House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif. Thursday, Jan. 17, 2019. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
CNN reported Thursday evening that top Democrats are privately acknowledging that the impeachment hearings will do little to persuade the vast majority of the public that President Trump committed an impeachable offense. According to CNN, in a private meeting earlier this week, "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her top lieutenants were skeptical about the prospects of a dramatic shift in opinion even as public impeachment hearings began this week, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter." Nevertheless, they intend to carry on, in the hopes that things might change.
Democrats have tried various shifts in narratives in order to find something that would stick, even accusing Trump of "bribery" with regards to the $400 million in military aid that was briefly held up by Washington (without Ukraine officials even being aware of it) but even that hasn't moved the needle in a significant way.
It seems Democrats fault the American public, for apparently not being smart enough to understand what abuse of power is. "Abuse of power is not necessarily a concept that most Americans run around thinking about," claimed House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Jim Himes, (D-Ct.). "The point is we are all working to try to make a fairly unusual concept to most Americans — abuse of power — understandable."
Really? Never mind the fact that Nancy Pelosi was essentially pressured into going forward with impeachment from the moment she became Speaker, even though she knew it was a political loser for the Democrats because of the weakness of the charges. Nope, instead, it's the fault of the American people who are too small-minded to understand concepts like "abuse of power," "quid pro quo," or "bribery."
The problem isn't that Americans don't understand what these terms mean. The problem, for Democrats, is that they've failed to prove these occurred to sway public opinion. They bring forth witnesses who heard from someone who heard from another person what somebody else was thinking and expect the public to just swallow it.
There's another theory Democrats have chosen to ignore: the American public isn't interested in impeachment. The ratings for the impeachment hearings are well below those of James Comey's testimony or the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. It seems as though Americans are tuning out this impeachment nonsense because they know that Democrats have been itching for impeachment since Trump was elected.
"I'm concerned that if we don't impeach this president, he will get re-elected," Rep. Al Green said back in May. Perhaps that has resonated with the public far more than the hearsay and innuendo Democrats are working with right now.
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