ANALYSIS/OPINION:

And they’re off — that’s the tenor of Monday’s politics, as Jared Kushner headed to the Senate Intelligence Committee to testify that he did not collude with Russia to sway U.S. elections.

And everybody’s got an opinion — but the most surprising so far is from Sen. Chuck Schumer. Giving credit where credit’s due: The leftist senator from New York finally said something that actually makes sense.

He said, in an interview with The Washington Post noted by Fox News, that Hillary Clinton had nobody but herself to blame for her election loss — that her tendency to point fingers at, say, Russia was a bit off base.

“When you lose to somebody who has a 40 percent popularity,” Schumer said, “you don’t blame other things — [former FBI chief James] Comey, Russia — you blame yourself. So what did we do wrong? People didn’t know what we stood for, just that we were against Trump. And still believe that.”

Going in to Monday’s widely anticipated testimony from Kushner, this message was a heck of a gift from one of the Democratic Party’s biggest horses.

“After 1 year of investigation with Zero evidence being found, Chuck Schumer just stated that ‘Democrats should blame ourselves, not Russia,” President Donald Trump tweeted.

It was a perfect segue to cast Russian light back on the Clintons — where it rightly belongs.

Trump tweeted: “So why aren’t the Committees and investigators, and of course our beleaguered A.G., looking into Crooked Hillarys crimes & Russia relations?”

The reference, in part, was to recent revelations about former Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, that he failed to fully disclose some of his green energy involvements. In 2011, Podesta was appointed to the board of a company called Joule Unlimited. Shortly after he was appointed, an investment fund founded by Vladimir Putin gave $35 million to Joule. But Podesta failed to disclose his full relationship with Joule when he was brought on board as a counselor to Barack Obama in 2014, as noted by the New York Post.

“In short, Clinton’s top campaign chief and a senior counselor to Obama sat on Joule’s board alongside top Russian officials as Putin’s Kremlin-backed investment fund funneled $35 million into Joule,” wrote Peter Schweizer, for the Post. “No one looking at the Podesta fact pattern can claim to care about rooting out Russia collusion and not rigorously investigate the tangle of relationships.”

But it’s Kushner the left is after — it’s Kushner the Democratic leadership, like Rep. Adam Schiff, finds an interesting target.

Trump, on Twitter, took him to task.

“Sleazy Adam Schiff,” Trump wrote, “the totally biased Congressman looking into ‘Russia,’ spends all of his time on television pushing the Dem loss excuse!”

It didn’t take long for Schiff to respond.

“With respect Mr. President,” he wrote on his own Twitter account, “the problem is how often you watch TV, and that your comments and actions are beneath the dignity of the office.”

What is this, Week Bazillion of the Democratic-driven effort to draw a parallel between Trump’s win of the White House and Russia interference in the 2016 elections?

Here’s a thought: When even Schumer, one of the left’s loudest partisans, is suggesting it’s time to move on with the party messaging — it’s really time to move on.

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