Perhaps the most notable thing about the articles of impeachment is what isn't in them: specifically, an obstruction of justice charge related to Trump's efforts to thwart former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. Mueller's final report, released to the public in April, outlined ten separate instances of Trump's potentially unlawful conduct and more or less invited lawmakers to begin the impeachment process. At the time, Democrats declined to do so. But eight months later, as the Ukraine-related inquiry drew to a close, lawmakers debated behind closed doors the merits of impeaching Trump for Mueller-related high crimes and misdemeanors, too. "The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law," Mueller wrote—language that would have fit just as neatly within the resolution released today.

The articles of impeachment echo these same themes, but nonetheless exclude obstruction of justice from their scope. The "prevailing feeling," explained House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Eliot Engel, was that sticking with the two charges allowed Democrats to "not spread ourselves too thin"—in other words, to avoid launching a fresh round of partisan debate over the Mueller report's significance, which could derail the entire impeachment effort.

This strategy prioritizes electoral pragmatism at the expense of substantive completeness. When the House passed its official impeachment resolution in October, only two Democrats—Collin Peterson of Minnesota and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, both of whom represent districts Trump carried in 2016—voted no. And according to Politico, a small group of purple-district Democrats, worried about how a vote to impeach will play at home, are still pondering a resolution to censure Trump instead. Although this faction cannot block an impeachment vote by itself, its existence is a reminder that enthusiasm for impeaching Trump among Democrats, although significant, is not universal.

As of earlier this week, Van Drew remained publicly opposed to supporting impeachment, while Peterson said he was "leaning that way." By focusing the resolution on a discrete, recent episode of presidential malfeasance, House speaker Nancy Pelosi and company are trying to maximize their chances of persuading their swing-district colleagues, and of achieving as close to Democratic unanimity as possible when the time comes for a full House vote.

For the same reasons, presumably, the articles do not mention Trump's many other corrupt abuses of his office's power, his exploitation of the presidency to enrich himself, his administration's wholesale rejection of congressional oversight, his unrepentant bigotry in its many forms, or the dozens of credible allegations of sexual assault for which he has never truly been held accountable. The price of successfully impeaching a lawless president, Democrats have decided, is not impeaching Donald Trump for every element of his lawlessness.