There was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose reluctant conversion to the impeachment cause put Trump in the dock in December. There was Chief Justice John Roberts, whose stated reverence for institutions and the rule of law raised hope that he might conduct the Senate trial with a firmer hand than what he has thus far shown. There was the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, whose demand for additional witnesses and documents sparked a fleeting hope of persuading four moderate Republicans to join in seeking more evidence of Trump’s misdeeds.

Now, with the defendant’s foregone acquittal in sight as soon as tomorrow, it’s all come down to Schiff, the terminally earnest chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Schiff’s powers, while formidable, have proved just as un-super as everyone else’s in the near-lockstep partisan loyalty that fear of Trump has produced.

Read: The new question hanging over the impeachment trial

In the House managers’ presentation of their case last week, Schiff spoke some 60,000 words over three days, nearly three times the amount uttered by his next-loquacious colleague, according to an analysis by National Journal Daily. Yesterday, he answered five of the first 13 questions directed to Democrats, usually with only the barest reference to prepared notes, almost always taking the full five-minute limit the chief justice has allotted—a pace he kept up as the evening dragged on.

One of the president’s lawyers, the former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, insisted, “If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected—in the public interest—that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.” Schumer immediately asked Schiff to respond to the claim. “All quid pro quos are not the same,” he said. “Some are legitimate and some are corrupt, and you don’t need to be a mind reader to figure out which is which.” By 6:30 p.m. ET, when he asked the senators if they really wanted a president “who can abuse his office” and “do so sacrificing national security and undermining integrity of elections and there’s nothing Congress can do about it,” Schiff had grown hoarse.

The trial’s question-and-answer phase, which continues today, has injected some new energy—or at least some new motion—into the proceedings. Young pages in blue suits ferry each small buff-colored card of written questions to the chief justice in the presiding chair by marching solemnly down the chamber’s center aisle. Roberts then reads the questions aloud.

But the trial’s semifinal stage has produced not a shred more bipartisan agreement on the gravity of the president’s conduct, as both Republicans and Democrats asked questions mostly of their own side in an effort to bolster arguments already endlessly rehearsed.

The format nevertheless has played to Schiff’s strengths as a former prosecutor. While his fellow managers read scripted answers from prepared three-ring binders, in response to mostly friendly questions from Democrats that feel well prepared if not outright planted, Schiff has handled even the occasional hostile query from Republicans with extemporaneous aplomb.