There’s a rather condescending view of voters here: They can focus on only one topic at a time. The truth is that voters, to borrow’s Jeffries’s phrasing, “can sing and dance” too. Just last year, when Democrats won back the House, candidates were successful talking about pocketbook issues with voters while national news was crowded with Trump White House scandals and Democrats calling for investigations. There’s no evidence to suggest that voters’ minds have suddenly atrophied. Under Pelosi’s leadership, House Democrats have passed about 50 bills on drug prices, preexisting conditions and other key issues. Voters will notice those accomplishments, just as they noticed Republicans’ unsuccessful attacks on Obamacare in the last Congress.

Besides, waiting for voters to back impeachment hearings is a recipe for inaction. As I wrote last week, during the Watergate scandal, public support for impeachment consistently trailed events. Before the televised Watergate hearings began in May 1973, fewer than one-third of Americans thought the break-in a serious scandal, even though the burglars’ ties to the White House and the Nixon campaign had already been extensively reported. After the hearings, 53 percent thought the scandal serious, and 71 percent thought Nixon at least somewhat culpable. Yet even then, it wasn’t until the month Nixon resigned that a majority of the public supported his removal from office.