Schiff, Nadler Insist Impeachment “Not A Failure” Despite Plunge In Public Support, Interest

No matter what the Democrats do to try and juice up some public hysteria about the impeachment process – from delaying votes to ‘prime-time’ to conjuring images of Trump holding Zelensky’s daughter hostage in the basement of The White House – it appears both public interest, and more importantly public support, for the impeachment of President Trump is slumping.

In the latest sign that Democrats are losing the public’s interest, Axios reports that The level of readers’ engagement on stories about impeachment has steeply declined since September, according to data from NewsWhip.

Source: NewsWhip

A trend that so vividly exposes the fact that while plenty of attention is being paid to the impeachment saga, it doesn’t draw the same level of emotion and enthusiasm that we saw in September.

Specifically, Axios notes that public interest hit its apex when the case against Trump was building and news cycles were driven by new revelations about Trump, Ukraine and the characters involved; but, after two weeks of public testimony in mid-November, the national conversation shifted from the accumulation of evidence to debate over whether that evidence was sufficient for impeachment and conviction.

And so as “interest” fades, so does “support” which, regardless of political affiliation, peaked in October.

For a brief glistening moment on The Hill, public support (based on the polls), topped 50% (on October 14th), but since then it has slid lower…

Source: FiveThirtyEight

As one would imagine, the support is split dramatically between Democrats (84.6%) and Republicans (10.0%) in favor of impeachment, but as the chart below shows, those whose mind remains “independent” – should those unicorns actually exist in the real life – have seen a dramatic slide in support.

Source: FiveThirtyEight

Finally, we note that, in addition to public interest (news report engagement) and public support (polls), the betting markets are also going “the wrong way” as PredictIt shows the odds of Trump serving out his first term are soaring back to pre-impeachment-process highs…

Source: PredictIt/Bloomberg

Simply put, no one trusts the news to get to the facts and when it is as boring, partisan, and predictable as this has been, who can blame them.

And don’t forget, Democrats have been planning this ‘coup’ since before the midterms, but according to the New York Times, Pelosi says she’s not going to push moderate Democrats to support the impeachment, saying she has “no message to them” and that “we’re not whipping this legislation.”

None of this appears to bother Rep. Eric Swalwell, who farted on live TV last week,

“I’m not focused on the polls, I know my colleagues aren’t either… this president used his great vast power to ask a foreign government to help him cheat an election.”

Sadly, Mr. Swalwell, with members of your own party mutinying, perhaps it is time to listen to “we, the people” after all.

And despite all the evidence above, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff insisted “it isn’t a failure” during an ABC News interview on Sunday.

“No, it isn’t a failure, at least it’s not a failure in the sense of our constitutional duty in the House,” he said.

Nine months ago, Schiff said that the “only thing worse than putting the country through the trauma of an impeachment is putting the country through the trauma of a failed impeachment.”

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the House Judiciary Committee chairman whose panel drafted two articles of impeachment, also believes the impeachment push wouldn’t be a failure if not passed in the Senate.

During an interview on Sunday, Nadler was reminded that he previously stated that “before you impeach somebody, you have to persuade the American public that it ought to happen,” including “Trump voters.”

We suspect Pelosi and the core of the Democratic Party base would disagree on whether this whole process has been a “failure” or not.