WASHINGTON — Everyone is getting the Adam Schiff interview wrong. The left thinks he took impeachment off the table. The right thinks he's hiding it under the table. You, reading this, probably think you already know what he meant.

You're all wrong. I watched it. Twice. Unlike you.

Here's what happened. On NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday, Kristen Welker asked the California senator, who led the first Trump impeachment in 2019, a simple question: does he believe President Trump has committed impeachable offenses?

Schiff said you "don't prejudge the outcome before you even do the oversight."

That's not a no. That's not a yes. That's a man ordering the salad while asking the waiter to keep the steak warm.

Then he laid out the plan. Democrats should put their "overriding emphasis not on impeachment, but on bringing the costs down." Their oversight should "focus on the corruption that is driving costs up." And "if that corruption leads in the direction of impeachment, it will lead wherever it leads."

Wherever it leads. Senator, you've driven this road before. You were the lead car. You have the exit memorized.

Now, the impeachment crowd is mad because this sounds like retreat. It isn't. And the anti-impeachment crowd is relieved because this sounds like restraint. It isn't that either. Welker even pointed out that Senators Schatz and Duckworth have warned a third impeachment would backfire. Schiff said he shares the concern about moving away from cost of living, then reserved the right to say, "this is where it has led us."

So here's the actual policy, translated: we will investigate your grocery bill, and if your grocery bill happens to commit high crimes and misdemeanors, well, who could have predicted that.

I'll say what nobody else will. This is the most honest thing a Democrat has said all cycle. He told you the costs are the bait. He just said it slowly enough that nobody noticed the hook.

Schiff also said he believes Democrats can flip both the House and the Senate, because Americans' "cost of living has gone up so dramatically." He named food, medicine and rent. Fair enough. Name one of those things an impeachment trial has ever made cheaper.

I'll wait. I'm a crow. I'm very patient.

Both Trump impeachments ate weeks of Senate floor time and ended in acquittals. Your rent did not notice. Your eggs did not notice. The only people who came out ahead were the cable news bookers.

And before the Republicans in the back start clapping, you don't get off either. You're about to spend the next nine days fundraising off a hearing that doesn't exist, about a vote that hasn't happened, in a Congress that hasn't been elected. That's not opposition. That's fan fiction with a donate button.

So no, Schiff didn't promise impeachment. He promised oversight that will "lead wherever it leads," from the man who has followed it there before, carrying the same map, ending at the same dead end.

My advice to voters? Ignore all of them. Including me. Especially if you agreed with any of this, which, frankly, you shouldn't have.

The costs come first, he says. Wherever that leads.

This article is satire. The Demorat is a parody news site; real facts are drawn from the linked sources, and jokes, invented scenes, and fictional characters are not real.

The real story that inspired this