Campaigning in the states of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, senator and Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is leading the charge for President Trump’s impeachment. We can’t be an America that says it’s okay for a president of the United States to try to block investigations into a foreign attack on our country, or investigations into that president’s own misbehavior.

Fellow presidential contender and South Bend Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg is more non-committal. I think that Congress needs to make that decision. I think he may well deserve it. But my focus, since I’m not part of Congress but I am part of 2020, is to give him a decisive defeat at the ballot box.

For the moment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposes impeachment, preferring to hold the president and his administration accountable through congressional oversight hearings. Analyst Julie Pace. She feels like an order to move forward on impeachment. You have to not only have really solid evidence of an impeachable offense, but you also have to be able to bring not just Democrats, but also Republicans, on board.

Many Democrats remain conflicted, says California representative Adam Schiff. Is the best thing for the country to take up an impeachment proceeding, because to do otherwise sends a message that this conduct is somehow compatible with office, or is it in the best interest of the country not to take up an impeachment that we know will not be successful in the Senate, because the Republican leadership will not do its duty?

Even Democrats who support impeachment concede that it is a lengthy and politically risky process, says analyst Matt Dallek. By the time impeachment proceedings were even to ramp up, here talking about the end maybe of 2019 early 2020, that creates its own complication, because there’s another remedy for removing a president—it’s called the election. President Trump blasted Democrats on Twitter, and told reporters he’s not even a little bit worried about impeachment. It’s all part of the political battle to come, says expert John Fortier. Well, I don’t think it’s over. We’ll keep talking about it, but I think the topline was what the president wanted to hear. It was that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Trump himself and the Russian government. Even if Democrats hold off on impeachment, the Muller report is likely to get plenty of attention from Democratic presidential contenders all through the 2020 election cycle.

Jim Malone VOA News Washington.