California’s Democrats had their annual convention this week, working to figure out precisely what their agenda will be going forward. There are currently some serious schisms between the hard left and the more traditional elements of the party so they clearly have a lot of work to do. But all the policy talk went out the window when their featured speaker, Congresswoman Maxine Waters took that stage. The event quickly turned into an anti-Trump rally complete with chants and calls to figuratively drag President Trump out of the White House by force. (The Hill)

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who has been a leading opponent of President Trump on Capitol Hill, told thousands of Democratic activists and officials to “get ready for impeachment.” Speaking at the California Democratic Party’s annual convention in San Diego, Waters said that she believes special counsel Robert Mueller, who’s been at the helm of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, is “getter closer” to figuring out who colluded with Russia. “I say it is time to get ready for impeachment,” Waters said to roaring applause. “I cannot wait and I’m counting on special counsel Mueller to connect the dots.” “I believe he’s getting closer to discovering what Americans were and are involved in collusion with the Russians.”

According to people in attendance, Waters went on and on about Donald Trump for almost twenty minutes. Her theme was clear… everyone get ready for impeachment hearings. When it finished she was treated to several standing ovations and a chant of “Impeach 45” filling the entire hall.

To be clear, this isn’t new territory for Maxine Waters. She’s been talking about impeaching Trump since before he was sworn in. (Okay… she may have waited for a few days after the inauguration.) But in the past, the Democratic leadership has mostly edged away from her, not signing on to using “the I word” and letting her be the loud, extreme voice in the crowd. Is that changing now?

That may just backfire on the Democrats if Waters’ enthusiasm begins spreading to other candidates. There’s no question that Trump’s popularity is lower than it needs to be in a midterm election year and the party out of power traditionally does well in these cycles. But unless somebody finally produces some actual evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors against Donald Trump, the Party of Pelosi may just learn that people really don’t want to put the nation through the upheaval of another attempted impeachment. It would effectively shut down the government for an extended period of time, as all the focus turned to those proceedings. If impeachment is viewed as the agenda of the Democrats this year, that overreach could absolutely cost them their shot at taking the gavel back in the House.

And it’s also worth mentioning that the votes don’t exist in the Senate to actually impeach Donald Trump, even if they could come up with a majority in the House willing to bring the charges. Do they really want to start down this road? Clearly Maxine Waters does, but she may not have as much support among her peers as she did in that convention hall.