WASHINGTON ― Impeachment pressure is mounting, both among voters and within the House Democratic Caucus. And Democratic leaders are as happy as ever to run out the clock. As of this week, there are 76 Democrats calling to at least open an impeachment inquiry on President Donald Trump. Impeachment looks to be getting more popular, particularly among Democratic voters. But don’t tell that to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic leaders. They continue to tamp down impeachment fever as best they can while calling for more investigations that have thus far been fruitless. Two months after the release of the Mueller report, Democrats are still trying to get the Trump administration to comply with its most basic subpoenas. Lawmakers haven’t heard testimony from a number of material witnesses involved in the potential crimes outlined in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, let alone the people involved with releasing the report. And Democratic leadership is advocating to stay the course. On Tuesday, leaders held a closed-door meeting with Democrats and presented them polling from 50 battleground districts intended to underscore the potential peril in backing impeachment. “For members that are looking to be cautious, certainly you’re going to find that in any kind of polling like that,” one Democratic member, granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting, told HuffPost. But this member added that, for the representatives who are looking to craft a message around “aggressive oversight and accountability,” there was evidence that voters even in those moderate districts also support that. “Members will see in it what they want to see,” this lawmaker predicted. For Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), the polling underscored the importance of Democrats framing the investigations as more than just an attempt to “get” Trump. “We needed to make sure that we talked about the investigations in a way that reflected our interest in national security, not just going after Donald Trump,” Yarmuth said. But all of this polling misses how Democrats have contributed to the landscape. The immediate reaction from most elected Democrats after the Mueller report was released was a shrug, even though it detailed repeated efforts to obstruct justice. Most Democratic lawmakers said they wanted to continue investigating the president, which was tantamount to saying they hadn’t yet seen enough to warrant impeachment. “The numbers for an impeachment inquiry would be much higher had we been more forceful in our messaging immediately after the Mueller report,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) told HuffPost on Tuesday. Huffman has been supportive of impeaching Trump for more than a year. And, although he has generally avoided criticizing Democratic leaders’ Trump strategy, he said Tuesday that one of the reasons more members keep coming out in support of an impeachment inquiry is the recognition that “the ordinary course of oversight is not getting this done.” “We’re not getting anywhere,” Huffman said. “And we’re certainly not getting there fast enough. It’s frustrating.” Time and again Tuesday, Democratic members seemed to acknowledge that Democrats were coming around to opening an impeachment inquiry in the face of more obstruction from the Trump administration.

Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr. (D-Mo.), who recently announced he favors impeachment, says, “The numbers keep growing. They are not half of the caucus yet, but it is predictable that they will get to that point."

“The numbers keep growing,” said Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr. (D-Mo.), who came out in favor of launching impeachment proceedings last week. “They are not half of the caucus yet, but it is predictable that they will get to that point, and then that would ― I would think ― force the leadership to look at it in a different way.” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who hasn’t yet endorsed impeachment, described it as almost inevitable. “It’s a dam that could break at any minute,” Connolly said, describing Pelosi as the person plugging the hole. “We are one major explosive piece of testimony or evidence away from that dam breaking.” The problem with that approach is that new evidence isn’t coming out quickly. Democrats are fast approaching a point in the election season where the pressure to “impeach Trump at the ballot box,” in the words of those who seem to write messaging for Democrats, will be overwhelming. Even when new information does come out, such as Trump allegedly raping a journalist in the 1990s, the president and other Republicans reflexively dismiss it. Democrats consistently undersell the seriousness of allegations against Trump, and they’re quick to move on to the next crisis. An irony of Democrats controlling the House is that Democrats may be more careful about coming out for impeachment, considering they now control what gets a vote. “There is a recognition now that we are going to have to live with the consequences of whatever course we set here as the majority party,” Huffman said. When we asked Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) where Democrats would be on impeachment if Republican Paul Ryan were still speaker, he was adamant that Democrats were much further along on opening an inquiry because they had the majority. “No. 1, we’re actually using subpoena power, we’re actually having oversight, we’re actually trying to get information that we weren’t able to get when Paul Ryan was speaker,” Gallego said. He said that the Intelligence Committee has more access to information now that Ryan isn’t assisting in former Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes’ “cover-up.” “I mean, Paul Ryan is probably the most gutless speaker of the House that we ever had in the history of the United States,” Gallego said.

We’re not getting anywhere. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.)