Related to the high-mindedness is another comforting reality: there is a base level of goodwill between the two parties in the House. This is odd to say, given how incommensurable and bitter the political divides have become. But political disagreements and standard-issue partisan games don’t poison the waters. (For example, Republicans know that their investigations into the F.B.I., while not without some merit, will get shut down, and they accept that. Similarly, Democrats knew that Trump was going to benefit from a lot of double standards set by his own party, and they accept that.) What infuriates either side is a breach in implicit boundaries, such as when Newt Gingrich deployed a new brand of attack rhetoric in the 1980s and 1990s, or when Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay held a vote open for three hours. Currently, though, despite all tensions over policy, House Republicans have played fair enough to mollify House Democrats, and the two sides get along better than you’d think. When Pelosi asserts that truly impeachment-worthy crimes would get Republican buy-in for action, she means it.

This gets to the inescapability of politics in all of this. Those who see impeachment as a clean matter of upholding the rule of law in the face of crime, who see only cowardice or a concern for “optics” in attempts to avoid it, tend to have greater confidence in their conceptions of impartiality than those who urge restraint. Impeachment is like yelling, “Fire!” Unless everyone can see the flames, as opposed to your side alone, you lose credibility, with serious repercussions in all directions. That’s what happened to Republicans in 1998, and this, just as much as midterm setbacks, is what many Democrats take as the crucial lesson.

If Pelosi understands anything better than nearly anyone else, it’s the workings of consensus. Impeachment is the breakdown of consensus, and if you’re using it in the hopes of getting a president booted out of office, then you’re doing it wrong. Republicans impeached Clinton because there was no bipartisan consensus to do more than that. They wanted to make a point and draw some blood. If the crimes are indisputably heinous, however, then, as Pelosi sees it, impeachment never happens. Instead, the leaders of the House and Senate pay a visit to the Oval Office and say, “Mr. President, we have the votes to impeach and convict you. The jig is up.” Then the president, as Nixon did, resigns. The circus is averted.

There’s a final dirty truth about why Democrats aren’t going to impeach Trump: they don’t think he’s that bad. Oh, sure, they despise him. (No angry e-mails, please.) Pelosi thinks he’s a coarse and erratic buffoon. But she doesn’t think he’s a Hitler or Mussolini or Pinochet or Franco or Erdoğan or even Orbán. She remembers scandals from previous presidencies, such as warrantless wiretapping or Abu Ghraib or the sale of arms to Iran with a portion of the profits being diverted to rebels in Nicaragua. Payoffs to sexual partners look mild in comparison. (She also knows about far worse among some of her colleagues in the House. Thirty years in Washington will do that.)

Anti-Trump passions have therefore presented Democrats like Pelosi with a tricky balance to strike. They value the outrage and voter mobilization, and they’re willing to stoke the fire, but they want a controlled burn. That means tamping down impeachment talk. They’re happy to accuse Trump of crimes and suggest that impeachment would be merited, but then they pull back from the brink. The offenses outlined in recent filings concerning Trump’s payoff to porn actress Daniels are “impeachable,” noted Jerrold Nadler, the incoming chairman of the Judiciary Committee, but “whether they are important enough to justify an impeachment is a different question.” A weakened and infuriated Trump is an ideal foil for a party looking to retake the White House, and so is the party covering for him. If Trump were gone, Mike Pence would clean the slate and exhibit far more self-control. So why get in the way of a good, or at least not-all-bad, thing?

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