Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) was all bravado when House Speaker Kevin McCarthy booted him from the House intelligence committee for dishonesty.

According to Fox News:

" "Kevin McCarthy just kicked me and @RepSwalwell off the Intelligence Committee," Schiff tweeted Tuesday evening. "This is petty, political payback for investigating Donald Trump. If he thinks this will stop me, he will soon find out just how wrong he is. I will always defend our democracy.

Fox reported that he drew reactions like this

MRCTV managing editor Brittany Hughes commented on how Schiff wrote his tweet: "You sound like a Batman villain."

So now Schiff is running for Senate, presumably to get back onto an intelligence committee, this time the Senate's, a likely thing given that Democrats control the Senate.

Wouldn't that be payback on payback?

Except that it's not going well.

First up, a day after announcing his Senate bid, he got hit with an ethics complaint by a group called the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, which appears to be aligned with conservative groups.

“In the present case, Rep. Schiff is clearly using official government video for campaign purposes in violation of federal law and the House ethics rules,” the group wrote in a letter to the Ethics Office on Friday. “The Office of Congressional Ethics is responsible for ensuring each Representative fulfills the public trust inherent in the office and that they comply with the House’s ethical standards. Therefore, we urge the Board to immediately investigate whether Representative Schiff used official resources for campaign purposes in violation of the House ethics rules.”

In his campaign announcement, Schiff used video of him speaking on the Senate floor during Trump’s impeachment proceedings. Ethics rules prohibit members from using government resources in their campaign materials, which include photographs or videos taken from inside the House or Senate.

He's about as ethics-challenged as such Democrats can get. One wonders if this wasn't the work of his potential rivals, leaking the problems to the conservative group. He's got a lot of them, and the one who's declared her intent to run for the seat already, Rep. Katie Porter, is famous for her meaner-than-cats**t demeanor, racist remarks and toxic workplace accusations. Was she the one who pulled this stunt? It's natural to wonder.

Schiff, who represents Hollywood actually has got four potential competitors vying for the Senate seat -- Porter of Orange County, Rep. Barbara Lee of Berkeley, and Rep. Ro Khanna of the Silicon Valley, all of whom are fanatical leftists. Call these the left's Beautiful People. The Senate seat in question, that of San Francisco's Sen. Dianne Feinstein, meanwhile, hasn't been vacated yet. Feinstein, who will be 91 in the next election, may well follow Joe Biden and run for yet another term. Who says senility is an obstacle?

Vox thinks that will be a problem for Schiff because all of the other rivals have many legislative acts to point to in their bid to remake America on the California progressive model. 

Other criticisms from California progressives reveal one of the central tensions of Schiff’s nascent campaign: how to run an appealing primary race when his greatest asset is a backward-looking appeal to anti-Trump, #Resistance-era nostalgia instead of a future-oriented agenda backed by a track record of congressional advocacy, like Porter, Khanna, and Lee.

Vox continued:

The Democrats who do end up running will have to find ways to distinguish themselves, given that they all occupy space on the Democratic Party’s left flank.

Lee is an old-school, anti-establishment liberal with widespread name recognition in the Bay Area. Khanna has built more of a name for himself as a technocrat and wonk in the tech, antitrust, and economic realm, and co-chaired Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign. Porter comes from the Elizabeth Warren lane of the party. But Schiff’s congressional identity has been shaped by his establishment ties.

All that Schiff has for a record is his bid to Get Trump. What else is he going to sell to voters, his friendship with Ed Buck?

Schiff claims that he sort-of has Dianne Feinstein's "support" because he met with her, which, given his record of lies probably means he doesn't:

Does this sound like a hearty endorsement?

In an interview with “CNN This Morning,” Schiff said Feinstein had been “gracious” and “welcoming” of his candidacy.

“We talked by phone a couple days ago and met earlier,” he said.

Feinstein told reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday she would finalize her plans “probably in a couple of months,” as she is still processing the death of her husband, who passed away last year. She added it was “fine” for people to get in the race.

“I think people should,” she said. “If they want to run, run.”

Feinstein, of course, has yet to retire and back out of the race. One wonders what that conversation must have been like between the ambitious Schiff eager to "get back at" and "show " Kevin McCarthy the dread consequences of keeping him off the House intelligence committee, and the utterly doddering Feinstein.

Worst of all, Schiff is behind in the polls -- to the nasty, unpleasant Porter (who has fresh ethical problems of her own) no less.

Porter, who announced her candidacy for Senate Tuesday, topped Schiff 37% to 26% in a hypothetical general election matchup. Porter and Schiff are both Democrats but could face each other in November 2024 under California’s all-party primary system that advances the top two finishers to the general election contest. Schiff is not yet a candidate, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has not revealed her 2024 plans.

No wonder it suddenly got important to Schiff to announce his candidacy for the Senate with the news of his booting from the House intelligence committee. He had to get into that race because Porter was eating his lunch.

More painful for Schiff, Porter has more fundraising prowess, which is the only thing that matters in Democrat-on-Democrat politics.

According to Fox News in a different report:

Porter, a progressive rising star and former pupil of Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, raised a whopping $25 million in political donations last cycle, making her the second-highest-raising House member behind House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Porter's fundraising total even beat out that of her boss, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — a renowned fundraiser in her own right. 

Schiff was the fourth-highest-raising member of the House members up for re-election last year, taking in just over $23 million from 2021 through November 2022. 

Nothing, in other words, is going Schiff's way since he shook his fist at McCarthy and told him he'd show him.

What a pathetic situation -- all bravado, and no political muscle, just a weak, pencil-necked, effort to make himself look important. He's going to wish he had President Trump back to lie about.

Caricature by DonkeyHotey, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0