Please stop assuming if you don't see the Democrats strategizing and whipping, it's not happening

[StarfishSaver]

196. Since you're citing Professor Gerhardt as your unassailable source, you may want to read what else

he has to say about impeachment in general and Speaker Pelosi's approach to it, in particular. You may find it illuminating.

Considering impeachment? Slow down.
By Michael Gerhardt
Washington Post, May 18, 2017
...
Impeachment cannot and should not be done hastily, nor should it be done for reasons so flimsy they suggest politicians are merely jockeying for political advantage rather than protecting constitutional values.

The more that impeachment proceedings appear to be rushing to judgment or driven by partisanship, the less credibility they ultimately have. The Clinton and Nixon examples offer crucial lessons about the importance of slowing down and ensuring that the public is confident that the gravity of the alleged conduct warrants the extraordinary and fundamentally undemocratic remedy of Congress removing the president from office
...
The Clinton episode offers a cautionary tale ... {T}he failure of the House to undertake its own fact-finding, and its reliance instead solely on Starr’s findings, made it easier for Clinton and his defenders to attack the impeachment as both a rush to judgment and not being properly grounded in misconduct involving the president’s abuse of official powers. The Senate quickly disposed of the matter when it was obvious it lacked the votes to meet the two-thirds threshold for a conviction.

The more deliberate the inquiry, the better chance that the American people will have confidence in it. For Nixon, the process that led to his resignation took more than two years, and the scope of wrongdoing that those investigations revealed was breathtaking. The House Judiciary Committee and a Senate select committee undertook meticulous fact-finding, which ultimately uncovered the evidence that Nixon had taped every conversation in the White House.
...
Impeachment is serious business, perhaps the most serious other than going to war that Congress ever contemplates. Any impeachment inquiry must be conducted thoroughly and preferably with bipartisan support. Those eager to get started must remember: If not done properly the first time, there might not be another chance.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/considering-impeachment-slow-down/2017/05/18/5bb60dfc-3bfb-11e7-8854-21f359183e8c_story.html?utm_term=.9cf5b1aba295

A Constitutional Scholar on the Purpose of Impeachment
New Yorker, May 10, 2019

What have you made of the way that the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has been talking about impeachment, essentially saying that we have an election coming up in a little more than a year, and this can be settled at the ballot box?

{Professor Gerhardt:} Impeachment is a political proceeding, and the framers vested this power in political authority, and therefore it’s consistent with the design of the process for political leaders to make political calculations on whether or not to impeach. The second related thing is that the fact that the House has the power to impeach doesn’t necessarily mean it will impeach or it should impeach. It has the discretion not to bring an impeachment, for whatever reason it comes up with. So all that could make sense.

Speaker Pelosi’s also said that, short of an impeachment process, Congress is entitled to investigate and even to lay a foundation through its investigation to later bring an impeachment. Congress is fully entitled, whichever party controls it, to investigate the person in the White House, for abuses of power, lying, or breaking laws.
...
You said earlier that this is a political process. Because it’s a political process, does it bother you less when Pelosi kind of says that it would be better for Democrats not to impeach Trump? Or do you mean something different by “political”?

The political process clearly involves all the political leaders and members of Congress, and they will make calculations on the basis of politics as well as the Constitution. That’s part of what we get from the design of the impeachment process. I’m not critical of Speaker Pelosi when she says what you said. She’s also said, Look, the President has lied and some investigations are needed, and that’s a perfectly appropriate judgment.

The mix of political and constitutional is really a hard one to figure out sometimes. And the political judgment may in a sense outweigh the constitutional judgment or vice-versa, and the reason it might work out differently at different times is the political makeup of Congress. For example, if Democrats had control of the House and the Senate when Clinton was President, my guess is there would have been no impeachment.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/a-constitutional-scholar-on-the-purpose-of-impeachment