NY Times: “Instead of watching the proceedings in Washington, Americans largely went on with their lives.”

Democrats and their media cohorts are quite pleased with their success in forcing through sham impeachment articles along mostly partisan lines, with the only ones crossing party lines being Democrats who voted with Republicans not to impeach. Granted, Democrats are still worried that their attempt to interfere with the 2020 election won’t pay off and President Trump will be reelected, but mostly they are celebratory.

Across America, however, it seems that few were paying attention during the impeachment “debate” and vote. Ratings for the show were unimpressive, and even the New York Times is reporting that people across the nation were focused on “anything but politics.”

The ratings winner among networks for the impeachment show was NBC, with a total of 2.599 million viewers. Fox News won the ratings war for the impeachment vote with 5.032 million viewers.

The Wrap reports:

NBC won the day in ratings Wednesday as the highest total of viewers tuned into the broadcast channel to watch coverage of President Donald Trump’s impeachment. From 8:45 a.m. ET to 9 p.m. ET, 2.599 million viewers turned on NBC, 694,000 of whom were in the advertiser-coveted 25-54 age demographic. Fox News was in second place with 2.368 million total viewers. Fox News was in fourth place among the major news networks when it came to viewers between 25-54: 458,000 of them were in the demo. . . . . CBS brought in 2.311 million total viewers with 515,000 in the demographic. Next was ABC with 2.308 million, 547,000 of whom were between 25-54. The last two spots were taken by cable news: MSNBC had 1.480 million total viewers and 256,000 in the key demo. CNN has fewest total viewers at 1.416 million, but did better than MSNBC in the demo: 405,000 of CNN’s viewers were between 25-54. . . . . Fox News was the most-watched cable news network for the impeachment vote on the House floor, with 5.032 million viewers, 1.1 million of whom were in the demo.

For comparison, consider that more people tuned in to watch Survivor on Wednesday night than to watch the impeachment show on any given network, and those watching the vote were vastly eclipsed by people tuning in to watch The Masked Singer.

ShowBuzz does point out that “Network news special reports last night for the Impeachment vote in the House of Representatives interrupted some programming. Precise program start and end times with actual program ratings will be available later this afternoon. The numbers below are time period numbers with approximate schedules as a rough guide.”

My guess is most people tuning in to watch Survivor, etc. wanted to watch that and not the Democrat impeachment circus.

The New York Times apparently came to a similar conclusion.

In Chicago and cities around the U.S.: “Impeachment? Not something we’re talking about today.” Instead of watching the proceedings in Washington, Americans largely went on with their lives. https://t.co/oRWWgvI7jS — The New York Times (@nytimes) December 19, 2019

The NY Times has changed the title of this article to “Impeachment Unites Many Americans in a Desire for ‘Anything But Politics’.” The new subtitle is “From Boston to Albuquerque to Atlanta, Americans mostly averted their gaze as impeachment proceedings shook Washington.”

As of this writing the above tweet is still live, but here’s a screen grab should it disappear:

The article has been changed, too, you can view its original content archived here. The new content, as of this writing, is available via archive here.

Both versions begin with the same observation:

It was a momentous day in American history. But, by all indications, it was not a momentous day in the lives of most Americans. So while the House of Representatives debated the impeachment of President Trump, one man in Houston was more focused on a $279 speeding ticket. Tourists in Chicago savored an impeachment-free shopping day. Members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 401 in Albuquerque followed a simple mantra: “Anything but politics, man.”

Only the last paragraph of the intro was rewritten. Here’s the original at publication:

Americans may be deeply invested in the outcome, but as history played out, many of them were taking whatever opportunity they could to look elsewhere.

And here’s the revised version under the new title:

Americans may be deeply invested in the outcome of impeachment. They might adore or loathe Mr. Trump. But as history played out Wednesday amid the bombast and rancor of impeachment proceedings, many of them seemed intent on looking elsewhere.

Personally, I like the second version better, but both make the same point: Americans tuned out the Democrat impeachment circus.

I don’t think this lack of concern is reflective of much beyond the fact that between the (more bipartisan) Clinton and the (completely partisan) Trump impeachments, impeachment has come to be seen by the American people as a political weapon rather than the serious and dire consequence for actual high crimes and misdemeanors.

The American people are also just worn out. Democrats have been screaming for Trump’s impeachment since before he even took office and have spent tens of millions of our taxpayer dollars to try to find a crime that can be used to oust him.

They couldn’t find one despite hundreds of investigators and lawyers scouring everything they could get their hands on over the past three years. In the end, they settled on the Democrat-led House equivalent of Orange Man Bad. No wonder America tuned out and carried on with their lives.



