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More Than 70 Million Americans Watched Impeachment Hearings

More Than 70 Million Americans Watched Impeachment Hearings

More than 70 million Americans watched at least some portion of the House impeachment hearings on television over the past two weeks, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.

The numbers, complied by Nielsen, do not include those who watched the hearings on C-SPAN or PBS, nor does it include millions who watched through streaming services.

NBC News told the L.A. Times that its streaming services recorded almost 10 million “starts” for the impeachment hearings.

Nielsen’s 70.8 million viewer-count includes anyone who tuned in to the hearings on television for at least six consecutive minutes, meaning more than one in five people in the country (21.6 percent) tuned in.

Republicans complained repeatedly throughout the hearings that they were boring and that Americans likely did not care about tuning in.

“This sham hearing is not only boring, it is a colossal waste of taxpayer time & money,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham tweeted hours after the first hearing began.

Eric Trump, Trump’s second-eldest son, used the hashtag “#snoozefest” to describe the hearings.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), a staunch defender of Trump, said that “the ultimate judge will be the American people,” adding his assessment that most Americans would find the hearings tedious.

Despite Meadows’ prediction, tens of millions of Americans tuned in to see one or more of a dozen witnesses give testimony and evidence regarding Trump’s actions toward Ukraine.

Those witnesses testified specifically to “a months-long effort in which President Trump again sought foreign interference in our elections for his personal and political benefit at the expense of our national interest,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, wrote in a letter to his congressional colleagues at the conclusion of the public hearings.

“As the evidence conclusively shows, President Trump conditioned official acts — a White House meeting desperately desired by the new Ukrainian president and critical U.S. military assistance — on Ukraine announcing sham, politically-motivated investigations that would help President Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign,” he wrote.

Trump bragged recently that support for impeachment had tanked since the start of the hearings.

“Support for Impeachment is dropping like a rock, down into the 20’s in some Polls,” Trump tweeted Monday.

That was a lie. On the day Trump made that claim, 48.2 percent of Americans said they supported the impeachment inquiry, according to an average of polls compiled by experts at FiveThirthyEight.

By Wednesday, support for impeachment had crept up to 48.8 percent .

Since news about the Ukraine scandal broke in mid-September, support for impeachment has increased among Democrats, Independents, and Republicans, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Calling All Patriots

Calling All Patriots

When I was pregnant with my daughter, my parents gave me a Cabbage Patch doll with blonde hair and eyes that blinked.

On the spot, I named her Gloria Steinem.

“Think this through,” my father cautioned.

My mother just smiled.

By the time my daughter, Cait, could walk, Gloria Steinem was her constant companion — dragged from room to room and regularly strapped into a seatbelt next to Cait on our outings.

You can learn a lot about strangers’ politics by their reaction to a doll.

I remember a particular moment with such clarity that my heartbeat accelerates in the recollection. A friend and I, with our children in tow, had just finished lunch in a restaurant, and we were gathering up our things to leave. When I told Cait we had to go, she held up her doll and said in her outside voice: “I know, Mommy. It’s cold outside, and I have to put Gloria Steinem’s sweater on first.”

To our left, a table of women laughed and one of them gave a thumbs-up. To our right, a woman shook her head in disgust. The man with her pointed at the doll in Cait’s arms and said something about how awful it was that I was raising my daughter to hate men.

My friend took one look at my face and mouthed “we’ll meet you up front” as she shepherded our kids to the door. She needn’t have worried. Anyone willing to take on a doll in front of the little girl who loves it was not going to hijack a single minute of precious time with my daughter.

There was a time when I would share this story and the typical response was shock. Who would do that in front of a child? The story has lost all of its punch these days, and there’s no pretending we don’t know why.

Hundreds of migrant children remain in U.S. custody after being ripped from the arms of their parents, and some of them have been adopted without their parents’ knowledge or permission. The well-being of innocent children is of no concern to this president, a racist and self-professed sexual predator, and his supporters have become increasingly vocal in their sycophancy. Good times.

Earlier this month, I was in Washington’s airport at 5:15 a.m., standing in line for my first, coveted cup of coffee. The man in front of me turned and pointed to the America Needs Journalists pin on my lapel. “You’d better be careful,” he said, his demeanor void of concern. “Someone might mistake you for a journalist.”

For three years, the president of the United States has been calling journalists the enemy of the people. Recently, I saw a photo on Twitter of an airline passenger wearing a T-shirt advocating for the hanging of journalists. This is not the first time I’ve seen that shirt, but still, the image stayed with me, probably because I’m not sure I could keep quiet if that person, in that T-shirt, were walking in front of me.

You might say I’ve had it.

So, in my low, precaffeinated voice, I said to the man pointing to my pin, “Step away from the badge, sir.” Miraculously, he backed off. Maybe it was my goggle-size reading glasses, which make me look like I’m on the verge of something.

This week, The Washington Post‘s Margaret Sullivan wrote a column under this headline: “‘I don’t know what to believe’ is an unpatriotic cop-out. Do better Americans.” I hope you’ll read it.

Sullivan encourages all of us to spend some time each day getting our news from legitimate sources, such as PBS Newshour, and to subscribe to newspapers. If you can’t afford it, then it’s likely your local library subscribes for you.

She adds this: “Stop getting your news and opinions from social media. Stop watching Fox News, especially the prime-time shows, which are increasingly untethered to reality.

“If every American gave 30 minutes a day to an earnest and open-minded effort to stay on top of the news, we might actually find our way out of this crisis.”

Earlier this year, my daughter, now in her 30s and the mother of two children, asked if I might bring Gloria Steinem with me for my next visit. She didn’t have to ask twice. I was standing in line waiting to board when a woman around my age pointed to the doll in my arms and said, “My daughter had one of those.”

The man with her sighed like a punctured tire.

You know what I had to do.

“Her name is Gloria,” I told her. “Gloria Steinem.”

She shot a glance at her deflated companion. “I wish I’d thought of that,” she said, returning my smile.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and professional in residence at Kent State University’s school of journalism. She is the author of two non-fiction books, including “…and His Lovely Wife,” which chronicled the successful race of her husband, Sherrod Brown, for the U.S. Senate. Her novel, The Daughters of Erietown, will be published by Random House in Spring 2020. To find out more about Connie Schultz (schultz.connie@gmail.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

How To Fix An Unfair Presidential Debate System

How To Fix An Unfair Presidential Debate System

By Stuart Rothenberg, CQ-Roll Call (TNS)

WASHINGTON — Fox News and CNN, which will broadcast the first two GOP presidential debates, have decided on a system for excluding candidates that could result in Donald Trump participating in those debates but current or former senators and governors being excluded.

Nice going, guys.

I certainly agree having a debate with 16 candidates is simply unwatchable, and there is no easy way to make the early debates fair to the candidates while at the same time more watchable and informative for viewers. But Fox and CNN have both dropped the ball as they try to avoid making tough decisions.

At the first debate on August sixth in Cleveland, Fox will limit participation to candidates who “place in the top ten in an average of the five most recent national polls in the run-up to the event.” Fox apparently will “provide additional coverage and air time on August sixth to the candidates who do not place in the top ten.”

CNN has chosen a similar-but-not-identical approach that is also based on polling leading up to the debate. It will hold two separate forums, one for the top-tier hopefuls and a second for the also-rans.

Fox and CNN, along with the Republican National Committee, can (and surely will) argue they are not excluding candidates from the first debate, the public is. And I’m sure they will say that with a straight face.

Even debate veterans privately admit ten participants are too many. Most of the early GOP debates last time, from August to November 2011, included only eight candidates, and that was bad enough.

But ten is a nice round number, and it allows Fox and CNN to claim they have found a reasonable balance between having too many hopefuls and arbitrarily excluding some. It’s a classic cover-your-behind strategy.

But limiting the field to ten participants means as many as six hopefuls could be excluded from the meaningful debates. Sure, CNN will have a loser’s bracket, but much like the NIT basketball tournament, nobody will care. Being the best of the losers isn’t exactly a winning outcome.

The two networks could end up excluding the only woman in the Republican field (businesswoman Carly Fiorina), the only African-American in the field (Ben Carson), or the only other candidate of color in the race (Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal). For a party that needs to remake its image, excluding candidates who are not white men is a novel strategy.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul would all appear to have guaranteed slots in the debate. That leaves room for five others. Who could be excluded?

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is the last Republican to have won the Iowa caucuses, but he could be excluded. The same goes for former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who won those caucuses in 2008.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is about to announce his candidacy, but he doesn’t yet have a campaign. He could be on the outside looking in, even though he is a sitting senator from the second primary state. Not only that, but Graham has become one of his party’s leading voices on national security issues. Oh well, who cares about those issues anyway?

Ohio Governor John Kasich appears poised to enter the race, but also has no real campaign yet. He may not be able to ramp up quickly enough to make the top ten cut. But the first debate is in Cleveland, which, the last time I looked, is still in Ohio. And Ohio remains one of the key states in 2016. Oh, what the heck, he’s only the governor.

The rest of the field includes former Texas Governor Rick Perry, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former New York Governor George Pataki and the aforementioned Trump.

Right now, Trump would make the cutoff, and because of his celebrity status he might very well meet the criteria later this year when the first two debate fields are set. Yet, I think we all know Trump is a carnival barker, not a credible contender for the Republican presidential nomination.

Clearly, any effort to limit the field will generate complaints and criticism. But any approach that limits the field so early in the race, at least five months before the first contest involving voters, seems inherently unfair. And using national polls to select participants in early debates seems odd when the first few actual tests of strength involve small, retail politics states like Iowa and New Hampshire.

After all, we are talking about the first debate or the first couple of debates, not the fifth. Each candidate can rightly argue he or she deserves to be in the first few debates, since those televised events will be the first time many Republican voters will have the opportunity to evaluate and compare the candidates.

The obvious answer is to divide the field in half, randomly assigning individual hopefuls to one of the two debates. Of course, not everyone will like the group he or she is in, and the makeup of each group would determine the particular dynamic of that debate.

After a couple of debates, the hosts of additional debates will have just cause to limit the number of debaters. But doing so in the first couple of debates is inherently unfair and could end up damaging the party’s image. You’d think that that would be something the RNC would want to avoid.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Is Anyone Not Running For The Republican Presidential Nomination?

Is Anyone Not Running For The Republican Presidential Nomination?

By Phil Mattingly, Bloomberg News (TNS)

Everyone, it seems, is in.

The multi-year “will they or won’t they” game that political reporters, operatives, and junkies have been playing was all for naught. Just about every Republican whose name was floated as a potential 2016 candidate — and a few who never even entered the conversation — have taken a look at the political landscape and decided to enter the race or have given clear signals that a campaign launch is imminent. While there are clear benefits to the diverse field, it is also already creating headaches for party leaders looking toward a major general election fight.

Six candidates already are officially in the hunt for the Republican nomination. Over the next ten days four more candidates may join the field. That group still won’t include expected players Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor; Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker; or New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Or Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. Or Ohio Governor John Kasich.

“The field is larger and deeper than in previous cycles,” says Nathan Gonzales, editor and publisher of the Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report, a non-partisan analysis of campaigns and elections. And that, without question “makes things more complicated.”

Republican donors and operatives have for weeks been weighing the benefits (real debate over the issues; the type of race that excites all corners of the party; an unlimited number of attacks from all sides directed at Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton) and negatives (no control of aforementioned debates; no unified message; donors spread thin; a primary process that, like the one in 2012, may suck resources, energy, and some of the sheen off the eventual candidate) of such a deep field. But the hypothetical exercise turned real last week when it was reported that Fox News would limit participation in its August debate to the top ten candidates based on the average of the five most recent national polls.

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who will announce his decision on the race Wednesday, criticized the “arbitrary” nature of the debate metrics in an interview with National Journal. He pointed to the 11 states he carried in the 2012 campaign as Exhibit A of why using early national polls is a poor plan.

He also noted the possibility of excluding candidates with major government or business bona fides — like Jindal, or former technology executive Carly Fiorina, or South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, who is expected to announce his entrance into the field on June first — as other examples of why the threshold was flawed.

That’s not to say there aren’t clear positives to the size of the group. The diversity, both in viewpoints and in backgrounds, the group brings to the table is something Republicans gleefully point out as a contrast to the current Democratic field of two (and dominated by one.)

“The quality of the candidates is just higher,” says Gonzales, something the party’s likely voters seem to agree with. A May 19 Pew Research Center poll found that 57 percent of Republican or Republican-leaning registered voters had a positive impression of the current field. That early enthusiasm, even with a looming hard-fought primary process, is certainly a step up from past years. The same poll found 50 percent of the same group had an excellent or good impression of the GOP field in September 2007. Last cycle was even worse: Only 44 percent had a positive impression of the field in May 2011.

Gonzales also points out a key, and too often ignored, point at this stage in the race: It’s really, really early. No, it sure wouldn’t look good to have the governor of Ohio, the premier swing state, left off the stage of the first Republican debate, which just so happens to be held in Ohio. But early debates aside, gaming out an elongated primary process with a sizable field of financially viable candidates ignores a key data point: the voters. Nothing whittles a field down quite like a couple of eighth or ninth place finishes, he says.

Photo: Teresa via Flickr