Pelosi having to be pressured into the proceedings supports my point, though. She understands like I do that it's very possible this will backfire. Her position wasn't that she doesn't want Trump impeached, because we all know she does, but rather that it is the political ramifications that are driving her actions.
Since your point was "the Democrats think it will help them in the next election" I fail to see how the House Democrat leadership initially not wanting to pursue impeachment actually supports your argument that the impeachment is a "purely political play". If the House leadership didn't want it done, it wouldn't be done, no matter what public sentiment demanded. Pelosi was persuaded to support impeachment by the findings of the House Intelligence Committee.
If anything it shows that Pelosi was wary that a weak case for impeachment, with motivations drawn primarily from sentiment and not substance, would cause the real politik calculus to turn against them in the general election. That impeachment is now moving ahead demonstrates the case has a level of substance that no longer threatens to backfire.
Also, anti-Trump sentiment and thinking impeachment is proper are two very different things. Sure, many house dems were voted in because constituents don't like Trump. That's a long leap from there to impeaching a sitting president.
Not if voters believe that the sitting president has committed crimes, which many do.
I have even found some to have acted so far from the constitution that it's a serious travesty.
How off the mark would I be if I assumed you were a constitutional originalist?
But I also didn't think impeachment was appropriate. That is for specific criminal conduct
Would you consider arming terrorists to destablize geopolitical enemies an impeachable crime?
If constituents don't like something, their first and best recourse is to vote that person out of office. Impeachment was not intended to be the mechanism for removing politicians you don't like. It was designed to pierce the immunity a sitting president has as it relates to criminal charges.
And if the sitting President credibly attempted to coerce a sovereign nation into influencing the intended mechanism by which constituents could vote that President out of power, what then? Exactly what is the recourse for a President that attempts to circumvent the intended mechanism for removing him or her from power if not impeachment?
I believe in situations like those the founding fathers would have recommended a vigorous exercising of our second amendment rights, and I also believe that between the two options impeachment is the much preferred solution.