Saturday, June 18, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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The congressional hearings on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot won’t save President Joe Biden and Democrats from a November midterm reckoning, but they could reshuffle the Republican hierarchy by easing former President Donald Trump’s grip on the GOP.
Billed as must-see TV in some quarters, more than 20 million people tuned in to watch the first hearing June 9. The ongoing, widely broadcast hearings promise to tell the story of how the Jan. 6 uprising fit into Trump’s plan to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The drama continued Monday as another sessions chronicling the committee’s findings aired.
Despite evidence that aspects of the riot were planned in advance by the Proud Boys hate group, and that Trump didn’t immediately try to stop the mayhem or end his attempts to cling to power, a large swath of the nation has already turned the page on Jan. 6.
Other issues facing Americans are now in the forefront, including inflation.
This month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the consumer price index, which tracks the price of goods and services, rose 8.6% from May 2021 to May 2022 — the highest annual increase since December 1981. Food and gas, which aren’t included in the index, rose 6%, which was higher than expected. And the national average price for gas reached $5 a gallon.
Many Republicans have used inflation to dismiss the hearings.
But Democrats hope most Americans will listen to the committee and fairly evaluate its findings.
“Democrats want to change the midterms from a referendum on Democratic policy to a choice between Biden and Trump, or more generically, Democrats and Trumpy Republicans,” said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University. “Their sense is that the import, and the consequence of Jan. 6, is receding, and that if people will just sort of be reminded of what they felt on that day, it is bad for the Republicans and good for the Democrats.”
That goal won’t prevent Democrats from losing control of the House and maybe the Senate in a midterm drubbing. November voters will probably have inflation in mind, though issues related to gun control and abortion rights could give Democrats a boost.
“Whether you can do that over the next two weeks and have the half-life retained through the end of the year is very much an open question,” Jillson said of Democrats politically benefiting from the hearings.
That’s unlike the 1973 Senate Watergate Committee hearings that gripped a nation still unsure about President Richard Nixon. Today, Americans who support Trump either don’t care about his alleged misdeeds or don’t trust the sources delivering the information.
The era of Trump has created a generation of people who view criticism of leaders they like as “fake news.” And people on both sides of issues reject differing opinions, instead dashing for information that confirms their own views.
Need proof that many Americans aren’t looking at this issue with an open mind?
Neilsen ratings reveal that cable’s MSNBC, which is stacked with liberal commentary, attracted about 4.1 million viewers during the hearings. That’s nearly four times what the network averages on a typical weeknight.
But the conservative Fox News Channel didn’t air the hearings. Fox Business Network broadcast them, but only 233,000 viewers tuned in.
Viewed through this prism, the Jan. 6 hearings have little chance of immediately changing the minds of Trump supporters who were duped into believing that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
In contrast, the Watergate hearings occurred as the nation was trying to determine whether Nixon was a crook. Americans — both Republicans and Democrats — accepted the findings. They were perhaps emboldened to put truth over politics by Republican Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker’s legendary questions: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”
The Jan. 6 hearings will serve as an important historical analysis of how our democracy came under attack. They also will provide a roadmap that federal prosecutors could use to hold lawbreakers accountable.
More immediately, the hearings could help close the book on Trump’s career as an elected officeholder.
Republicans who are hesitant to publicly criticize Trump quietly hope a new crop of leaders emerge as Make America Great Again candidates without the histrionics of Trump. It’s happening even as Republicans turn away from the hearings.
Biden’s 2020 victory proved that many voters were tired of Trump’s antics, even if they liked some of his policies. So it won’t take gavel-to-gavel viewing of the hearings to determine that — at the least — Trump’s behavior is a problem.
Under current circumstances, Biden will have trouble against most major candidates in 2024. But his odds improve if Trump is the GOP presidential nominee.
“Depending upon what comes out and how people evaluate it, it might be that he is damaged sufficiently to just take the wind out of his sails,” Jillson said of Trump. “It could allow an opening for a wider range of candidates.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and others could be considering 2024 presidential bids.
Politics is a strange game.
Gromer Jeffers Jr. is a columnist for The Dallas Morning News.
