Americans Are Voting with Their Eyeballs

The Economist: “Considering the passions that the president stirs, for and against, most Americans’ lack of interest in his trial may be its most remarkable feature. The public gallery has been half-empty for most of it. The few dozen anti-Trump protesters who have gathered outside the Senate are nothing to the hundreds who flocked to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing. The trial’s opening two days drew a modest prime-time TV audience of 7.5m. That is similar to the audience for Bill Clinton’s trial, once an increase in average viewership is factored in, though Mr Trump’s is taking place in a far more feverishly politicized environment. It is also more popular than Mr Clinton’s trial was. Only a minority of Americans thought Mr Clinton should have been impeached for lying about sex; a small majority think Mr Trump should be sacked for trying to extort personal favors from his Ukrainian counterpart.”

“Even Republican senators who denounce Mr Trump’s impeachment as a ‘political sham,’ in the phrase of James Inhofe of Oklahoma, seem slightly piqued by the public’s disregard. Quizzed on the thin showing in the gallery, the Oklahoman hyper-partisan told one newspaper he was ‘really surprised…because this is kind of historic.’ He shouldn’t have been. The reason most Americans find Mr Trump’s trial tedious is because they know how it will end: with the president, though guilty—as even some Republicans acknowledge in private—nonetheless acquitted by them.”