This AM, I got up and watched around 60 minutes of highlights from day two of the Impeachment 'series' (I'd almost refer to it as a TV series).
Day two was softer for some older folks in the Senate.....with it ending around 10 PM locally (taking roughly 8 hours). So you add it up.....the old Senators have to walk back to their office, and get their jackets. Along the way....their staff folks will chat, and they won't officially leave the building until 11:30. You can figure 30 to 45 minutes (no traffic) to get home, and then make a sandwich (it's awful late to eat a real dinner). Toss back three shots of something, and finally be asleep around 1:50 AM. By 7:00 AM, they will have to be up, sipping coffee, and getting into some frame of mind. Yep, marginally five hours of sleep.
The two things that I took out of this?
1. A bit of chatter from Schiff about the Russian threat. It wasn't clear about how this threat would work, or which Russians (the KGB, the Oligarchs, or just pain-in-the-ass hacker-kids) were responsible.
This chat has often been used over the past three years, but what always bothers me about this suggestion.....if you take it real....could it be that Bill Clinton, Bush II, and Barak Obama....were all brought to power by the Kremlin or Putin? Yes, were we already duped by Russia into accepting marginal performers?
I know....Democrats hate that scenario because it opens up a vast discussion, but where exactly this threat started is a problem, if you accept Schiff's idea.
2. The integrity of the 2020 election and trustworthiness is marginal....so says Schiff.
How would you relieve the public's questions? Well....you'd go and shutdown all political chatter on social media for three months prior to the election. You'd carve the length of the 18 months spent on election games down to three total months. That would mean that the primary, convention and national campaign would start around the end of July, and conclude by early November. Finally, you'd mandate a national ID card....free-of-charge for everyone, and mandate it's use for voting.
Instead, Schiff just wants the President to be moved out, and then integrity will just happen overnight.
So I come to this final view....it basically took 24 hours to bring the marginal two-star show to a one-star level, and make an episode of Honey-Boo-Boo seem appealing.
Luckily, because of McConnell's rules....the cameras can't focus on Senators bored out of their mind, and sitting there at their table....drawing images of monkeys, naked women, and race cars.
The idea of six weeks of this? No....you can now forget about that, and I would start to suggest that TV audiences will lessen by the middle of next week....to half the number of day one. This might be over in the third week, as journalists realize there is no great public interest.
