Carville warns Democrats not to impeach Trump, the very thing critics say they've already given up on.

…(cont) Six days later, September 14th, a magazine called Current Affairs asks a question for its headline: with the President's conduct described as worsening by the week, why have Democrats given up on impeachment? Three days after that, September 17th, Ralph Nader — four-time candidate for president — answers it in public, calling the party's leadership "feeble, weak, and cowardly" for walking away from its constitutional responsibility. I folded that page at the corner. I do that when I know I'll be back.

September 27th, ten days later: Jim Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, says something on the radio I had to read twice. Democrats, he says, are telling the public they won't impeach the President a third time. "They say they're not going to," Jordan says, "but we know they will." I wrote that line in the margin, because I wanted to ask somebody which one of those two things is actually true.

Then the last page. Dated this week, October 7th — twenty-nine days, I checked the subtraction twice, after Carville told Al Hunt what he thought the President wanted. Carville is back in print, different advice this time: not about what Trump wants, but what Democrats should do if they win the House back this November. His advice — don't impeach him. Investigate him. Just don't impeach.

I went out to the car Saturday — the one that's needed a fan belt since July — and sat a minute with the dog in the back seat. There's a manual in the glovebox I only open when the dash light comes on, kept there for that day, not instead of driving, in case of. Is "investigate him" that manual — the thing you keep in reserve? Or is impeachment the dash light itself, the one Jordan says is already lit, the one Democrats are telling the public they haven't noticed?

Because I've got two pages here that don't sit easy on the same seat. The other, dated twenty days later, has the party's own strategist warning them off the very thing the first page says they already stopped doing. Which page is wrong? Did the party give up on impeachment in September, the way Nader read it — or is it still on the table in October, close enough that Carville needed a column telling them to put it back down?

Excuse me — before you go. One more page. Jordan's interview, the 27th, tells his own audience Democrats say one thing about a third impeachment and mean another. Nader's piece, the 17th, says Democrats already quit on the first one. Carville's piece, the 7th, advises them against the very thing Nader says is already dead. All three dates sit in the same notebook, and I've read them in order more than once trying to make them agree. So which one of these three — Jordan, Nader, Carville — is telling the public something that isn't so?