THE IRON WAS HOT FOUR MONTHS AGO

The Washington Examiner reports:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, speaking to rank-and-file Democrats in a closed-door meeting in the Capitol basement, said the whistleblower complaint involving President Trump’s phone call with the president of Ukraine convinced her it’s time to conduct a formal impeachment inquiry.

“Right now, we have to strike while the iron is hot,” Pelosi told Democrats, according to a source in the room.

The problem is, the iron was significantly hotter back in the spring. I'm hearing a lot today about a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted Monday and Tuesday, that shows a drop in support for impeachment:

It ... found that 37% of the American public thinks Trump should be impeached, down from 41% in a similar Reuters/Ipsos poll that ran earlier in September. This compares with 44% in a poll that ran in May, after the Trump administration released portions of the Mueller investigation on Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

A story in May said that the pro-impeachment number in that Reuters poll was 45%, compared to 42% opposed. (The discrepancy might be because Reuters measured support two ways, among all respondents and among registered voters.) What's striking about that poll is that impeachment had plurality support. The conventional wisdom is that every poll ever conducted on impeachment of President Trump reports a greater number of Americans opposed to impeachment than in favor -- but that one showed the opposite. This was a few weeks after the release of the redacted Mueller report, and the preferred media story was that the report was a huge bust for advocates of impeachment. A pro-impeachment poll didn't fit the master narrative.

Now the numbers are 37% pro-impeachment, 45% against (all respondents), and 39% pro-/47% anti- (registered voters).

However, it's possible that the numbers will change -- only 19% of respondents have heard "a great deal" about whistleblower story, and 47% "know little" about, haven't heard anything, or declined to answer. Please note:

Support for impeachment is higher among those adults who said they have been closely following the Ukraine news. Among those with a high level of familiarity, 5 out 10 said they think Trump should be impeached, while 4 in 10 said he should not.

And we start with more Americans inclined to believe that Trump is the guilty party. In response to the question "When it comes to the situation with President Trump, Joe Biden, and Ukraine, which of the following comes closest to your opinion?" the response "President Trump is trying to smear Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential campaign" gets 39% of all respondents and 43% of registered voters, while "Joe Biden is trying to cover up a potential scandal that could hurt him in the 2020 presidential campaign" gets only 26% of all respondents and 29% of registered voters.

So we're winning the spin war. Let's build on that.