I agree with you that this whole thing may backfire. But they have to do something! The only thing I take issue with is this line;

"This is clearly a calculated effort to remove the president immediately before the election, which prevents Pence from having the luxury of appearing presidential."

Pence can have a decade or a lifetime and he would never look presidential. At best he looks like a church deacon.

If Pelosi focuses the impeachment only on the whistle blower complaint, as she apparently wants to, the time line laid out in the article is ridiculously long.

Nixon still had over half the country opposing impeachment until less than two weeks before his resignation. In the first week of August 1974, previously unknown tape from June 23, 1972 (recorded a few days after the break-in) documenting Nixon and Haldeman formulating a plan to block investigations was released. This recording later became known as the "Smoking Gun". Nixon resigned on August 8, 1974.

We already have the country evenly divided on impeachment, and the evidence is just starting to come out. And we now know there is an entire server dedicated to politically sensitive conversations the administration is trying to hide. This is not a single smoking gun. This has the potential to be an exploding arsenal.

Plus I expect a number of former members of the administration will be willing to talk. After all given the choice of remaining loyal to the one who threw them under the bus and is now on his way out (and probably to prison), or saving their own ass, guess which way that goes.

I won't be surprised to see Trump and Pence gone before the end of the year.

The real question is whether or not Pelosi wants to be President?

So what should we impeach Trump on? He has to go. So if not this, then what?