In the interest of generating Must See TV I’m delighted to see that House Democrats, i.e. Adam “Shifty” Schiff and “Crazy” Nancy Pelosi, will allow staff/lawyers to question witnesses when the impeachment inquiry hearings go public next month. This at least mitigates the numbing tedium of 20-30 Congress-types preening and fulminating for their five minutes in the international spotlight.

Tight, cross-referenced questioning by practicing attorneys will help Schiff and Pelosi lay out a fuller, more comprehensible story of what the hell has been going on, simplifying things for the easily-distracted and confused general public.

Put another — simpler — way, the carefully strategized and coordinated (re-) questioning of people like Ambassador Bill Taylor, former Ukraine Amnbassador Marie Yovanovich, veteran Russian expert Fiona Hill and yesterday’s witness, Lt. Col. AlexanderVindman — and others — holds great potential to pull the many, varied elements of the Trump corruption saga into a tighter focus, a focus that has always begun and remains on … Russia.

Schiff in particular has long been hip to the all-important “compromised” factor involving Trump and Russia. Namely, as Schiff repeated constantly in the months prior to the Mueller Report, Trump’s money-laundering for Russian gangsters has been a fundamental staple of his personal finances. He owes Putin a lot.

Not a stupid fellow — unlike fellow Californians Kevin McCarthy and Devin Nunes — Schiff has long expressed confidence in the remarkably well-documented if not as yet fully confirmed story of Trump’s deep indebtedness to Putin-approved gangster “investment” in projects all over the world, from Panama to Azerbaijan to Soho (Manhattan). (My apologies for the much-abbreviated list.)

Full confirmation of that corruption — the remaining 2-3% of the story that isn’t demonstrable today — awaits acquisition of Trump’s tax records or interrogation of Trump’s Deutsche Bank handlers — the folks who doled out Russian gangster money to Trump via Deutsche Bank’s “private banking” operation.

The current Pelosi-led strategy to avoid confusing the issue with all that — weird Russian names, off-shore accounts, spy vs. spy vs. spy covert ops and such — is completely understandable.

Having been handed a vividly clear and re-re-re-re-re-corroborated tale of a flagrant, mob-style quid pro quo shakedown of Ukraine, the Democrats have no good tactical reason to cloud public comprehension of the matter with chatter about Oleg Deripaska, Dimitri Firtash and Semion Mogilevic. The latter being the Don Corleone of Russian organized crime and one of the two men, Putin being the other, to whom Firtash would report. Ukrainian oil gangster Firtash being the guy (he posted a $174 million bond as he fights extradition to Chicago for a bribery charge) who has been bankrolling the two Ukrainian goombahs — Lev and Igor. Those two being the farcical duo Trump’s “personal attorney” Rudy Giuliani has been cavorting around with as he tries to convince someone (either Laura Ingraham or Sean Hannity will do) that the Ukrainians and not the peace-loving Russians are the true guilty party in that U.S. election interference stuff. Interference that, if not wholly responsible, was without question directed at putting Donald Trump in the White House.

And so … well you see how quickly the Mario Puzo-deep chain-of-characters narrative roars off into the weeds.

As I’ve said before, unless you follow this story with true, nerd-like obsession, its easily to bewildered. But the point here is that it appears Schiff and Pelosi understand this, and are setting up a public process — a TV spectacle — that cleans up the messy storyline and focuses in, for the easi(er) comprehension of reasonable people, on Trump’s latest but hardly worst act of corruption.

Whether this makes a whit of difference to Senate Republicans or Trump’s base, I have no idea. But as bad as the Taylor-Lewis-Yovanovich-Vindman testimonies have been behind closed doors, nothing gets better when they tell the same stories on national TV. Which is to say and I believe in tipping points. The moment when the craven, mostly-clueless Republican herd makes a 90-degree turn away from the cliff and suddenly sees great, indisputable merit in replacing Trump with a “true conservative”.

Larger point being this: I have faith that Schiff and Pelosi, armed with a deep from the get-go understanding of the entirety of the Russian compromise of Trump, have the means, motive and opportunity to roll Mike Pence (and certainly Mike Pompeo) into this fresh, tight narrative.

Even better for my and your viewing pleasure, the World Series will end tonight and we won’t have to click back and forth between Alex Bregman and Alex Vindman.