Democratic leaders are investigating the president and his administration on multiple fronts, but they, too, are muddled when it comes to articulating a coherent and consistent perspective on their greatest power of presidential chastisement: impeachment. Is an impeachment process underway or not? Is this impeachment by another name? Is this impeachment-lite?

CNBC’s John Harwood tweeted Saturday:

“is whistle-blower/Ukraine situation changing Pelosi’s view on potential Trump impeachment? adviser tells me: ‘no. see any GOP votes for it?’”

He followed up Sunday, tweeting:

“senior Dem aide on Speaker/impeachment: ‘contrary to popular belief, Pelosi isn’t giving members a red light. She’s telling them to do what’s right for them and their district. But Ukraine stuff may be breaking point. goes to whether we can actually have free/fair 2020 election’”

It is possible, but Pelosi is weighing another concern: Maintaining Democratic control of the House and her own speakership. There is a school of thought that a vote to impeach in the House that is met with a refusal to convict and remove in Moscow Mitch McConnell’s Senate will be viewed as a “failed impeachment,” would put the country through unnecessary strife and might turn swing voters against the Democrats or rile up Republicans to vote for Trump.

The first rule of politics is self-preservation, and everyone in Washington is following that rule to the letter. But as they do, the country suffers. The country succumbs. The country collapses.

Trump thinks that the idea of Congress as a coequal branch of government is largely a tradition and convention, even though it is written as so in the Constitution. Trump, however, knows that the enforcement mechanisms are weak and rusty. To a large degree, Congress will have to fight his obstruction in the courts, where cases can have a long horizon. He can simply run out the clock, or stall as the sting of an accusation dulls in the public consciousness.

The public is being told that the only real, meaningful remedy to the Trump problem is to defeat him at the polls next year. But that is by no means a surety. As Nate Cohn wrote in The Times in July, Trump could lose even more of the popular vote next year and still win the Electoral College by an even larger margin than in 2016.