Schiff In Gear

U.S. Representative Adam Schiff, who prosecuted Donald Trump in Trump's first impeachment trial in early 2020, is now an announced candidate for the U.S. Senate from his home state in California in 2024.

Having been kicked off the House Intelligence Committee by Speaker McCarthy, he has nothing else to do.

Schiff and fellow California Democrat Eric Swalwell were both expelled from the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff for having "openly lied to the American public" (to quote McCarthy) about proof of Trump's efforts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and for lying about not knowing the anonymous individual who made the original allegations (no evidence of that) and Swalwell for being involved with a Chinese national who was most likely a spy (whom Swalwell dissociated himself from the second he was informed about this individual).  Schiff is very popular in California for his crusade against Trump and is a darling of the anti-Trump media for his crusade for preserving the Constitution, so he should be a formidable candidate in the "jungle primary" in June 2024 that will pit all wannabe senators of both parties against each other for the two ballot positions in the general election.

Schiff, however, has two obstacles.  The first is that Katie Porter, an Orange County congresswoman, is also standing for election to the Senate.  The second is that incumbent Senator Dianne Feinstein, despite being 89 year old, has not announced her retirement yet.

My guess i thateht November 2024 election to the Senate from California wil lbe a POrter-Schiff contest, as Feinstein is likely to retire or be retired, and in this scenario, I'd give the edge to Porter because . . . she's a woman.

After all, it is California . . .     

Impeachment

Get it?

Now that Trump has been impeached, the Democrats have won the battle but have not yet won the war.  The might find the end of this war to be like Waterloo, and not from Wellington's perspective.  They have history and duty on their side, with House leaders Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler convinced they have Trump dead to rights, but the Senate's Republican majority is already trying to figure out how to concoct a show trial that will allow Trump to be acquitted while Trump and his minions on his campaign and at the Republican National Committee figure out how to destroy the Democratic Party once and for all in 2020 and consign it Whig-like extinction.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is already anticipating that, and she's reportedly holding back on referring the indictment to the Senate, where Mitch McConnell is already planning to strike the final blow against the Democratic opposition.  Mitch is already planning how to decimate Amy McGrath, his likely Democratic opponent in Kentucky's Senate election next year, and he must relish the idea of doing the same to Pelosi simultaneously.  The Speaker has been known to outwit many an opponent, but McConnell is not an opponent.  He's a mortal enemy, and in him she may yet meet her match.        

Meanwhile, the Republicans are sure to raise money over the impeachment vote, giving them more  dough than they need.  Democrats are likely to get money from their biggest supporters, which means they'll get checks in figures without a lot of zeroes at the end, thus pointing to a financial disadvantage.  Joe Biden is already campaigning against Trump as if he's already the nominee-in-waiting, not because he's convinced he's going to win the nomination but because he wants to frame the argument against Trump early, whether he's the nominee or not.  Biden is showing how dangerous to democracy and the rule of law Trump is.  That said, how many people will really care if we continue to have a booming stock market and low unemployment, even if the Dow numbers and job statistics are grossly misleading?  This, sadly, is nothing new for the majority of voters in These States, who continue to vote their pocketbooks for leaders who take their oaths on Bibles. :-(  

Up The Hill

Fiona Hill (below) was certainly impressive in her testimony on how American national security was diverted to help Trump with domestic politics and how it should never have been allowed to happen, and she was just as impressive in withstanding attacks on her loyalty to the United States just because she was born and raised in England.  She was especially forceful in refuting the bogus charge that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 presidential election to help Hillary Clinton, a charge that Trump has embraced.  She and her fellow witnesses also made it clear that Joe Biden and his son did nothing wrong regarding business with Ukraine. 

"The Russians’ interests are frankly to de-legitimatize our entire presidency," she told House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff.  "The goal of the Russians [in 2016] was really to put whoever became the president - by trying to tip their hands on one side of the scale - under a cloud."

And yet, none of this matters one iota.

Voters who want to hear more about what the government is going to do about them and their own concerns have pretty much stopped caring about the impeachment inquiry, assuming they ever did.  Or, as I said at the start of the month, meh.  Not only has interest in the inquiry waned, so has interest in impeachment.  Independents have turned against it, and voters in swing states have followed suit.  Democrats are suddenly in danger of losing the 2020 presidential election for going after Trump. 

Trump voters simply believe that their guy did nothing wrong.  They do, however, believe that the Bidens did something wrong, which is why they'll be pleased to know that the Republican Senate is launching an investigation of them.  And the Republicans in Congress have paid no heed to Dr. Hill's insistence that the story about Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election is a fake - they're looking into it in hopes of finding something.  Because why should anyone listen to Dr. Hill - "That Limey bitch, what does she know?"

Maybe Adam Schiff should ask what the naming Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, knows.  It seems he went to Vienna to meet a now-discredited Ukrainian prosecutor to dig up dirt on the Bidens, even though he's supposed to be an impartial as ranking member of the House intelligence Committee. Lev Parnas, the recently indicted Soviet-born American who was working with Rudolph Giuliani to push the story of corruption in Ukraine caused in part by Democrats, is ready and willing to tell everyone about it.

But hey, if no one cares, because the economy is doing so damn well . . .

The House Intelligence Committee hearings are over, and so, quite frankly is any hope of getting enough people concerned about Trump's actions to ensure his defeat in the 2020 election.  To sum up: Legally, the impeachment hearings have been a success for the Democrats.  Politically, they have been a flop.

Of Heaven's Gate proportions.

Tell Me I'm Not Dreaming!

My, oh my, oh my, what have we here?

Donald John Trump, the man currently calling 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington his home, called the president of Ukraine to say that he could get the missiles he wanted for the Ukrainian armed forces provided he try to . . . dig up dirt on a political opponent?  And Trump's bragging about it?

In case you have been under a rock lately, Trump did just that, and a whistleblower who remains anonymous filed a compliant that the Trumpster was "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" by trying to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the business dealings of Joe Biden's son and especially as to whether the former Vice President inappropriately intervened in Hunter Biden's affairs on his behalf.  Instead of getting Biden in hot water - who was in trouble already because of Elizabeth Warren's surge in Democratic presidential primary polls - Trump got himself into deep rhymes-with-voodoo.  This story was all Nancy Patricia Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, needed to allow a for an impeachment inquiry to go forward.  And although this allows House Democrats to get information they'd tried to obtain before on semi-unrelated matters, Pelosi is keeping the focus squarely on Trump's attempts to have Ukraine influence the 2020 presidential election - because the American people can understand that!

You know Trump is in trouble when even House Democrats from vulnerable swing districts - including my congresswoman, Mikie Sherrill - support an impeachment inquiry.  Thanks to Trump's brazenness, a majority of House members - not just a majority of House Democrats, a majority of House members (though all but one of them are Democrats) - now support the inquiry.  House Judiciary Committee Jerrold Nadler's investigation into Trump is no longer a sideline.  It's his main business. However, Adam Schiff, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, will be doing a good deal of heavy lifting, with this involving national security and all . . .

And we've already found out this much - Trump lawyer Rudolph Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr tried to lock down the transcript of the Trump-Zelensky call and remove it from the computer file where transcripts to calls to foreign leaders are stored.

And what does this all mean for Joe Biden?

Well, it depends on how he handles it.  Given that the American people are in no mood for a bold liberal experiment to make the United States more like a European country, with all of the nice things such a country has, Biden, whose most radical policy proposal is to modernize Amtrak, is likely still the best shot the Democrats have to beat Trump.  The stiff challenge he currently faces from Elizabeth Warren is less about his son's business dealings than it is about his own mistakes and missteps.  Bear in mind, though, that there is no evidence that Hunter Biden did anything wrong or that his dad tried to help him or obstruct justice in any way.  It's just a rumor.  And if it is in fact the case that there's nothing to see here, Biden should just come out and say so and then move on.

He didn't do so well, though, when a Fox News reporter asked him about Hunter and the former Vice President tried to do what Trump always does - change the subject.  I winced when he dodged the question, recalling Gary Hart's arrogant attempt to dodge the question as to whether he committed infidelity when reporter Paul Taylor asked it.  And if Biden wants to nip this in the bud, the last thing he should do is respond with a carefully crafted, lawyerly statement - as Hart had done with his sex scandal - because first of all, Biden is incapable of doing that anyway, and second of all, there'll likely be reporters who can find an opening to go after him on, as Paul Taylor did after Hart denied having done anything "immoral" with the future Trump supporter who went into his Washington townhouse.  ("Do you think adultery is immoral?"  "Yes."  "Have you ever committed adultery?"  You know the rest.)

My guess is that Biden will be fine.  After all, there's more evidence against Trump trying to get a foreign government to look into an alleged illegality on the Bidens' part than there is of the allegation.  Just as long as Biden's denial, whatever form it may take, isn't plagiarized from someone else.

Yes, I went there . . .

Oh, was there a United Nations General Assembly this week?