For several months, House Democrats have sought to translate their desire to impeach President Trump into compelling television. They first hoped special counsel Robert Mueller would offer gripping testimony that would jump-start an impeachment effort based on his Trump-Russia report. The show did not turn out as planned. Then they hoped televised hearings on the Ukraine matter would grab the public’s attention. But again, no blockbuster.

For all their work, Democrats were not able to raise public support for impeachment beyond the level it had been before the hearings. On Oct. 12, 2019, weeks before the public sessions began, support for impeaching the president was 49.8%, according to the 538 Impeachment Tracker. Today, it is 49.9%. Those are high numbers, based mostly on the fact that a large majority of Democrats have wanted to impeach the president for a long time. For everyone else, support and opposition levels have been mostly unchanged for the last three months.