Good Tuesday morning. I'm Jake Sherman and welcome to your political playbook audio briefing.

Stay tuned after the show for a message from Jewel Labs. And I'm Anna Palmer. A hearing with John

Dean, a star of the Watergate era, a package of civil contempt resolutions against administration

officials like AG Bill Barr. Welcome to the House Democrats' non-impeachment impeachment campaign. It would be foolish

to believe that impeachment-hungary Democrats would be pacified by voting to slap the Attorney General

or Don McGahn, the former White House counsel on the wrist. And it would be equally as foolhardy to

believe that an American public wary of removing the president will be brought along to impeachment by listening

to Dean, an 80-year-old opponent of the president, who was last White House counsel 46 years ago.

We have to imagine that there are several generations of Americans who have only the faintest idea

of who Dean is.

But this is what House Democratic leadership strategy is to keep

impeachment at bay, action, heat, moving pieces, a process to keep Democrats from feeling like

the top of the party is sitting on its hands. We saw yesterday just how much Democratic leadership

wants to stay away from impeachment. House Minority Whibb Jim Clyburn of South Carolina told

Jake Tapper on Sunday, he thought Congress

was heading toward impeaching Trump. When he returned to the Capitol Monday evening, he told Heather

Kagle and Sarah Ferris this, I'm probably farther away from impeachment than anybody in our caucus.

We will not get out in front of our committees. We will see what the committees come up with.

I've said that forever. When he was asked whether he thought impeachment was inevitable,

Clybird said no. Truth be told, the impeachment caucus has swelled. The New York Times has 56 Democrats

saying they are ready to impeach Trump. That's still less than a quarter of the caucus, but more than

it was last week. Remember this. People doubted Speaker Nancy Pelosi's whipping abilities when she ran for the

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