Impeachment isn't a valid excuse for Trump's slow virus response

My problem with the pin-it-on-impeachment argument is twofold. First, it confuses the difference between an explanation and an excuse. If I tell you that I robbed a liquor store because I wanted the money to buy a new car, that’s an explanation, not an excuse. If I did it because kidnappers threatened to harm my family, that’s an excuse.

For people who think there was no merit whatsoever to the impeachment of Trump, and that whatever mistakes he made in his response to the coronavirus were because of it, blaming the Democrats makes some sense.

But that raises my second objection. Whether or not you think the president should have been impeached or removed, Trump is not simply a victim. As Ramesh Ponnuru (also of National Review) notes, this attempt to shift the blame “implicitly treats Democratic behavior as the variable and Republican behavior as the constant.”