Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat who backs an impeachment inquiry.

“I think it was groundbreaking,” said Washington Rep Pramila Jayapal, a key liberal voice on the Judiciary Committee who favors an impeachment inquiry, adding that she thought Mueller had moved the needle for the public and her own caucus.

How was it “groundbreaking”? All that happened was Mueller nodded and uttered single-word responses when Democrats read from the report, while at the same time he hedged or outright shot down their legal theories. At the same time, Republicans punched holes in the premise of fairness in the investigation. And all along the way, Mueller had so much difficulty keeping up with both friendly and hostile questioning that the most “mind blowing” aspect of the day was the realization that Mueller might not have had a lot to do with the report.

It was, as Toobin says, a “wall to wall failure.” And the only impulse from House Democrats so far is to push the walls back in order to widen the failure.