One of the central tensions of Democratic politics in the last few years has been balancing the party’s appetite for attacking President Trump with an effort to appeal to voters who may support him.
That political calculus is at its most complicated and high-stakes on the possibility of impeachment. Democratic leadership, careful to avoid overshooting and repeating the pitfalls of the Republican effort to impeach Bill Clinton, has so far successfully quelled the most vocal calls for impeaching Mr. Trump. During the midterm election, they sought to focus the party’s message on policy priorities, namely protecting health-care coverage.
But with the midterm election over and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation continuing to release damaging information about the president, staving off efforts to initiate impeachment proceedings in a Democratic House could become more difficult. In a filing last week, New York federal prosecutors wrote that the president directed his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen to arrange illegal hush-money payments to women who said they had sexual encounters with Mr. Trump.
During an interview on CNN on Sunday, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.), who would oversee impeachment proceedings as the Judiciary chairman next year, continued to hedge.
Mr. Nadler called Mr. Trump’s actions “impeachable offenses.” But he stopped short of saying that Democrats will attempt to impeach the president.
“You don't necessarily launch an impeachment against the president because he committed an impeachable offense,” he said.
Democrats would likely need to feel like they have wide public, bipartisan support for taking such a consequential step against Mr. Trump—support that they currently lack. Mr. Nadler said he would consider the gravity and frequency of impeachable offenses before beginning that process.
The Republican-led impeachment of President Clinton in the ’90s backfired. The House voted to impeach Mr. Clinton on perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges, leading to a trial in the Senate, where Mr. Clinton was acquitted of the charges.
Most Americans viewed the attempt to remove Mr. Clinton from office as partisan overreach—and punished House Republicans as a result.
“An impeachment is an attempt to, in effect, overturn or change the result of the last election, Mr. Nadler said. “And you should do it only for very serious situations. So, that's always the question.”
Write to Andrew Duehren at andrew.duehren@wsj.com.
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