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It’s not great for Pelosi to lose these two vulnerable lawmakers to the pro-impeachment side. But it also doesn’t change her political calculations that an impeachment inquiry is bad for her party.

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Pelosi’s primary job is to keep the House of Representatives in Democratic control, and she’s not worried about winning most of those 67 districts again in 2020. She’s worried about lawmakers in tight races in swing or even moderately Democratic districts, the people you don’t see supporting impeachment. Given that polls show a majority of Americans oppose impeachment of Trump — even if most think the president lied — most of those lawmakers are staying quiet about it.

Those who do speak out have to do it carefully. In a video Monday, Porter parsed her decision to support an impeachment inquiry carefully, even though Hillary Clinton won her district in 2016. “I didn’t come to Congress to impeach this president,” she said. " ... But when faced with a crisis of this magnitude, I cannot in a clean conscience ignore my duty to defend the Constitution."

Even impeachment supporters representing Democratic-leaning districts (rather than Democratic strongholds) have had to carefully explain their decisions. Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.), who represents a Democratic-leaning district not quite as liberal as the others on this list, spent considerable time in his statement acknowledging his decision might be unpopular with some of his constituents.

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“This is a conclusion I reached only recently,” he said, “and not one I reached lightly.”

But most Democratic members of Congress who support impeachment have nothing to lose in doing so. In fact, you could argue that lawmakers such as Reps. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) or Barbara Lee (Calif.) would lose credit back home if they didn’t call for Trump’s impeachment. They represent some of the most anti-Trump places in the country.

Espaillat’s Manhattan district voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 over Trump by a margin of 87 percentage points. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which assigns each congressional district a partisan ranking based on how Democratic- or Republican-leaning it is, ranks his district as Democratic by 43 points! (For comparison, an average swing district leans one way or the other by three points or less.)

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Another ultraliberal lawmaker firmly in the impeachment camp is Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) She chairs the House Financial Services Committee, and she was one of the first members of Congress to call for impeaching Trump, well before the Mueller report was released. She represents a heavily Hispanic part of Los Angeles that voted for Clinton by a margin of 61 points.

So Waters can say things like this about Trump:

Pelosi isn’t worried about these lawmakers. The ones she is focused on live in much more conservative places in Georgia, like newly elected Rep. Lucy McBath, or Iowa, like Rep. Abby Finkenauer. Both represent districts that voted for Trump in 2016, and both knocked off Republicans last year to win their seats. They are top Republican targets for 2020.

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By virtue of winning back control of the House in 2018, Democrats have quite a few vulnerable newly elected lawmakers. The Cook Political Report ranks 17 Democratic-held seats as toss-up races, compared to just four Republican-held ones.

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More centrist Democrats than liberals picked up Republican-held seats, points out Jim Kessler, a Democratic strategist with the centrist think tank Third Way. Their reelections will be critical for helping House Democrats keep their majority in 2020, and thus their concerns arguably carry more weight than the ones liberals have.

That's especially true when it comes to impeachment.

There’s an argument the pro-impeachers make that opening impeachment proceedings against Trump is the right thing to do for the history books. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III made a rare public statement making it clear that it is up to Congress to act if it wants to, given that he was hamstrung by Justice Department guidelines that don’t allow charging a president with a federal crime while they are in office. Hundreds of former federal prosecutors from Democratic and Republican administrations think Trump would have been charged with a crime if he were not a sitting president.

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Another pro-impeachment argument being made behind closed doors to Pelosi maintains that saying the “i” word will actually help House Democrats win court battles with Trump over information for their investigations. The courts are more likely to force the Trump administration to hand over documents and testimony and the unredacted Mueller report if Congress needs them to carry out its constitutionally mandated right to impeach a president.