Brilliant closing argument by Adam Schiff. Schiff laid out the stakes of a continued Trump presidency and the threat Trump poses to the nation. Very well done.
He's got nothing.
THE SOLEMNITY TRAP
I think it’s hilarious that the Democratic Senators running for president are stuck in Washington, D.C. attending the entirety of the impeachment trial. There’s no need, other than a political one, for them to do so. What’s the point? Sens. Sanders, Warren, Klobuchar, et al. know they will vote to remove President Trump. Presumably, they are conversant with the evidence. But even if they aren’t, there’s a .000000 chance that anything they hear during the trial will cause them to vote to acquit.
Nor is there any actual rule that requires their attendance at all times. Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer
issued decorum guidelines for the trial that say “senators should plan to be in attendance at all times during the proceedings.” But that’s just a guideline, and it doesn’t say that senators
must be in attendance at all times or even every day.
Why, then, do Sanders, Warren, Klobuchar feel compelled to be at the trial at all times, to the detriment of their campaigns? Because Democrats have to maintain the pretense that there’s something serious and solemn about the trial House Democrats have forced the Senate (and the nation) to endure.
Thus, Sanders, who surely would like to be elsewhere, dutifully
intones:
My focus today is on a monumental moment in American history: the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Together, we are going to go forward and defeat the most dangerous president in American history.
But this is not a monumental moment in American history. It’s a footnote.
Nor will Trump be defeated at trial or in November.
But all Democrats have to play along with the fiction Sanders articulated in the quotation above.
The Senators know these things. These particular Senators — the ones running for president — must subscribe to Nancy Pelosi’s solemnity myth, and I find it delicious that they do.
