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

Stay tuned after the show for a message from VET Voice Foundation.

And I'm Anna Palmer. It's impossible to truly make an informed judgment or assessment about

how House Democratic Judiciary hearing with Corey Lewandowski went yesterday.

Because no one has any idea what the party's end goal is. You have one camp of people,

the Democratic leadership, holding out against impeachment, saying that the party would pay a price

for impeaching the president, almost no matter what the evidence shows. And another camp,

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, chief among them, which believes the committee and the public have the information they need to begin proceedings to remove the president.

The following things came out yesterday. Lewandowski testified under oath that the president asked him to pass a message to Jeff Sessions about ending the Mueller investigation, something we knew from the Mueller report, but is nonetheless significant when coming from Lewandowski's mouth. Lewandowski also offered a masterclass in declining to answer questions from Congress,

raising the specter of obstructing the investigation. Nadler also accused Lewandowski in the White

House of a cover-up. Barry Burke, a outside Democratic counsel, was able to paint Lewandowski as

dishonest and tripped him up repeatedly during staff

questioning tucked at the end of the hearing. If Democrats were looking to impeach the president

or were clear-eyed in what they were trying to accomplish, yesterday would have gone a long way

in helping build a case. Some Democrats privately told us that Lewandowski's stonewalling was

certainly enough to hold him in contempt.

But the party is so deeply divided on what they should do next that it all seemed like a circus

without a clear purpose to many Democrats. The question is this. Will any of these moments

have a crystallizing effect in either direction? Right now, Democratic insiders say 175 of their members would vote for impeachment

today on the House floor. Will that ever tick up in the face of a leadership that's looking

to tamp it all down? Right now, Democratic lawmakers continue to work at cross-purpose. So at the

moment, many Democrats feel listless, hapless, and lost on this subject. President Donald

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