Pelosi has never been quick to cry “Impeach!” She pointed out that she dismissed demands from some House Democrats to pursue impeachment against George W. Bush over the Iraq War in the final two years of his presidency. More recently, she rebuffed demands from her party’s liberal wing to impanel a full-scale impeachment effort following Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report about Trump and Russian interference in 2016. But now that she’s begun an impeachment inquiry, she betrays no doubt about seeing it through. Impeachment promises to be an ordeal, especially against a president so volatile, combative, and willing to twist the truth. Approaching that heaving sea, Pelosi projected resolve. “When we decide if we are going to go forward, we will be ready, and we will be ironclad,” she said, referring to potential votes on articles of impeachment. It sounded less like a boast than a statement of fact.

Without detailing specific plans, Pelosi left the clear impression that the impeachment process will conclude sooner rather than later, and its focus will be more narrow than broad. She refused to answer when asked directly whether any eventual articles of impeachment will cover issues beyond Trump’s interactions with Ukraine and the administration’s defiance of subpoenas from the committees investigating them. Some House Democrats have advocated for articles that address everything from family separations to emoluments. “No one should infer from what we’re doing that there is an imprimatur to do emoluments if it’s not” listed among Democrats’ justifications for impeaching Trump, Pelosi said. (She was careful to say, too, that if Trump’s team has “exculpatory testimony they want to present” on Ukraine, House Democrats are open to it: “We pray that that will be the case—something we don’t understand about how he interprets the Constitution.”)

Though Pelosi is vague on just how much longer the inquiry will go on, she expressed concern about Americans’ appetite for a lengthy process. “How much drama can the American people handle?” she asked. “Where does the law of diminishing returns set in? Where is the value added not worth the time?”

As those comments demonstrate, Pelosi seems focused on trying to win over public opinion on the impeachment process—and the Democrats’ broader governing agenda. Even as she dismissed the complaints from House Republicans about the investigation, she repeatedly returned to the theme of finding ways to reach voters now skeptical of Democrats. In the internal Democratic debate over whether the party’s future depends more on mobilizing its own core supporters or recapturing swing voters who took a flier on Trump in 2016, she clearly leans more toward the latter. This preference seems to inform not only how she’s approaching the House inquiry, but also how she’s assessing the party’s policies.