The Numbers Game, Or: Political Twitter is not the U.S. House of Representatives

All arguments for impeachment assume the House would draft and approve articles of impeachment handily, and then put the Senate on the hot seat to remove Trump from office.

Not so fast, Clever Hans.

“At the end of the day, by our count, there have been 20 members who have expressed a desire to proceed to an impeachment inquiry. An additional seven members have said, ‘throw him out, he should be impeached, we need to get rid of him.’ That’s a total of 27 members,” [Rep. Hakeem] Jeffries [D-N.Y.] told The Daily Beast. “Nobody counts better than Speaker Pelosi. There are 239 members of the House Democratic Caucus. Nobody counts better than Speaker Pelosi.”
....

But privately, some lawmakers have begun to wonder how much patience there is within the caucus for Pelosi’s methodical approach. One House Democrat scoffed at Jeffries’ insistence that there were only 27 members who wanted impeachment considered. “Far more,” the member said. “It seems like people are getting there, one at a time.”

So, how many more?  28?  29?  30?  "It seems like" is not the same thing as a solid head count, and 27 is a long way from 239.  "One at a time" means you'd need another six months (at one day at a time), to get the votes to impeach in the Democratic caucus.  You surely want a unanimous vote, knowing removal from office has no chance in the Senate (whether McConnell will even allow it to come to trial is an open question, to be honest).

Pelosi and her team have prided themselves on not getting swept up in the fetishes of the national press corps, noting that they won back control of the House in 2018 on a platform that emphasized protections for people with preexisting conditions while cable news obsessed over Russia. But, increasingly, it’s not just the media that’s been buzzing about impeachment but Pelosi’s own members, including several swing-district freshmen who have, to this point, largely resisted calls to start proceedings.

Considering what Pelosi did to Trump today (did he learn nothing from the government shut down?  Threatening to do nothing on legislation, which is simply saying out loud what McConnell is doing in the Senate (where he has Merrick Garlanded all legislation coming out of the House).  If McConnell is right, and there's no education in the second kick of a mule, Trump is uneducable.), it is probably the best course to follow her lead.  If the House holds impeachment hearings and sends articles to the Senate by year's end, what do the Democrats run on in 2020? Especially if the Senate quickly acquits Trump, who then claims once again he was the victim of a "witch hunt" which couldn't touch him because he's now invisible and bulletproof? (In the final analysis, do you want to remove Trump, or make him inevitable?  The people bleating about "principles" are using the same argument people used to justify not voting for Clinton.  How did that work out?)

And what's it really going to take to move that head count from 27 to unanimous?

Trump's head is not going to be the first ever to roll under the blade of impeachment.  But death by a thousand cuts, which is what Pelosi is administering....that could well be another matter.