Is Adam Schiff Re-Inventing Himself-- With The Help Of Trump?

Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) hammering Trump by Nancy Ohanian

I don't want to go into-- for the 300th time-- the whole long story about how I helped my congressman first get elected in 2000 and then was mortified when he joined the Blue Dogs and started voting like a Republican. Needless to say, my support turned to anger and I never voted for any of his reelection bids-- and stopped talking to him. But, lately, things have changed. It wasn't even that he quit the Blue Dogs and started voting more like a Democrat. He still wasn't a progressive and identified with the Wall Street-owned New Dems instead. But then he took a bow on the national stage and became best-known for something else instead. But... I live in Los Feliz, part of California's 28th congressional district and, yep, my member of Congress is Adam Schiff, of late Trump's chief antagonist and someone who is handling the Republicans on the House Intel Committee as perfectly as anyone could possibly hope he would (short of setting up an impromptu firing squad). Early last week, a radio syndicate asked me if I would come on to denounce Schiff as a conservative Democrat, as I had done many times in the past. Slightly embarrassed, I begged off and suggested electorally vulnerable ConservaDems Dan Lipinski, Tom O'Halleran or Josh Gottheimer instead.

Last week, I asked award-winning illustrator Nancy Ohanian, to consider doing a caricature of Schiff. That's it up top. Nancy sent me a few autographed 12"x16" copies of it. If you'd like one, contribute any amount to any Blue America-endorsed congressional candidate on this page or by clicking on the thermometer on the right. (We will pick 3 random winners on Tuesday evening at 6pm, PT.) Unless the Democrats keep their House majority, Schiff will be replaced as chairman of the Intel Committee by Devin Nunes, the ranking member who has been acting as Trump's chief defender throughout the hearings-- and for the two-plus years previous to the hearings.

Last week, writing for L.A. Magazine, Bryan Smith penned a feature, Adam Schiff Is Ready to Rumble, that will be music to the ears of his constituents, my neighbors. In 2016 Hillary eviscerated Trump in this district, 72.1% to 22.3%, and last year Schiff was reelected with 78.4%. If I'm reading the signs correctly, Trump will do even worse next year and Schiff will do even better. In Smith's words, "The mild-mannered, vegan congressman from Burbank has become the GOP’s worst nightmare... Before the impeachment inquiry Schiff was known for eschewing fame while representing a town-- Hollywood-- built on it."

He is world-famous now. The chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence can now see himself caricatured on Saturday Night Live. In Trump’s Twitterverse, he’s the limp, Ivy League-educated elitist scheming to bring down the President of the Real America. To his supporters, he is Elliot Ness chasing Al Capone, Joseph Welch facing down Joseph McCarthy. Which of these images wins out may ultimately determine nothing less than the fate of the free world.

...He may not want to play the leading man, but Schiff’s confrontation of Trump is the stuff of a Frank Capra film. The by-the-book former prosecutor, who seems every bit the embodiment of the process he champions, is poised to take down a president whose primary mission has been to blow up the system for his own gain, regardless of how many laws (or reputations) were trampled in the process.

...When the impeachment inquiry opened, and Schiff replaced Robert Mueller as the existential threat to Trump’s presidency, Trump and his GOP henchmen trained their full hyperbolic artillery on the “congessman from Hollywood.”  The attacks intensified after Schiff paraphrased the written summation of a telephone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rather than reading straight from the summation, culminating (for now) in the absurd blitz of the “secret” impeachment hearings. “He’s a liar!” Trump tweeted.  “Behold the Lord High Impeacher,” sneered a headline in the Wall Street Journal’s opinion section. Meanwhile the usual suspects at Fox News-- Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro-- spewed their daily invective. In yet another sign of the times, the evangelical preacher and best-selling author Perry Stone claimed that Schiff and other Democratic lawmakers were possessed by demons and trying to “place hexes” on Trump.

The demonization campaign also has had its darker side. “Someone called the office and said, ‘I’m going to put three bullets in the back of your head, and this is the gun I’m going to use,’ ” Schiff told me. A Major League Baseball umpire tweeted in October that he would “be buying an AR-15 tomorrow,” and there would be “another cival (sic) war” if Trump was impeached.

...He finds the “conspiracy stuff” that Trump’s attacks foster less humorous. A man named Anthony Comello attempted to make a “citizen’s arrest” of Schiff after reading an outlandish QAnon conspiracy. Not long after, Comello was charged with murder when he shot and killed a mob boss he was convinced was part of the “deep state.” Comello’s lawyer argued that his client only shot Francesco “Frank” Cali after the mobster resisted Comello’s citizen’s arrest.

Schiff makes no attempt to hide his contempt for Trump. One of my visits with him came just after the president mocked Elijah Cummings, whose home had recently been burglarized. When I asked Schiff if he thought Trump was racist, he responded bluntly.

“Yes,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any question about it. And you know it’s startling to come to the conclusion that the president of the United States is racist, but there’s no denying the facts. And we just have to make sure that his fundamental calculation that that’s a good political strategy is dead wrong. And God help us if we can’t.”

Regarding Trump’s more serious attacks, Schiff was equally direct: “Preaching hate is dangerous,” he told me. “This president gets up every day determined to find new and innovative ways to divide us. I think it’s really tearing the social fabric of the country apart. Meanwhile it has also legitimized a lot of bigotry that was there below the surface [that]people now feel free to express.”

Equanimity comes naturally to Schiff, but it’s also a part of a conscious strategy. “I do think that this is such a head-on-fire kind of a time that there’s a premium amount of people talking rationally. Along the way I’ve had people say, ‘You need to get angrier. You need to yell.’ I say, ‘Look, there are plenty of people getting angry right now. That’s just not who I am.’ And I think people in my line of work who have a problem, it’s often because they try to be something they’re not or someone they’re not. I’ve never tried to be anything other than what I am, and so I tell those who are looking for someone more incendiary there are lots of other choices.”

The other advantage, Schiff said, is that when he does show anger people pay far closer attention. “If you’re not angry all the time,” he said, “then people do notice when you are. And it tends to have more of an impact.”

In June of 2017 Schiff signed on as a co-sponsor of Pramila Jayapal's Medicare for All act. This year, he was an original co-sponsor of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's Green New Deal Resolution. He was also an original co-sponsor of Bobby Rush's Raise the Wage Act-- the $15 minimum wage bill. And when Lloyd Doggett introduced his tougher-than-Pelosi bill to lower drug prices (H.R. 1046), Schiff was one of the 108 co-sponsors on February 7, 2019-- day one. Maybe he's changing. Maybe he's getting ready for the race to win the Feinstein Senate seat when she gives it up.