Democrats keep insisting impeachment is off the table.
But their own allies on friendly television are sounding the alarm.
And what oe liberal media panel just said about a third Trump impeachment will leave the party’s base fuming.
What the MS NOW Panel Actually Said
Democratic strategist Adrienne Elrod and former Governor of Ohio John Kasich sat down with MS NOW host Katy Tur recently to talk through the midterm landscape, and the conversation landed somewhere that probably surprised the network’s average viewer.
Tur raised the question directly: if Democrats win the House in November, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will be “faced with” the question of whether to pursue impeachment against President Donald Trump.
Elrod didn’t dance around it.
“I think that impeaching Trump is a bad idea, and I think Leader Jeffries is doing exactly what he should be doing, which is to sort of steady the course,” she said.
She went further, noting that impeachment talk functions mainly as a fundraising mechanism rather than a serious governing strategy. “I think right now they talk impeachment because they want to keep the fundraising going,” Elrod said. “But at the end, I think it would be a major mistake.”
Kasich agreed.
Elrod also argued that a Democrat-controlled House would have more productive options available, including working with Republicans to push power back toward the Legislative Branch rather than burning political capital on a third impeachment spectacle.
The Pattern Democrats Keep Repeating
Here is the thing about Democrat denials of impeachment intent: they have a documented shelf life.
Before the 2018 midterms, Democrat leaders offered nearly identical assurances. Impeachment was described as a distraction, a waste of energy, something serious people wouldn’t pursue. Then Democrats won the House. Then came the Ukraine impeachment. Then came the January 6 proceedings, which this outlet treats as a partisan political exercise rather than a dispassionate constitutional process.
The current cycle is running the same play. Progressive members of the caucus have already been filing impeachment resolutions for months. US Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) vowed on MSNBC that Democrats “will impeach” Trump once they retake the House. US Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) made a similar pledge at a town hall earlier this year, according to the Daily Caller.
But Jeffries keeps the public messaging carefully noncommittal, telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that Democrats would “hold every single member of the Trump cartel accountable” if they win the majority. That language is flexible enough to mean almost anything, and that flexibility is the point.
Elrod’s warning that “it is a distraction to a lot of the American people who will vote for Democrats this cycle, because they’re concerned about affordability” is a candid admission of the political math. She isn’t saying impeachment is wrong. She’s saying it’s bad strategy heading into an election where voters are focused on their grocery bills.
And that is a very different thing.
Why the Left Won’t Listen to This Warning
The base pressure on Jeffries is real and it isn’t going away. The progressive wing of the party doesn’t want to hear about affordability messaging or bipartisan dealmaking. They want scalps. They want the third impeachment. They have wanted it since roughly January 20, 2025, and the intervening months have only increased the appetite.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has been saying for months that a Democrat House majority would move immediately to impeach Trump. “Imagine if the Democrats took over the House, they’d impeach him,” Johnson told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham.
President Trump himself told “The Will Cain Show” that Democrats would “find something.” “I made the wrong turn at an exit, and let’s impeach him,” Trump said, describing the pattern from his first term. “They did that before. They impeached me on a perfect phone call, turned out.”
Trump has been impeached twice already, acquitted by the Senate both times. The first proceeding centered on his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The second followed January 6, a day Trump’s own speech called on supporters to march “peacefully and patriotically” — a fact the partisan House Select Committee and its media allies consistently omitted from their preferred narrative.
Both proceedings were political exercises. Both failed. And the lesson Democrats apparently took from that track record is that the third time might be different.
It won’t be. The Senate math doesn’t change. Conviction still requires a two-thirds majority. US Representative Brad Schneider (D-IL), who chairs the center-left New Democrat coalition, acknowledged as much to Axios, noting that without that threshold, “the president will not be removed from office.”
But logic has rarely been the primary driver of impeachment politics. Rage has. And the Democrat base is running on a lot of rage right now.
Elrod’s advice — steady the course, focus on affordability, resist the impeachment temptation — is probably the most tactically sound guidance a Democrat strategist could offer in this environment. The fact that it had to be delivered on MSNBC, of all places, tells the whole story.
Because the people most likely to demand a third impeachment aren’t watching to hear that it would be a mistake. They’re watching to be told that Trump deserves everything coming to him, and that the only question is timing.
Jeffries will face that pressure the moment the first vote is called if Democrats take the majority. And the 2018 precedent suggests the institutional guardrails won’t hold for long once the base starts demanding action.
The warning from Elrod and Kasich is worth noting. But if history is any guide, it won’t be heeded.
Sources: Mediaite, “Major Mistake! MS NOW Panel Warns Democrats Not to Impeach Trump if They Win House”; Daily Caller, “Some Democrats Are Gearing Up To Impeach Trump A Third Time If They Retake The House”; Fox News, “Trump could face impeachment if Democrats seize House majority, GOP leader warns”; Fox News, “Trump warns Democrats will ‘find something’ to impeach him over if they win back House”; Axios, “Jeffries faces impeachment dilemma if Democrats win back the House”