Nancy Pelosi remains unmoved when it comes to opening an impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump, but the ground is shifting under the powerful speaker. As the number of lawmakers in favor balloons—more than 75 House Democrats and one Republican now back an inquiry—the fissures between members who view impeachment as a political calculation and those who frame it as a constitutional duty are coming into starker relief. At the center of this divide is the Judiciary Committee, which would be in charge of trying the case against the president. And, tellingly, 15 of its 24 Democratic members are in favor of opening an impeachment inquiry.

“It’s impossible to evaluate the political component without the politics of it, and I will tell you I am absolutely terrified of another four years of Donald Trump. I think it would be catastrophic for the planet, catastrophic for women, catastrophic for minorities, catastrophic for people with disabilities, catastrophic to our democracy, and the list goes on and on,” said Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, who sits on the committee. “But we have a criminal in the White House who must be held accountable, and if Congress does not hold him accountable, I see that as an absolute abdication of our oath of office.”

Judiciary Committee members account for nearly 20% of House Democrats publicly in favor of an impeachment inquiry. “It’s not surprising that a lot of members of the Judiciary Committee would be among the first to arrive here,” Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and constitutional law professor, told me. “Those of us on the Judiciary Committee have just been much more intensely exposed to the president’s daily obstruction of justice and contemptuous conduct toward Congress.”

This proportion can be explained, in part, by the lens these lawmakers are applying to the issue. “I don’t think anybody is looking at it politically in the committee,” said Tennessee Congressman Steve Cohen, who sits on the Judiciary Committee but has long been in favor of impeaching Trump. Still, he conceded, “I guess if you get an impeachment inquiry, the action is in the committee, and so you want it.” No committee member mentions it directly, but everyone is aware that an impeachment inquiry would generate weeks of primetime, televised history. Watergate made careers, minted political superstars.

But is this Watergate, or Whitewater? The conventional wisdom is that without overwhelming public support and Republican buy-in, an impeachment inquiry would backfire on the Democrats, as some argue it did for the GOP when the Newt Gingrich–led House impeached Bill Clinton. But lawmakers I spoke with dismissed the premise that the current moment is analogous to the Clinton presidency. The better comparison, they say, is to Richard Nixon. “We’re talking major league and minor league violations,” Cohen said. “Things people can relate to and people can’t relate to.” Unlike Clinton, Nixon saw his approval rating plummet from 68% at the start of the impeachment process to 24% by its end.

The fear is not just that an impeachment inquiry could lead to four more years of Trump but that it could also cost Democrats the House and rob the party of the opportunity to take back the Senate. As former Congressman Barney Frank recently laid out to the Atlantic, the thinking is that “impeachment will be a problem for Democratic candidates—not everywhere, but in districts that are in the middle.” In other words, the House seats Democrats flipped in 2018 and the Senate seats they are targeting in 2020.

Among Democrats on the committee, there is a budding concern that not launching an inquiry would pose a greater danger. “To me, the larger issue is, regardless of what happens in the Senate, we have to show future presidents for the sake of our democracy that when this president broke the law, we sought help to hold him accountable,” Congressman Eric Swalwell told me. “History will judge what we did…I don’t want to just assume the Senate is not going to hold him accountable. And that may be what ultimately happens, but I don’t want to walk away from this because I’ve prejudged that.”