“I’m not for impeachment. This is news,” Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, told the Washington Post’s Joe Heim in an interview published on Monday. Previously, she had not been entirely clear about her position, she said. “But since you asked, and I’ve been thinking about this: Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.”

The not-worth-it “he” is, of course, President Donald J. Trump. Pelosi was not advocating complacency in the face of what she said she saw as Trump’s “unconstitutional” actions as President. Instead, she argued for the need to beat him at the polls in the 2020 election—which is not that far away. (She also said that she wanted to win the Senate and hold the House—“the whole thing.”) What Pelosi thinks here is critical, because any bill of impeachment would have to pass in the House, after which the Senate would hold a trial. Although Pelosi didn’t lay out the process in the interview, a danger for the Democrats is that they might waste the opportunities that control of the House has given them on a political process that would only end with the Republican-controlled Senate acquitting Trump. Democrats who favor impeachment, including some members of Pelosi’s House caucus, might note, however, that she did not entirely dismiss the possibility, leaving it open in the event that “something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan” emerges in whatever report the special counsel, Robert Mueller, is writing. Of the three qualities, “bipartisan” is almost certainly the most elusive.

But, in deeming Trump “not worth it,” Pelosi was saying a number of things. She was effectively diminishing him; he is not so historically powerful that only impeachment can stop him. Taking him on in legislative fights, as notably happened in the government-shutdown fight, earlier this year, can be very effective. So can elections. (Of the midterms, she said, “Thank God, because we now have a lever; we have leverage against this assault on the Constitution.”) Asked if Trump was fit to be President, she said, “No. I don’t think he is. I mean, ethically unfit. Intellectually unfit. Curiosity-wise unfit. No, I don’t think he’s fit to be president of the United States. And that’s up to us to make the contrast.” She wanted the voters to join in dismissing him, which would be all the more humiliating. “Not worth it,” in that sense, is a corollary to the argument that James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, has made against impeachment: that it would let voters “off the hook.” And it is another way of expressing an idea that Adam Gopnik discusses in this week’s Comment: that impeachment might be “too good” for Trump.

“Not worth it” expresses a different strain of confidence, too, namely, the belief that the Democrats will, indeed, win the Presidency in 2020. That prospect has drawn a double-digit number of Democrats to enter the race, and that number provokes another question: What about the Republicans? Only one reasonably serious figure, Bill Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts, has put his name down as a primary challenger to Trump. It would be worth it for a few more to try, and to at least confront the President in the primaries when he campaigns, as he undoubtedly will, on bigotry, bitterness, lies, and fantasies.

Pelosi touched on this point in the interview, in addressing the question of whether the country is as divided as she has ever seen it. She had witnessed plenty of partisanship in her time, she said. What was distinct about this moment was “that we don’t see a commensurate—I don’t want to say reaction, just action—on the part of Republicans to the statements and actions the president is taking.” A Republican Party that was a bit more divided, in other words, might help the country to become less so.

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