Shane Te Pou: Is the Trump hangover finally beginning to subside?

Viewership numbers for the January 6 hearings are more akin to a major sporting event than a committee meeting. Photo / AP

Opinion

OPINION:

Kicking off tomorrow midday our time, the US Congressional Committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021, will hold its eighth televised hearing, the second to coincide with network primetime. To date, the committee has surprised everyone with viewership numbers more akin to a major sporting event than a committee meeting.

Some of the credit for these high ratings is owed to the impactful design of the hearings themselves. Enlisting a TV producer to guide them, the committee has expertly utilised video and jaw-dropping witness testimony while eliminating almost all of the speechifying such hearings typically involve. These narrative techniques were essential if they had any hope of appealing to the attention spans of viewers who could easily switch over to Netflix or stare at TikTok.

Having said that, all the bells and whistles of modern storytelling won't amount to much if the story being told lacks new information or broader resonance. They have delivered both in abundance.

It does appear as if the January 6 hearings are shifting the needle in a couple of important ways. Firstly, they seem to have depressed enthusiasm among Republicans for a second Trump presidency. Focus group researcher Sarah Longwell reported again this week that conservatives she interviews have markedly shifted on Trump. Longwell tweeted: "Just had another focus group of Trump voters with ZERO wanting Trump to run again in 2024. Really a striking departure from dozens and dozens of focus groups pre January 6 hearings, when at least half of any Trump voting group wanted him to run again. His support is noticeably softer."

The second noticeable shift is that, despite Joe Biden's terrible approval numbers and the significant advantages Republicans expected to enjoy in this November's midterm elections, the Democrats are beginning to rebound somewhat.

This is especially true of the Senate, where Trump-endorsed candidates in places like Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Arizona are struggling to overcome voter perceptions that they are too extreme.

Who knows what will happen in the months between now and November but, as it currently stands, the Democrats are more likely than not to hold the Senate in a year when nobody thought that possible.

As for the House of Representatives, Republicans remain the favourites, but few pundits expect them to pick up the 40-plus seats you may have expected based on historical trends, the current inflation crisis and Biden's deep unpopularity.

The US Congressional Committee is investigating the events of January 6, 2021, at the Capitol. Photo / Getty Images

So that's the good news. Americans are paying attention to the January 6 hearings, which, in turn, suggests they care more about preserving democracy and resisting autocracy than I gave them credit for.

And yet I find myself more pessimistic about America than at any time I can remember.

One reason for my gloom is simple. As I say to my American friends: given his oafish conduct in office and propensity for dishonesty and criminality, the fact anyone in America, let alone 40 plus per cent of the population, think returning Trump to the Oval Office is a good idea, suggests a country in decline.

But there are deeper reasons for my concern as well - and, as always with America, it circles back to race.

There's one piece of social science research in particular that illuminates the threat.

Researchers at Yale conducted a survey of white American voters to test political ideology and views on various policy ideas across the spectrum from left to right.

They then repeated the survey - with one simple addition. They would mention upfront to participants that the US Census Bureau projects America will become a majority-minority country by 2042 - in other words, there will be fewer whites than non-whites.

Just by raising the salience of changing demography, these and other experiments have shown voters lurch radically to the political Right. What's worse, they begin to support policy ideas that, if enacted, would be harmful not only to the minority groups about whom they are fearful, but to themselves as well. In other words, even self interest is subsumed by what academics call group status threat.

This explains, for example, why, despite having the worst health outcomes of any state in America, the Republican government of Mississippi refuses to pass on federal subsidy money in the form of Medicaid grants to poor people, even though doing so will save lives and cost them nothing.

The implications of this research strike me as chilling. If white people's sense of grievance and animosity is such that they are willing to harm themselves in the process of extracting pain from others, what hope does the country have when demographic change isn't theoretical, but real?

Things will get a lot worse before they get better. If they get better.

I often think the United States gets a bum rap, especially from those on my side of politics who fail to grasp the true radicalism at the heart of the American experiment.

But, while the January 6 hearings have emerged as an unexpected high point, the broader picture remains dire for US democracy as it increasingly behaves exactly as its harshest critics contend.

• Shane Te Pou (Ngai Tuhoe) is a commentator, blogger and former Labour party activist.