Why impeachment now? Democrats cite the clarity of the case

“It has shifted the ground,” Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont and a member of the Intelligence Committee, said about the new allegations against the president, as party support for an impeachment inquiry solidified. “It makes the brazenness of the conduct and the simplicity of the misconduct easy for everybody to understand.”

A second factor was also at work. The national security implications of the president pressuring an embattled ally for political help threw open the door for more moderate Democrats — many of them products of the military and intelligence communities, rather than lifelong politicians — to justify their decision to pursue an impeachment case against the president despite his relative popularity in their districts. In Tuesday’s outpouring of new demands for an inquiry, national security loomed large as a rationale…

Among the main questions for Democrats is how unified they are now on an issue that has created deep rifts within their ranks until this week. It is far from clear, for instance, whether they agree on how broad the impeachment inquiry should be, or who should run it. Already on Tuesday, some more moderate lawmakers from Republican-leaning districts, who put themselves at political risk to embrace impeachment, were privately voicing frustration at the lack of certainty about what the inquiry would look like going forward.