Missing the forest for the trees

"A lawyer does not stand in front of the chief justice of the Supreme Court and lie. And Cipollone said the following: 'Not even Mr. Schiff's Republican colleagues were allowed into the SCIF.'

That is a flat lie. A demonstrable lie." —@ClaireCMC #ImpeachmentTrial pic.twitter.com/3aSP7xSF65

— CAP Action (@CAPAction) January 21, 2020

These kinds of analyses:

Though McConnell’s planned scheduling may have been a step too far for some in his conference, they were aligned with him on the bigger question of process: whether to subpoena documents and witnesses now, as Democrats want, or to consider that question in the trial. Despite impassioned speeches throughout the day from impeachment managers like Reps. Adam Schiff and Zoe Lofgren, Republicans didn’t budge.

What Democrats could do, at least, was get Republican opposition to those witnesses on the record now lest they don’t get the opportunity later. Under McConnell’s rules, before votes to summon individual witnesses or specific documents can be considered later in the trial, there will first be a vote on whether the Senate wants to subpoena any witnesses or documents. By voting no on that entire question, the Republicans could keep the Democrats from forcing individual votes on subpoenaing John Bolton, or Mick Mulvaney, or the White House or the Office of Management and Budget.

explain why most political reporting is about the horse race (news!  Bernie leads Biden in latest CNN poll!  Does Bernie even have a snowballs's chance in hell in Iowa?  New Hampshire?  South Carolina?  Has anybody yet voted?  Who cares?!?  HORSE RACE!!!), not about anything substantive.

What happened yesterday was the White House lawyers were handed their heads by very well prepared House Managers who changed the narrative of the entire trial.

5/ The contrast between the preparedness of the House managers and the POTUS team is striking. Schiff and his team carefully build their case w prepared remarks choreographed with video. Cipollone and his lawyers seem to be winging it mostly. Kind of wild to watch.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) January 22, 2020

Again: the outcome is a foregone conclusion. The House Managers are essentially trying to make bricks without straw. Despite that, they made bricks.  They got their version of events in front of the public.  Like Nancy Pelosi, who parlayed a "weak hand" into a delay that drew the nation's attention to the impeachment trial (especially over the Christmas break.  Pelosi actually did McConnell a favor by not forcing him to hold the Senate in trial during Christmas; or, alternatively, giving him a reason to end the trial in a few days because of Christmas) and allowed Lev Parnas (she knew something was going to come out, if not what) to get his story out.  Now Chuck Schumer accomplished the same end:

“I would ask consent to ask the Democratic leader, since there’s a certain similarity to all these amendments, whether he might be willing to enter into a consent agreement to stack these votes,” McConnell said, addressing the presiding officer, Chief Justice John Roberts of the United States Supreme Court, who had to show up for his day job the following morning. In other words, he wanted to bundle everything Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had left, vote on it, and get out of there.

Schumer seemed to delight in McConnell’s parlay offer, as it gave him the rare opportunity to tell McConnell to eat dirt. “The bottom line is very simple,” Schumer said. “As has been clear to every senator, and the country, we believe witnesses and documents are very important. We will have votes on all of those.” He also alluded to more amendments tweaking the text, beyond subpoenaing witnesses or documents, as well. “There will be a good number of votes.”

Schumer offered to break for the night and continue in the morning. It was a reasonable offer in a reasonable world. In the world of the Senate impeachment trial, it was one that McConnell couldn’t possibly accept. The majority leader had committed earlier in the day to keeping the Senate “in session today until we complete this resolution and adopt it.” Exhausting the opposition in an open-amendment process is a standard leadership tactic. But Schumer wasn’t exhausting easily. So McConnell called for a brief break, after which Schumer introduced his amendment to subpoena Defense documents.

Senate Democrats don’t have much power in Mitch McConnell’s Senate, and they won’t have much power in Mitch McConnell’s Senate trial. McConnell, as we saw in repeated votes on Tuesday, has 53 Republicans—or 100 percent of his caucus—who support his plan, crafted in coordination with Trump’s lawyers.

Rather than playing for an impossible win on conviction, Democrats have organized their strategy around presenting the Republicans’ plan—in which presentations from the prosecution and the defense, and a written question period, would precede any decisions about subpoenaing additional witnesses and documents—as not being a “fair trial,” and putting Republicans on the record about whether they oppose that “fair trial” through numerous surgical votes that could come back to haunt them.

And win they did.  The House managers were expecting this strategy, and came loaded to present evidence.  Trump's lawyers?

The Trump team mainly got up and sputtered about fairness and process and otherwise whined and complained about the House Democrats. They fulfilled their principal duty, which was to provide Fox News with digestible clips of them passing on familiar lies, such as the tiresome falsehood that House Republicans had been shut out of depositions and that the president wasn’t allowed to participate in the House hearings.

Although we did find out Trump is not the author of the most notorious legal documents to come out of the White House.  That would be mini-Trump, a/k/a Pat Cipollone:

Until yesterday, Cipollone was something of a mystery. Most people hadn’t heard him speak but having been a partner in a big law firm and a long-time Washington figure in Catholic activist circles, I think it was assumed he was a serious person. Tuesday’s long day put an end to that assumption. He was testy and snide though most of it, and failed to offer any cogent legal arguments.

Many of us had thought his incomprehensible screeds like the one above must have been personally dictated by the president. But after watching Cipollone for 11 hours, it’s clear that he is personally very much on Trump’s wavelength in a way that goes beyond the zealous representation of a good lawyer. Let’s just say that he’s got a second career on talk radio or Fox News ahead of him if he wants it.

And while McConnell retained control over Senate proceedings (who expected otherwise?), he also allowed the House Managers a forum for over 12 hours to present a case like this:

“In a day full of solid evidence presented by Democrats in the Senate impeachment trial, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York provided the most powerful, concise, two-minute summary of the whole controversy of the past four months,” wrote Hillyer. “‘We are here, sir, because President Trump pressured a foreign government to target an American citizen for political and personal gain. We are here, sir, because President Trump solicited foreign interference in the 2020 election and corrupted our democracy. We are here, sir, because President Trump withheld $391 million in military aid from a vulnerable Ukraine without justification in a manner that has been deemed unlawful….'”

And the GOP Senate dutifully voted, again and again, to refuse to consider any further evidence about what the President of the United States has been doing.

The GOP may have won the Senate battle; but they are well on the way to losing the war.