© Samuel Corum/Getty ImagesSpeaker of the House Nancy Pelosi calls for the removal of President Donald Trump from office either by invocation of the 25th Amendment by Vice President Mike Pence and a majority of the Cabinet members or Impeachment at the Capitol on January 7, in Washington, DC.
House Democrats want you to believe these two things -- at the same time:
1) The threat posed by Donald Trump is so dire that, if Vice President Mike Pence won't remove him from office this week, then they must immediately vote to impeach the President (again).
2) In order to avoid cluttering Joe Biden's first days in office with an impeachment trial, they may wait for up to 100 days to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate.
If those two ideas seem directly contradictory to you, well, good! It means you are paying attention. Because they are directly contradictory.
It can't be both incredibly urgent that the House impeach Trump with just more than a week left in his term AND totally cool for the House to sit on the articles of impeachment until the Biden administration gets off the ground.
Right? Right.
The logic breakdown here is obvious if you spend more than five seconds thinking about it. Which is why some House Democrats voiced opposition to that sort of delay on Monday.
"My view is no," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Maryland) when asked about delaying sending any impeachment articles to the Senate.
"This is urgent," said Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline, who co-authored the impeachment language in the House. "This President represents a real danger to our democracy and, you know, obviously I'm not in control of the Senate, but they ought to come back immediately respond to this."
Why the contradictory messaging? Because what the average House member wants is entirely different from what Biden and his incoming administration want.
Biden wants to get Trump in the rearview mirror as quickly as possible so he can focus on the Covid-19 vaccine rollout and his own major policy initiatives.
The rank-and-file in the House -- especially liberals -- want action NOW on Trump for his incitement of the crowd that stormed the US Capitol last week.
The Point: Who wins? Well, that depends on how much swat Biden has among congressional Democrats and how much Speaker Nancy Pelosi is willing to follow his lead on all of this.