ATLANTIC CITY – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended her decision to launch an impeachment inquiry, arguing that President Trump's actions posed a threat to the American republic.

"This is not a cause for any joy that we have to go down this path,'' Pelosi said at Harrah's Resort in Atlantic City, where she was keynote speaker for the annual New Jersey State Democratic Committee convention on Friday.

"But we have that obligation because of the actions taken to undermine the Constitution and the oath that we have taken to defend the constitution,''' said Pelosi, striding the stage before an enthusiastic throng hoisting cell phone cameras.

Pelosi stepped away from the national firestorm and into a city where Trump once owned four casinos. But that once glittering empire has long since crumbled under the weight of bankruptcy. His last property, the Taj Mahal, closed in 2016.

Pelosi, once reluctant to pursue impeachment, is now leading the Democratic Party's campaign to end his presidency, a venture mired in controversy and scandal from the outset.

Pelosi declined to wade into a detailed defense of her actions, but framed the decision as part of fundamental test of democracy. She summoned the names of Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine to make her case.

Pelosi's speech came three days after formally launching an impeachment inquiry, triggered by Trump's attempt solicited the help of Ukraine's president to investigate Joe Biden, a rival for president in 2020, and his son, Hunter. The details of Trump's effort during a July 25 phone call were outlined in a whistleblower's complaint released Wednesday.

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Democrats say Trump abused the power of his office in an attempt to bolster his reelection efforts.

"It's a very said time,'' Pelosi said, noting that Congress was first alerted about whistleblower's complaint of the phone call on Sept. 17, Constitution Day. It was a phone call that "dishonored our constitution," she said.

"None of us came to Congress to impeach the president,'' she added. "We came here to work for American working families".

Pelosi has long worried that impeachment could backfire and allow Trump to emerge from the ordeal as a sympathetic survivor and seize a second term.

But she switched her position this week as details of the whistleblower's complaint became public and as many moderates, including freshmen who seized competitive Republican districts last year, publicly endorsed impeachment as an option. As of Friday, 223 House Democrats, or 91 percent of the party's caucus, endorse impeachment.

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Yet on Friday night she also sough to quell party concerns that the impeachment battle could dominate the 2020 campaign, and overshadow what many House Democrats consider to be winning issues – health care, gun control and immigration reform.

"The election is about all of the issues and policies that we have a difference of opinion with the Republicans on. And they are very drastic,'' she said. "And they have nothing to do with impeachment. And impeachment has nothing to do with the election."

If there was any ambivalence about Pelosi’s plunge into an impeachment inquiry, it was hard to find among the rank and file Democrats who gathered here for the party’s annual convention.

Many said the cascade of evidence over the past week left Pelosi with no choice.

“It was the straw that broke the camel’s back,’’ said Elizabeth Banwell, a retired probation officer from Howell. She likened Trump to an arsonist who repeatedly eludes capture after setting fires but finally gets caught after setting one that claims victims.

“He’s doing what he did before, but got away with it,’’ she said.

Others argued that the evidence from the complaint and the details of the suspicious context surrounding it – Trump’s perplexing decision to freeze nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine and the decision by White House staffers to “lock down” an account of his conversation in a secret file used for classified documents – gave House investigators a much clearer road map to pursue than the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“They don’t have to investigate where the evidence is. It out there in plain sight for them to see,’’ said Pat Chambers-Kazanjian, a retired artist from Ocean City. “I think they got him this time. This is it.”

Mirtea Abreu, a former bank official from Union City, was no longer worried about the impeachment inquiry backfiring into a political benefit for Trump – a concern Pelosi had long shared.

“You don’t know what the outcome of the battle is going to be until you fight,’’ she said. “We got to let the president know he can’t do whatever he wants. It’s a democratic country."