Rep. Adam Schiff calls for Democratic unity in speech that suggests an ambitious future for himself
Rep. Adam B. Schiff has been one of President Trump’s most able tormenters in Washington as the ranking Democrat on the House committee looking into the involvement of Russia in the 2016 presidential election.
In the process, the congressman from Burbank has also vaulted himself into the top ranks of California Democrats. On Saturday night he delivered to party members at their state convention a speech that spoke of ambitions for them — and, none too subtly, himself.
Schiff was blistering in his condemnation of Trump, asserting that he’d violated American norms and a sense of decency that had previously defined even the most unsuccessful politicians.
“Over the last 120 days we have come to see what an acute threat to our democracy can come from a president who lacks that central quality and who is instead profoundly indecent,” he said of Trump.
Schiff defended the House investigation and the FBI director recently fired by Trump, an action that ultimately caused the Department of Justice to name a special counsel to examine whether the Trump campaign in any way cooperated with the Russian effort to deny the presidency to Hillary Clinton.
“This is not about re-litigating the election as the president claims; it is not 'fake news,'” Schiff said.
He alluded to criticism of former FBI Director James B. Comey that Trump was reported to have uttered to Russian diplomats during an Oval Office meeting the day after the firing.
“Jim Comey was many things," Schiff said, "but he was not a ‘nut job.’"
Beyond his castigation of the president, however, the speech was notable for its ambitious pitch.
Schiff has been high on the list of Democrats considered interested in a run for the U.S. Senate if incumbent Democrat Dianne Feinstein were to announce that she will not seek another term in 2018. (So far, she has said she’s running.)
Schiff’s nationally televised interrogations of Russian investigation figures and his frequent appearances on cable news shows have helped him gain followers in parts of California where he was previously unknown. It has also shot his national image from something close to anonymity to wider prominence, an assist in whatever race he might run in the future.
His options appeared open. Not by accident did he refer to men and women in coal country and steel manufacturing areas and other rural Americans — zones in the country where traditionally Democratic voters went for Trump. (He also lauded Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, the two combatants in last year’s Democratic primaries, and Howard Dean, who in 2004 sparked an earlier Sanders-style infusion of enthusiasm in the party.)
“We love you,” a fan in the crowd shouted as he began to speak Saturday night.
“And I love you too,” he said, a call-and-response heard more often in presidential campaigns.
Schiff detailed several freedoms — a rhetorical flourish that updated President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” — that he said form the American canon. Among them: freedom from want, from fear, of liberty and of faith.
“We are for the liberty to live as we choose as long as we do not hurt others,” he said, to “walk as we will, talk as we will, and yes, within reason, even smoke what we will.”
“Well, at least you can,” the congressman joked.
At a convention that has been riven by sniping between liberal and even-more-liberal Democrats, Schiff took no side on some of the dicier issues.
He said he backed “universal” healthcare, for instance, but did not offer an opinion on a state Senate measure proposing Medicare-style healthcare for all in California. That measure has been a hot-button issue throughout the weekend convention.
Instead, he called for Democratic unity, regardless of differing views on some issues.
“We cannot afford division when the fate of the republic is at stake,” he said. “Our people are stronger united, our party is stronger together.”