What's impeachable and what's not?

In the evening of December 18, 2019, President Donald Trump became the third president in U.S. history, after Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, to be impeached by the House of Representatives. The two articles of impeachment were for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, neither of which passed with any votes from Republican Representatives. The articles of impeachment that were passed by the House of Representatives can be read in full here.

The first article states that Trump abused his power by pressuring the government of Ukraine to investigate a potential political rival in the 2020 election, Joe Biden, and that Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine in an effort to force them to comply.

Using the powers of his high office, President Trump solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 United States Presidential election. He did so through a scheme or course of conduct that included soliciting the Government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations that would benefit his reelection, harm the election prospects of a political opponent, and influence the 2020 United States Presidential election to his advantage...

In all of this President Trump abused the powers of the Presidency by ignoring and injuring national security and other vital national interests to obtain an improper personal political benefit. He has also betrayed the Nation by abusing his high office to enlist a foreign power in corrupting democratic elections.

Trump did ask the president of Ukraine to investigate whether Joe Biden as Vice President of the United States abused his power by withholding aid to Ukraine to force the government of Ukraine to get rid of an investigator with the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office who was, according to Trump, going to investigate a gas company who Biden's son, Hunter, sat on the board of directors for. So why is it wrong for Trump to withhold aid to Ukraine unless they comply with his desired investigation, which has not been established as a fact, and Biden withholding aid to get the Ukrainian government to sack one of their employees?

If the problem is that Biden is trying to run against Trump in 2020, then shouldn't the Democrats in Congress also be removed from office for investigating Trump ahead of his reelection bid in 2020? Why is it abuse of power for Trump but not for Congressional Democrats? It seems perfectly reasonable to ask whether Biden, during his time as Vice President, used the office to benefit his son financially. That seems like something voters might want to know before they head to the polls to nominate someone to run for president.

This is similar to Democrats claiming that Russia "hacked our democracy" in 2016 by stealing private emails from the Hillary Clinton campaign and giving them to WikiLeaks to leak to the public. As if giving voters more information about their candidates is somehow harmful to democracy. Note that the Access Hollywood tape of Trump saying foul things about women being leaked was never considered harmful to democracy by Democrats.

As far as Trump withholding military aid to Ukraine being injurious to U.S. national security, why wasn't it injurious for Biden to do so? Biden did it during a time that Russia had annexed Crimea away from Ukraine and it wouldn't have been unreasonable to assume that they might attempt to take more, whereas nobody really suspected that Russia was going to make any further encroachments against Ukraine in the Summer of 2019.

I'm not going to bother addressing the second article of impeachment, as obstruction of Congress is a moot point in my opinion given that the first article of impeachment is obviously a partisan exercise designed to harm Trump's reelection campaign. This is especially obvious given that many Democrats have been talking about impeaching Trump since before he was even sworn in as President. They've been fishing for an excuse for nearly three years and this is the best that they could come up with.

I personally think that Trump does deserve to be impeached, but not for this nonsense. He deserves to be impeached for continuing illegal wars in Iraq, Syria, and Somalia, and for funding the ongoing genocide in Yemen by the Saudis. He deserves to be impeached for the aggressive expansion of NATO up to Russia's borders, and he should be impeached for continuing to give military aid to countries like Ukraine in the first place. U.S. taxpayers should not be plundered for the benefit of foreign governments. The problem is that all of these impeachable offenses are bipartisan policies that get carried on by each successive regime and there's no political benefit to prosecuting them, so we're stuck with a never-ending clown show instead.