Adam Schiff had a good day yesterday. He won the California Senate primary and the special primary that will determine who gets the last two months of Dianne Feinstein’s term.
Also, by spending his campaign funds running against Steve Garvey he managed to push progressive favorite Katie Porter into 3rd place. That means he won’t have to compete against another viable Democrat in the general election. Instead, he can probably count on getting most of the votes that went to Porter, giving him what should be an easy win against Garvey in November.
All of this led to a celebratory mood last night when Schiff came out to announce victory to his supporters. But he couldn’t even make it 3 minutes into his speech before this happened.
Adam Schiff’s entire victory speech tonite was interrupted by protesters chanting for a ceasefire in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/zptVYFagu1
— Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago) March 6, 2024
Schiff stood there while security dragged the Ceasefire protesters out. “We are so lucky to live in a democracy where we all have the right to protest,” he said.
But there were a lot more protesters mixed into the crowd who kept chanting.as Schiff continued to thank members of his family. He was clearly thrown off as were all the people on stage behind him. They were all staring toward the protesters instead of at Schiff who finally stopped talking altogether.
As security attempted to remove the protesters, Schiff at first tried to make their presence a sign of democracy’s strength, but their sheer numbers overwhelmed the Congressman and his Hollywood victory party. Likely forcing a shorter speech than the gregarious politician intended, the incursion by the protesters exemplifies the backlash that Democrats — from President Joe Biden to down ticket races — face as an end to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza remains elusive.
People in the crowd were trying to usher the hecklers out but it didn’t work. There was some shoving and the protesters started pumping their fists along with the chanting.
Schiff forged ahead with praise for the late Sen. Feinstein but this clearly wasn’t the mood he was going for in that moment. As you can see, someone came out on stage in the middle of all of this chaos and asked Schiff if he wanted to call it a night. He kept going but wrapped it up less than a minute later.
More of Adam Schiff being interrupted thru his whole speech. At one point, an aide asked if he wanted to stop and he waved her off and continued. pic.twitter.com/jLGfkY5FOo
— Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago) March 6, 2024
Instead of a springboard for Schiff’s general election campaign this became a news story about Schiff being heckled by fellow Democrats. This sort of thing could easily continue until the election. Even if there is a ceasefire at some point, I suspect the same crowd will just show up to demand the next concession from Israel. And don’t forget that we’ve had a ceasefire once already and it ended with a terror attack on an Israeli bus stop. What the protesters don’t seem to understand is that Hamas doesn’t want to stop fighting.
All of that to say, Democrats better hope the conflict in Gaza is over by the time they have their convention in Chicago this August. Because if not, the whole convention could wind up looking like Adam Schiff’s victory speech last night. Here’s the whole thing.