Ross: Speak not of that awful show, which with or without Kevin Spacey shames the memory of the British original. As for soothsaying, were Trump a normal president, or person, you would expect him to seize this opportunity to return to his 2016 populism and triangulate against his own party by, say, finally doing that infrastructure bill. But again, you watched the news conference. Did that seem like a man ready to triangulate? I think not.

Frank: I’m not sure Trump could define or spell “triangulate,” let alone try it. He would probably blush if you said it to him, mistaking it as counsel from the Kama Sutra. We will not have a big infrastructure bill, because we never get a big infrastructure bill, even though it’s the no-brainer piece of needed legislation and its absence is a complete betrayal of the American children who will inherit our crumbling bridges, cramped airports and constipated trains. But go back to Democrats and a possible subpoena-palooza.

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Ross: I think the key for Democrats is to stay focused. That means going after corruption, both Trump’s own and the shady doings of some of his functionaries, without going down every rabbit hole that the party’s conspiracy theorists want investigated. It means getting the Trump tax returns, or trying to, while leaving the Russia stuff to Mueller as long as he’s still allowed to do his work. It means resisting the temptation, which apparently is strong enough that The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway overheard Jerrold Nadler going on and on about it in a phone call on the Acela today, to try to impeach Justice Kavanaugh for perjury — and resisting a rush to impeachment for Trump as well. It means treating their newfound investigative power mostly as means to check Trump’s behavior now and weaken him before 2020 — and recognizing that it would take more extraordinary developments for a path to open to actually removing him. That’s my sense, at least. What do you think?

Frank: I think that Nadler must just ride the Acela between New York and D.C. multiple times daily, because I rarely ride it without spotting him. More seriously: I think that what the most impassioned warriors of the Democratic base want is Trump’s impeachment, because they recognize him — rightly — as a danger and a disgrace. But what most Americans want more is a government that seems to be doing its mature, earnest best to govern.

The next two years will likely be stalemate, but if Democrats are wise, they will show voters that they are doing their damnedest to draft and move along sensible, helpful legislation. Bob Kerrey shared some thoughts about this with me for my Wednesday newsletter this week, and I think he made excellent points.

Ross: Yes, I think that’s right: If you assume that no big, beautiful deals are possible, it makes sense for Democrats to pick a few (but only a few) discrete pieces of potentially popular legislation and march them through the House so that they can attack the Republicans for obstructing them two years hence. (My zeal for family policy makes me wish for a House version of the Sherrod Brown-Michael Bennet child tax credit bill, but that’s relatively unlikely.) My main caution for the Democrats is that despite all their wins this week, their most ambitious progressive candidates — the Medicare for All endorsees, especially — often fell short. Which might suggest that the public will respond better to liberal incrementalism (a minimum wage hike, a modest Obamacare fix) than some of the more sweeping ideas that the 2020 candidates are likely to endorse.