Nancy Pelosi made herself more than clear. For over a year, the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives wanted nothing to do with the growing interest in impeaching President Donald Trump. “It’s not someplace that I think we should go,” she said on CNN last November. At a press briefing in April, she said, “I don’t think we should be talking about impeachment. I’ve been very clear right from the start…. On the political side I think it’s a gift to the Republicans.” The following month, she called impeachment “divisive” and a “distraction.” And in August she said, ‘‘It’s not a priority on the agenda going forward unless something else comes forward.”

But Pelosi recently sounded a slightly different note. “Recognize one point,” she told The Atlantic’s Edward-Isaac Dovere on Friday. “What Mueller might not think is indictable could be impeachable.” Meanwhile, Axios reported on Monday that “Top Democrats, who had largely avoided the subject during the campaign, now tell us they plan to almost immediately begin exploring possible grounds for impeachment.”



There have been no major revelations of late that could explain this shift; the evidence of Trump’s malfeasance was no less convincing a month or two ago than it is today. But something else has changed: The Democrats handily won back the House of Representatives in last week’s midterms, setting up Pelosi’s return as the chamber’s speaker. Could it be that she and other leading Democrats have been seriously considering impeachment all along?



If so, one can hardly blame them, given the pressure they were under from the base and megadonors alike—which has not abated. “As President Trump continues to accelerate his lawlessness, the new Democratic House majority must initiate impeachment proceedings against him as soon as it takes office in January,” Tom Steyer wrote in The New York Times last week. Six in ten Democrats agree with him, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll released on Monday.



But this would be a mistake, or at least premature. After last week’s blue wave, it’s clear that most everything is trending in Democrats’ favor. The party won handily on a message focused on health care. The Rust Belt states that Trump flipped in 2016 appear to be turning blue again, while demographic shifts elsewhere in America are turning some red states closer to purple. In Washington, meanwhile, Democrats will have two years to investigate every nook and cranny of the Trump administration. So why would they push their luck by impeaching the president, risking a backlash that could propel Trump to reelection?