House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should have chosen an impeachment trial chief who wasn’t tainted by serious questions about the propriety of his prior conduct in this process. Fourth-term rising star Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, not Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of California, should have been the lead manager.
The case against President Trump was simple, yet somehow Schiff managed to botch it beyond repair. In rushing through the process, he refused to allow courts to enforce his subpoenas, thus eliminating the chance of impeaching Trump on an obstruction of justice charge. Schiff also compromised himself by repeatedly lying about the outset of the process. Moreover, he has the stage presence of a substitute school teacher and the likability of a proctologist. As a matter of pure public relations strategy, putting him at the helm of the prosecution was a mistake, compounded by his basic inability to understand how to sell impeachment to the public.
Meanwhile, Pelosi needed to escape the public impression that her caucus merely plays the tune of the radical “Squad,” led by New York freshman socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. For a year now, Pelosi has been beholden to the demands of socialists who barely even consider themselves Democrats, and Ocasio-Cortez has amped up her attacks on her own party in recent weeks.
Remember that Ocasio-Cortez first attempted last February to rally Democrats around the socialist Christmas list enclosed in her Green New Deal. After Pelosi tried to write it off as the “Green New Dream,” Ocasio-Cortez cajoled six senators running for the presidency into co-sponsoring it. When Ilhan Omar spewed anti-Semitic tropes and slurs that same month, Pelosi tried to coerce the Minnesota congresswoman into a sham of an apology. When she did it again a month later, the dregs of the Democratic Party forced Pelosi to water down an anti-Semitism resolution into a general “anti-hate” resolution. At every twist and turn, Pelosi has bent to the whims of the Squad, culminating in her finally giving the green light to the House to impeach Trump.
Recently, Pelosi couldn’t get the Squad to shut up and stop revealing that they couldn’t care less about Ukraine. In Ocasio-Cortez’s own words, Democrats just had “to run with however [they could] unify the House” to impeach Trump.
Contrary to the notion that Pelosi held any leverage in withholding the Articles of Impeachment from the Senate, the San Franciscan’s final card to play was her choice of the House impeachment managers. Schiff proved himself contemptible and Jerry Nadler incompetent. Pelosi had the opportunity to head the seven-person team with a rising star in her court, a liberal Democrat she could elevate as a nationally recognized Resistance hero to combat the Squad. While she wisely chose Hakeem Jeffries as a manager, Tuesday night’s debate proved that she squandered her last shot in not making him the lead manager instead of Schiff.
On that first evening of the Senate impeachment trial, Jeffries proved why he would have been Pelosi’s most strategic short and long-term selection to lead the effort.
When Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow asked why they were there at all, Jeffries responded:
In two minutes, the Brooklyn congressman made a case for impeachment more elegantly, more earnestly, and more compellingly than the entire Democratic House did in multiple months. Jeffries came off as authoritative, intelligent, and, in small part, due to that final Notorious B.I.G. throwback, young and in touch with the cultural forces over which the Squad currently has monopoly control.
Pelosi is soon to turn 80, and yet she’s failed to cultivate a rising star with the practical competence to control the House and celebrity to match. Jeffries would be that guy, and seeing as she can’t get a presidential conviction out of this trial, the least she could do is catapult Jeffries to a few magazine covers. He would prove the perfect foil to the Squad.
After all, whereas Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib regularly espouse anti-Semitism, Jeffries is an avowed supporter of Israel and active proponent against anti-Semitism. As the Congressional Black Caucus whip and House Democratic Caucus chairman, Jeffries has efficiently exacted the agenda of the party establishment. He’s effective enough that Ocasio-Cortez reportedly wants to recruit someone to primary Jeffries, who’s considered by the left-wing Justice Democrats group as its “highest priority” target.
The Squad won’t take a seat, and the Senate won’t remove Trump from office. If the least Pelosi could have gotten out of this was turn her most promising member into a liberal superstar, that’s no small feat given the stakes.
