House Speaker Nancy Pelosi played this perfectly. Delaying the transmission of the articles of impeachment to the Senate generated exactly the desired extra attention to the moment and opened up the time necessary for critical new information to come out. And new information did come out. That information included John Bolton’s yes-he-did manuscript leaks, as well as a whole series of FOIA responses showing the desperate moves going on inside a White House scrambling to cover-up actions it knew were illegal.
Rep. Adam Schiff played this perfectly. Day in and day out, Schiff not only provided the Senate with a master class in presenting a case, but he also ended those days with speeches that called back to the best of American oratory. And while Schiff was delivering a live action remake of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the rest of the House management team absolutely had his back. Val Demings, Zoe Lofgren, and Hakeem Jeffries were standouts, but the whole crew pulled its weight and then some.
And that only makes what’s happening in the Senate today a thousand times more difficult.
I cannot imagine how hard it was for Adam Schiff and the rest of the House team to get up this morning. They went to the wall. Left it all on the field. Whatever metaphor for “did absolutely everything they could and then some” you prefer, it applies in this case. They worked hard. They did everything they could to save this nation, against impossible odds and in dire circumstances. They charged that hill and did not hold back for a moment.
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Still ahead of them are four hours of arguments about calling witnesses. Four hours made absolutely pointless by the declaration ahead of time of a Republican majority that they have already made their decision based on the fine legal tradition of We Don’t Give A Damn. To even make the House team come in on Friday and argue a case when Republicans have already forged Donald Trump’s crown is both a waste of time and cruel. Ted Cruz is surely looking forward to it.
Trump’s legal team could sleep through the final day. They could let Dershowitz call in from Miami to discuss underwear brands. They might even consider having Pam Bondi present a short course in “How to get away with obvious bribery,” but senators have already had that course. It’s called being a Republican in the Senate.
Papa, if Mitch McConnell sat down with that nice lady from Alaska and promised her hundreds of millions for her vote, is that impeachable?
No, my child. That’s how Republicans in the Senate work every f’ing day.
On Friday the House team will walk into a Senate whose Republican members has already decided to join Trump in his cover-up. Except that’s not even the right term. They’ve already decided that obstruction is valid tool for a White House that wants to end congressional oversight in full. Except … even that’s not enough. Because the Republican senators aren’t unaware of Trump’s actions, or even particularly concerned about who else finds out. They’re simply putting their loyalty to Trump over liberally, literally everything.
They’ve decided they don’t care about obstruction. They don’t care about the elimination of their oversight authority. Because they’re not denying what Trump did. The final decision from the Republican Senate didn’t simply put a gun to the head of American democracy. It fired it.
Which doesn’t mean that they won’t come out of the Senate, after agreeing that Trump was guilty, and march right in front of Fox cameras to proclaim his total innocence. Of course they will. After all, it was a perfect call.
When the House impeachment managers come back to the other end of Capitol Hill, they should do so with heads held high. More than that, they should be met with trumpets. With flowers. With every plaudit that can be brought to genuine heroes of their nation. They should get a parade.
And then there should be another parade of people in the streets. In every street in the country.