Rep. Adam Schiff has spent a great deal of time pushing collusion claims. And he has a New York Times op-ed which all but suggests that this impeachment thing won't work if voters believe that it's a backdoor effort to nullify the 2016 election.
Was the president’s conduct so incompatible with the office he holds that Democratic and Republican members of Congress can make the case to their constituents that they were obligated to remove him? If they cannot, if impeachment is seen by a substantial part of the country as merely an effort to nullify an election by other means, there will be no impeachment, no matter how high the crime or serious the misdemeanor...
The impeachment effort started before Trump took office.
When you're trying to preemptively impeach an official before he even takes office, your goal by definition is to nullify the election.
The claims of collusion have their origin in Clinton opposition research. The claim itself strikes at the very legitimacy of the election. If your scandal attacks the legitimacy of the election, you're saying that the official you're targeting was not legitimately elected. And you're seeking to remove him from office based on that claim.
That's the whole Dem mission plan in a nutshell.
Schiff's pretense that there is some other motive than nullifying the election just doesn't hold up. Indeed the need to make the argument to his fellow Dems is an admission that the election is a nullification effort. Telling them to be careful of their rhetoric so that Trump voters don't see it as a nullification effort is a messaging memo.
The simple fact is that the Dems rejected Trump's election before it even happened. Trump received no presidential honeymoon. He's been targeted by Clinton allies in the DOJ during the campaign. Dem judges have essentially nullified his governance while denying his basic rights. All of this is what happens when a political faction decides that elections are a zero sum game.
And that is what we have here.