Most people in the United States have not been tuning into the impeachment hearings over the past week. According to the media, that’s a problem.
New York Times writer Jennifer Weiner complained, “It seems to some members of the media, impeachment is no longer about right and wrong, legal versus illegal. It’s about watchable versus unwatchable, enthralling and fun versus dusty and dry.”
But this is only a problem if Democrats are using impeachment hearings to drum up more votes in 2020. No one really needs to pay attention until, you know, something actually happens.
Nevertheless, Weiner blames us for our poor attention spans: “Is it that President Trump, our clickbait leader, has trained us to expect daily drama, taking advantage of our natural affinity for the sizzle rather than the steak?”
Impeachment hearings will proceed this week whether or not they’re gathering viewers for Fox and MSNBC. And as it turns out, the demand that the rest of the country pay attention is really less about a fear for democracy and more about hopes of ousting Trump.
“The desire for politics to entertain was one of the things that gave us President Trump,” Weiner writes. “And now our collective need for amusement could keep him there.”
Further undermining her point, she quips that if we don’t stop everything, we may end up watching “Queen Ivanka’s birthday parade.”
Turn on the television kids! If you don’t, we might turn into a monarchy!
While Trump supporters such as Franklin Graham complain that the impeachment investigation is further “dividing our country,” the fact is, no one is really paying attention. Sports writer Clay Travis reported that more Americans have been watching football than impeachment: “Last week 23 million people watched Vikings-Cowboys on NBC’s Sunday Night Football. So far the most watched day of the Trump impeachment hearings — if you combine all the broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC together — was 13 million people.”
It was the second day of impeachment hearings, Forbes reports, that gathered 13 million viewers. Most people would rather be watching something else, and that’s OK.
Over at the Washington Post, Margaret Sullivan echoed Weiner by calling the national apathy “appalling.” Sullivan bemoans the man she met who said he didn’t know and didn’t care what was going on with the impeachment investigation. “This is the way a democracy self-destructs,” she writes.
Really, it’s the way politically fatigued Americans manage their time so they’re not paying attention to every stunt pulled by politicians in Washington. If articles of impeachment get approved by the House and the Senate agrees the accusations are so compelling that Trump ought to be removed, then it’s time for everyone to pay attention.
For now, the impeachment investigation is a partisan exercise. It’s not even going to remove Trump — it’s just a ploy to draw out more blue votes in 2020. The nation is split on impeachment, with about 48% supporting and 45% opposed. Democrats worry that if they can’t tip the scales so that impeachment hearings at least become a point in their favor, then how can they hope to oust Trump in the next election?
People are reacting to the narrative by ignoring it. Good for them. The hearings and their ensuing breathless coverage are not required viewing for concerned citizens. At the moment, Americans can enjoy the fact that unless they actually like watching endless hearings that they can later read about in the news, no one is forcing them to pay attention.
