The public impeachment hearings, overseen by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), concluded last week — and while the impeachment charade is far from over, Schiff’s hearings have been widely viewed as a failure in terms of convincing the American people that President Donald Trump should be ousted.
Writing for The Hill, journalist and political pundit Bernard Goldberg likened the impeachment hearings to a subpar TV drama directed and produced by Schiff. In an op-ed published Wednesday, he posed the one question that was everybody’s mind: Was Schiff’s “Trump Show” a hit with the viewers, in this case, undecided swing voters?
The short answer? Probably not.
We already know the ending
Goldberg noted in his op-ed that Schiff’s “show” lacked any real intensity for viewers, given that everybody already knows how it will end: the Democrat-controlled House will end up voting to impeach Trump for some reason or another, while the Republican-controlled Senate will ultimately vote to acquit the president.
The writer reported that the first episode of the show got decent ratings, but that viewership fell off for each subsequent hearing as the series simply grew more tedious and predictable.
Then Goldberg brought to the forefront the unstated truth of the whole thing, something many viewers determined early on, perhaps even before the show had actually begun: It was never really about impeaching and removing Trump at all.
“The show was mainly about dirtying up the president, making him unappealing to moderate swing voters next year. Would they really want to cast a vote for a president who was…impeached?” he wrote. “It’s a good question, the only part of this show that we don’t know the answer to.”
Does anybody care?
Still, Goldberg noted that both Democrats and Republicans are already dug in on either side of the issue. And the hearings did nothing to change that.
As for those swing voters, though, the writer wondered if Trump’s alleged wrongdoing was any more “impulsive and foolhardy” than any of his other unconventional acts in their eyes — and therefore worthy of immediate removal — or if they would wonder why Democrats didn’t just let voters decide on that question in the upcoming election.
Furthermore, was what Trump was alleged to have done — which still remains unclear and unproven — even an impeachable offense, or was it merely inappropriate?
“We can’t say for sure at this point, but the show designed and scripted to hurt the president may wind up helping him. The final reviews won’t be in for 11 months,” Goldberg wrote, noting that some polls already show that Trump has emerged with more support than he had before, while support for impeachment has diminished.
More Hollywood bogus
For a congressman who represents a district that includes such places as Burbank, Hollywood, and Pasadena, Schiff should know a little something about writing and producing a compelling show that was a hit with viewers.
Unfortunately for him, however, it appears that his impeachment hearings were too much like all of the rest of the unoriginal and predictable nonsense coming out of Hollywood these days. Viewers — ahem, voters — have simply tuned it out.
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