Elise Stefanik Gets Famous... For All The Wrong Reasons

Not a good image for the North Country this cycle

North Country conservative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) is well-known among DC insiders-- but virtually unknown outside-the-Beltway. Or she was until last week, when she consistently beclowned herself on national TV during the impeachment hearings. Stefanik represents a huge, sparsely-populated district in the northeast corner of New York, bordered by Quebec, Ontario and Vermont. Plattsburgh and Watertown, each with less than 30,000 inhabitants, are the two biggest towns. There are a dozen counties in this swing district that went for Obama twice and then slammed Clinton with a massive 14 point loss against Trump in 2016. How would Bernie have done there? Well here's how he did in the primary:

• Saratoga- Bernie- 55.8%, Hillary- 44.2%
• St Lawrence- Bernie- 58.9%, Hillary- 41.1%
• Jefferson- Bernie- 50.9%, Hillary- 49.1%
• Clinton- Bernie- 73.5%, Hillary- 26.5%
• Warren- Bernie- 61.7%, Hillary- 38.3%
• Washington- Bernie- 64.1%, Hillary- 35.9%
• Fulton- Bernie- 61.1%, Hillary- 38.9%
• Essex- Bernie- 73.2%, Hillary- 26.8%
• Franklin- Bernie- 70.9%, Hillary- 29.1%
• Lewis- Bernie- 59.1%, Hillary- 40.9%
• Herkimer- Bernie- 56.0%, Hillary- 44.0%
• Hamilton- Bernie- 63.1%, Hillary- 36.9%

Last year, in an anti-red wave year, Stefanik beat Democrat Tedra Cobb 131,981 (56.1%) to 99,791 (42.4%) and won all but Clinton and Essex counties, both basically tied. As in many Bernie districts, the Democratic establishment pushed a Clinton-type candidate instead of a Bernie-progressive-- and lost. Cobb is running again and she just got her biggest break of the cycle. If her moderate, yes-but-better-than-a-Republican campaign was getting nowhere, Stefanik's clunky and uber-partisan defense of Trump benefitted no one but Cobb. Cobb's campaign raised over half a million dollars last week, her biggest fundraising week ever, and her social media following vaulted to over 200,000 people, now able to reach more people than Stefanik can on Twitter. Meanwhile, Stefanik's carefully-crafted, if misleading, image as a "moderate" lays smashed, irreparably, on the floor of the hearing room and in the minds of millions of Americans who saw her in action, kissing Trump's ass.

As much as Republican Party hacks-- from Nunes to Trump's Goebbels-like press secretary-- tried to push the idea that the hearings are boring and that no one was watching, people were very much watching and the hearings were all over TV, radio, newspapers and social media. CNN reported that the hearings were ratings bonanzas for Fox News and MSNBC. According to Nielsen, Fox averaged 2.9 million viewers at any given time between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and MSNBC averaged 2.7 million viewers at the same time. How big a deal is that? "On a typical day, Fox News has about 1.5 million viewers during the daytime hours, and MSNBC has closer to 1 million... The ratings contradict claims from some of the president's allies, including one of his sons, Eric Trump, who said on Fox News that 'no one was watching it. No one cares.' Clearly lots of people cared enough to tune in. They also wanted to see the spin later in the day-- Fox's Sean Hannity had one of his highest-rated shows of the year, with 4.4 million total viewers."

It's impossible to estimate how many people watched or heard the hearings across all platforms, since television, radio and streaming video are all measured in different ways.

Some people consumed the hearing in one sitting, but the more common experience is much more scattered-- hearing snippets on the air and seeing clips on social media and headlines on phones.

The ABC, CBS (CBS) and NBC broadcast networks pre-empted regular programming for Wednesday's hearings as well. ABC and CBS averaged 2 million viewers each, and NBC had nearly 1.67 million.

But a much greater total number of people saw some portion of the hearings over the course of six hours. The granular Nielsen data shows fluctuations throughout the proceedings.

CNN, for example, averaged 1.85 million viewers during the entire hearing, peaking at 11 a.m. when more than 2.1 million were tuned in.

The cumulative average audience for the big six channels listed above was 13 million-- about on par with the day former special counsel Robert Mueller testified in July.

Wednesday's hearing was also carried live on PBS; by some local Fox stations; by C-SPAN; and by other television networks.

And the hearing was streamed almost everywhere, on a wide variety of social networks and news websites.

CNN Digital reported strong but not off-the-charts interest in live streams of the testimony.

There's no Nielsen-like way to measure cumulative viewership on the web.

But the overnight ratings indicate that the impeachment hearing reached both political junkies and a wider group of daytime TV viewers.

The vast majority of Americans, however, didn't watch the entire event live-- they soaked it up through social media and heard about it later.

Nielsen estimated 13,787,000 viewers live (while most people are at work or school), however among elderly people, many of whom are retired and at home, there were 10,644,000 viewers live. News clips dominated the nightly news shows and all other forms of media. Elise Stefanik is famous, not as the moderate she has spent years trying to pass herself off as, but as a radical imbecile Trumpist trying to disrupt the hearings to protect a criminal plot to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election. Stefanik congratulated AOC when she was first elected, saying she was glad to give up the spot as youngest woman in Congress to her and predicting that AOC would inspire other young women. AOC has, while Stefanik has continued to sink into a morass of hyper-partisan Trumpism, adding both another chin and political enemies among moderates and independents.

Washington Post columnist Aaron Blake called Stefanik's shameful game-playing a gender-centric stunt. "During the hearing's first break, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) declared that Democrats were trying to get Yovanovitch to 'cry for the cameras.' But arguably the most significant moment on that front was one that was manufactured by Republicans-- and rather transparently so. After returning from the first break, ranking Republican Nunes tried to yield time for questioning to Stefanik. But Schiff said Nunes couldn't do that-- that he could only yield to his counsel or ask questions himself. The Republican professed to be perplexed. 'You're gagging the young lady from New York?' Nunes said incredulously. The optics would seem to be pretty bad for Schiff; he was silencing the committee's only female Republican, for apparently no reason except spite. Except that's hardly the case. The rules as voted on by the broader House last month were clear: The chairman, Schiff, and the ranking member, Nunes, each got 45-minute periods to either ask questions or yield to a staff member. (The resolution says: 'Only the chair and ranking minority member, or a Permanent Select Committee employee if yielded to by the chair or ranking minority member, may question witnesses during such periods of questioning.') Afterward, each member would get five minutes, during which they can yield to other members. Stefanik still tried to use the moment for political hay, tweeting, 'Once again, Adam B. Schiff flat out REFUSES to let duly elected Members of Congress ask questions to the witness, simply because we are Republicans.' That is just not true-- Schiff was acting firmly within the rules-- and Nunes and Stefanik have to know that. It's pretty apparent this was a stunt."