So deep-blue, safe-seat Detroit Democrat Rep. Brenda Lawrence has supposedly backtracked on her call to censure instead of impeach President Trump. No peel-off, no pullback, Democrats a solid bloc for impeachment, everything hunky-dory in the party.

According to the Detroit News:

Democratic U.S. Rep. Brenda Lawrence is walking back statements she made on a Detroit area podcast Sunday in which she seemed to be wavering on her support of President Donald Trump's impeachment. Republican groups, such as the National Republican Congressional Committee, had noted her remarks about censuring Trump, using them to ask why freshman Democratic Reps. Haley Stevens of Rochester Hills and Elissa Slotkin of Holly weren't similarly backing off support of possible impeachment. Lawrence of Southfield issued a Tuesday statement noting she was an early supporter of Trump's impeachment inquiry and found Senate Republicans behavior regarding the impeachment "unacceptable." "The House Intelligence Committee followed a very thorough process in holding hearings these past two weeks," Lawrence said. "The information they revealed confirmed that this president has abused the power of his office, therefore I continue to support impeachment." The statement came a couple days after Lawrence told reporter Charlie LeDuff that lawmakers could "censure," not "remove" the president.

Really? And we heard her the first time. What's obvious now is that the Democrat machine somehow got to her, telling her to knock it off or they'd punish her in that way they punish all dissenters. Get back on the Democrat plantation, or else.

It's not much of a walk-back, either. She says she supported censure on practical grounds, knowing that impeachment isn't going to make it in the Senate. That was pretty much her rationale for favoring censure over impeachment in the first place. Earlier on, she said she saw "no value" in impeaching President Trump, meaning, no payback for Democrats, which was likely an allusion to its coming bust in the Senate. Why get on that train at all if all it's going to do is crash?

But she obviously heard from someone, someone who acted swiftly, that such an obvious statement of reality wasn't...helpful to the Democratic leadership. It's not hard to see why. The Democratic leadership has already lashed itself to the mast of the impeachment ship, and if they were all going to go down, then they'd likely float longer if they all stayed together. Perhaps, among Democrats in the more powerful Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi set, wishful thinking remains that despite polls, despite a nothingburger of a case against Trump, events can still turn things around, just watch, and eventually, Democrats will Get Trump. But more likely, they dread the specter of Democrat after Democrat peeling off and getting the heck away from their burning impeachment ship, a humiliating spectacle after all the victory they promised and forecast.

In any case, what the rest of us can see is that Lawrence made her authentic sentiment known the first time, and then someone told her she'd wandered off the plantation, to use the common obnoxious phrase, and she'd have to walk it back before more Democrats from those dreaded swing districts joined her. It goes to show that the Democratic leadership is still exerting its muscle, even on the Detroit voters' own representative, and any non-conforming thought or new idea is still promptly tamped down.

One suspects that the black voters who elected her, the group with the 34% approval rating of President Trump, and the high disapproval for impeachment in their district, are going to notice this muscling of their congresswoman, too, and they aren't going to like that any more than they dislike the obsessive leftist attack on President Trump.

Bottom line: It won't work. Voters heard Brenda the first time.