Trump’s most vocal critics see Mueller’s testimony as perhaps the last, best chance to turn public opinion in favor of impeachment—a crucial barometer in their bid to pressure Republicans and persuade House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to begin the formal effort to remove the president, which she has steadfastly resisted. Impeachment backers point out that few Americans have actually read Mueller’s exhaustive two-volume treatise, and they argue that nothing that’s come out about Trump so far can compare to the image of the highly respected, apolitical G-man describing possible criminal activity by the president on national television.

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Yet here in New Hampshire, voters sizing up Democratic candidates see the Mueller hearings as more of an anticlimax than an inflection point.

“I feel like he’s just going to say, ‘Read the report.’ I don’t think he’s going to drop any bombshells,” said Amanda St. Ivany, 37, a nurse from Lebanon, New Hampshire, who was attending a recent Kirsten Gillibrand event in Concord. St. Ivany told me that she would probably watch some of Mueller’s testimony and that she supported the launch of impeachment proceedings “to keep our democracy working.”

St. Ivany’s low expectations for Mueller’s appearance matched what more than a dozen Democratic and independent voters told me in interviews: While some plan to watch the broadcast, and most said his testimony was important as a matter of process, none believed it would do much to alter a political dynamic that they see as lamentably immutable.

“I’ve had my hopes up before, and I don’t want to get them up again,” said Dorothy Minior, a 65-year-old software researcher at the Warren event in Peterborough.

Democrats had wanted Mueller to testify soon after he finished his investigation in April, but the special counsel’s reluctance to submit himself to what will likely turn into a partisan spectacle led to a delay. The leaders of the judiciary and intelligence committees spent weeks trying to negotiate a voluntary appearance by Mueller before ultimately resorting to a subpoena. His testimony comes after yet one more delay—a one-week postponement so that the Judiciary Committee could have an extra hour of Mueller’s time that will allow all of its members to question him. Junior lawmakers on the panel had protested the original two hours the committee was due to have, which meant the hearing would likely have ended before several of them got a chance to speak.

Rather than building suspense, the lag time seems to have had the opposite effect—like air slowly leaking out of a balloon. And if anyone popped that balloon, it was Mueller himself. On May 29, in his lone public appearance of the past two years, a televised press conference that lasted for about 10 minutes and featured no questions, the former FBI director made clear that he did not want to testify and that if he did appear before Congress, he “would not go beyond the report.” “The report is my testimony,” Mueller said.