Thread by @djrothkopf

Dear Leading Dem Type Friends,
While many of you recall the Clinton impeachment process and saw it as damaging for the GOP and thus are afraid of impeachment, it is a bad read and a bad analogy. First, Bush won (one way or another) the next election.

Second, Nixon is a better parallel. The Clinton impeachment was an abuse of power (Clinton's awful behavior notwithstanding). The Nixon resignation due to the certainty of impeachment was the Congress fulfilling its Constitutionally mandated responsibility.

It wasn't just the right thing to do. It was essential to the functioning of our system for the Congress to do it. To do otherwise would have enabled corruption and led to further abuses. We face the same circumstances and threats today.

If you resist doing what you must and should be doing, you will not only be abrogating an urgent responsibility, but you will actually be both weakening the party and strengthening Trump and his cronies and enablers.

Further by conducting the necessary investigations that would accompany the House's fulfillment of its role and conducting yourselves responsibly and with the public interest in mind, you will both enhance support for the party and keep the president's crimes in the spotlight.

That the Senate seems unlikely to convict should not be an impediment. In the first, instance a successful investigation would likely mobilize public opinion and could change the views of key Senators. If that was insufficient to convict, however, the case would not be over.

Instead the final verdict on both Trump...and his defenders in the Senate...would be left to voters in 2020. Thus a carefully managed impeachment process in the House, the Senate's actions aside, would dramatically increase the likelihood of Dem success in 2020...

...both for the White House and for the Senate. It is a Constitutional requirement, an obligation of your office to pursue impeachment. But it is also likely to be a political win and one way or another lead to the end of the Trump era...something our nation desperately needs.