truthdig | A huge national spotlight is now on Adam
Schiff, the member of Congress leading the impeachment inquiry. In his
tenth term, Schiff is really going places. But where is he coming from?
This year, as chair of the House
Intelligence Committee, he has relentlessly built a case against a
horrendous president. For progressives eager to see Donald Trump
impeached, Schiff is an enemy of their enemy. But whether he’s a friend
is another matter.
“Schiff’s record on foreign policy, civil
liberties, human rights and other key issues has often put him more in
line with Republicans than with liberal Democrats,” international
affairs scholar Stephen Zunes told me. “It is ironic, therefore, that
Trump and the Republicans are portraying him as some kind of
left-winger.”
For a backstory perspective on Schiff, I
contacted a progressive activist who has been closely tracking his
political career for two decades. Howie Klein, the publisher and editor
of DownWithTyranny.com, lives in Schiff’s congressional district in the
Los Angeles area. They met when Schiff was a state senator running for
Congress in 1990 against a Republican incumbent.
“I was all gung-ho and raised a lot of
money for him from my music industry colleagues,” Klein told me. “I
didn’t understand at the time that although he was a Democrat, he was a
conservative Democrat. There were a couple of hints during the campaign,
but it wasn’t until he was elected and joined the Blue Dogs and started
voting that I realized that we had traded a right-wing Republican for a
GOP-light Democrat.”
