| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. The House of Representatives appears to be moving both very fast and very slowly toward impeaching President Donald Trump. With a final vote likely by the end of the week, we'll have the fastest-ever impeachment, which is remarkable given that few politicians were even talking about it until Jan. 6. But it's also true that even though House Democrats are saying that Trump should not be in office one minute longer after he egged on the rioters who invaded the Capitol that day, they didn't impeach him on Thursday, or Friday, or over the weekend, and they'll apparently not be impeaching him on Monday. Indeed, they're trying to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to initiate procedures to remove him, or for Trump to just resign, both choices that are far inferior to Congressional action. Is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi making a mistake by going ahead now with impeachment? It's hard to tell. Impeachment is not just a moral statement. Impeachment is a political act, and that means that it should be applied prudently and carefully. It's easy for people on the sidelines (myself included) to believe that the House should have impeached Trump in the wee hours of Jan. 7, immediately after the mob was routed and Congress completed the count of the electoral votes that certified Joe Biden's victory in the November election. It's just as easy to say that the Senate should have followed with a quick trial that very afternoon and voted to convict and remove him. But Pelosi needs to be practical. It's possible that she waited because she wanted to be certain that impeachment would actually pass on the House floor, where she manages a newly narrow Democratic majority. It's also possible that she waited, and perhaps is still waiting, because she believes that waiting will help build bipartisan support. I'm not talking about wishful thinking; I'm suggesting the possibility that she has reason to believe that a somewhat more deliberate process will deliver the votes of several Republicans. I have no idea whether that's true or not — but if it is, it might well be worth the delay. That's especially true because it appears extremely unlikely that the Senate will take up any impeachment resolution before Trump leaves office on Jan. 20. It would take unanimous consent from senators to make it happen, and that seems impossible even if Majority Leader Mitch McConnell supported it. There's still an argument that a quick impeachment would exert at least some pressure on Trump to stop fomenting insurrection, given that it would be easier for him to be removed (should the Senate suddenly decide to do so) once the Senate had received articles of impeachment. That too, however, is more likely if the House vote is bipartisan. Meanwhile, Republicans have retreated to the flimsiest of defenses against impeachment and removal. Take Texas Representative Kevin Brady, who argued that impeachment would "further divide the country," or New York's Elise Stefanik, who claims that impeachment amounts to "politically shaming millions of Trump voters." These claims collapse as long as everyone, Biden and Trump voters alike, is on the side of democracy and the Constitution. Impeachment would only divide insurrectionists from those who support the rule of law; it would only shame that minority of Trump voters who believe it is just fine for him to undermine a free and fair election by asking election officials to "find" nonexistent votes and by encouraging a mob to riot. What's striking about these defenses of Trump (and these are only two examples from many Trump defenders in and out of Congress) is that they say nothing about whether the president is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, and nothing about whether his offenses are so grave that they demand the extraordinary action of impeachment and removal in the last days of his term. Surely that's what matters, not whether standing up for the republic is divisive or hurts the feelings of those who oppose it. Political scientist Jay Ulfelder argues, based on his research, that "the U.S. should harshly punish GOP leaders who attempted to keep Trump in power despite losing the election and fomented insurrection to advance that effort." As conservative columnist Philip Klein notes, the fact that any Senate action will almost certainly not commence until after Jan. 20 means that there's an option of using the process of impeachment and trial to fully investigate exactly what happened, both in the Jan. 6 insurrection and in Trump's long-term efforts to overturn the legitimate election results. The good news is that such procedures might be a good way to celebrate the heroes of the last two months, whether it's honest election officials (many of them Republicans) who resisted pressure from Trump and his supporters, including those in the House and Senate, or if it's the Capitol police and other law-enforcement personnel who helped prevent an even worse result when the mob attacked. The one thing that simply can't happen without causing enormous damage would be just ignoring the whole thing in the name of unity. The good news is that while Brady and Stefanik and others were evading responsibility, virtually all congressional Democrats and at least a handful of Republicans appeared to be taking the matter seriously. What matters most isn't whether Pelosi is moving too slowly or not. What matters most is whether the Republican Party can rid itself of the enemies of democracy that have brought us to this moment. 1. Melissa R. Michelson and Andrea Benjamin on Stacey Abrams and the Georgia elections. 2. Julian Wamble on protesting and rioting while white. 3. Hakeem Jefferson on insurrection and white power. 4. Stephen C. Nemeth and Holley E. Hansen at the Monkey Cage on right-wing violence. 5. Seth Masket at Mischiefs of Faction on what political scientists have said about Trump. 6. Michael J. Gerhardt on a post-presidential impeachment. 7. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Ramesh Ponnuru is probably too generous in National Review to Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, but his basic point is a good one: There was a far more legitimate way for the objectors to make their points, and it matters that they didn't choose it. 8. Harry Enten is correct that Trump has been an electoral disaster for the Republican Party. 9. And Jamelle Bouie on Congress's responsibility to act. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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