Democrats are having a tough summer. Inflation, disease, a president that people no longer want to see on the ballot.
So you can see why they are excited by a television show that offers a glimmer of political hope: The hearings of January 6, which held Donald Trump to account for the revolution of the Capitol 2021, and at the same time did a tacit argument that the Democrats can achieve anything – in this case, breaking the mentality of America that we have surpassed ourselves.
The eight hearings, which took place last week before taking a break until September, were a real break from the congressional hearings you’ve seen — or probably ignored — in the past. Instead of weighty pontifications from lawmakers, interspersed with hard-to-analyze testimony, they were expertly crafted – produced by a TV pro – to appeal to audiences on TV and the Internet.
They were well looked after. Eighteen million people watched last week’s season finale, putting the prime-time event on an even footing with the NFL, the most popular programming on TV. (This also puts them in line with Very Big Hearings such as the testimony of former FBI Director James Comey in 2017 and the appearance of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, although he supports that those had more drama built in because they were about real-time events, not a flashback).
And they seem to have been persuasive, both with voters and with elite opinion, such as Rupert Murdoch. After last week’s episode, which focused on Trump’s refusal to name the rioters who had breached the Capitol, Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal and Murdoch’s New York Post criticized Trump in their front pages. ‘opinions, which tend to support Trump. since 2016. (Note: Murdoch’s Fox News, his most powerful outlet, remains full MAGA).
All of which makes understandable the imagination that we see stylistic spin-offs of the hearing for years to come. “Those of us on the Dem digital communications side are like, ‘Okay, this shit works. Can we just do this? “says Jason Goldman, a former Twitter executive who worked in the Obama administration.
The answer, most likely, is no. Unlike a traditional congressional hearing, the January 6th programming is not a bipartisan production. It is run by Democrats and Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, two anti-Trump Republicans, because the rest of the Republican Party boycotted the committee.
They won’t do it again, which means we won’t see another audition with a consistent message and point of view. This is a one time only deal.
But the January 6 hearing is still likely to echo for years in political media and messaging strategies because they highlighted at least two important ideas and tactics.
Form matters: One of the great innovations of auditioning has been the use of pre-recorded interviews and other video clips. They are convincing at the moment if you watch them live on TV. But just as important is that they are explicitly ready for memes, designed to spread beyond broadcast and directly into news reports and social media, where a much larger audience will eventually see them. See, for example, Bill Barr, Trump’s attorney general, describing Trump’s voter fraud claims as “bugshit”:
Former AG Bill Barr on Trump campaign’s unfounded claims of voting machine fraud:
• “Bullshit”• “Idiot claims”• “Absolutely zero basis for the allegations”• “Heavily influencing members of the public”• “Complete nonsense”• “Crazy stuff” pic.twitter.com/hw1gnUKyZ8
Or last week’s clip of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), running away from the J6 mob shortly after giving his well-documented fist bump in solidarity. Here’s a version that shows the audience in the committee hearing room laughing at his sprint:
What makes it tempting to suggest that if you are trying to make a message with social media to the American public, you do not need to spend hours in live TV production. Why not just download it directly to Twitter and TikTok and cut out the middleman?
But that’s not right: the clips have their initial power because they’re on TV, and they’re on TV because they’re part of a Congressional Hearing, not a gif folder. So the media treats them—initially, at least—as news, not agitprop.
“You need an event,” says Dan Pfeiffer, a former communications director for Obama and now a host on Pod Save America. “It’s the difference between the movie you only see on Netflix and the opening of the new Spider-man movie that everyone knows.”
Again, it’s unlikely you’ll see a single political party given the opportunity to hold an audition, so you won’t see any more of this thrown from the Cannon House Office Building. But it doesn’t take much imagination to create events that look a lot like congressional hearings, held in rooms with paneled walls, hammers and microphones. (Just avoid landscape companies in Northeast Philadelphia).
The importance of the messenger: Some of the information that the audience has appeared is really new and important. But a lot of it has been out for a while, often in news reports you didn’t see the first time. That Bill Barr “crap” line? I might have read that in the Atlantic a year ago.
But the January 6 committee went out of their way to make sure you can see and hear people saying this stuff, live or on tape. And not just any people: Trump’s Republican fans.
Almost everyone present at the hearings, in live and recorded testimony, is a former Trump supporter – from Barr to Cassidy Hutchinson, an assistant to Trump’s chief of staff; to Stephen Ayres, a revolutionary who pleaded guilty to disruptive behavior; to Matthew Pottinger, Trump’s deputy national security adviser who resigned after the uprising.
It is not a coincidence. It reflects a belief that political persuasion is most effective when you use “trusted voices” – people with your background and point of view. The committee of January 6 does not convince the most hardcore fans of Trump, but it aims to give those less ardent a “permission structure” to spread and believe what they see and hear.
“There are millions of Americans who might not be activists in Trump’s base — they’re not true believers of the Big Lie,” says Tara McGowan, a former Democratic operative who helped organize digital campaigns during the 2020 election. “But they don’t trust the Democrats. They will pay more attention when it’s another Republican who presents this information.”
You may have seen an earlier version of this technique two years ago, when Democrats ran ads with former Trump voters breaking up with their candidate.
‼️ Jeffrey voted for Trump in 2016, and it’s safe to say he won’t do it again.
He takes you for a ride…. You have to watch it all. (Warnings: 1. NSFW 2. Wicked “Goodwill Hunting” Energy) pic.twitter.com/foIo4lmaDA
You don’t need to convince everyone with this stuff. Just moving people around the edges — as the decidedly progressive polling group Navigator says audiences are doing with some Republicans and independents — can be significant.
And here is where we can pause for a second and note that traditional congressional hearings are not going away, for better or for worse. And you can still use the old ones – the ones that hardly anyone sees on TV – effectively in today’s media vectors.
In my timeline, for example, a clip of Josh Hawley (yes, him again) sparring with UC Berkeley law professor Khiara Bridges on abortion access and gender in a Judiciary committee hearing of the Senate was painted as a victory for Bridges, who told Hawley that he was being transphobic. But this was obviously a fight Hawley wanted to have and was happy to use as a launching pad:
Democrats say what they really think: men can get pregnant and if you don’t agree, you’re “transphobic” and responsible for violence pic.twitter.com/44CeIi5WvT
Which is also a reminder for people who applaud the form and function of the committee of January 6: The things that work here will also work in settings that do not make you comfortable. And you don’t have to imagine politicians using edited video interviews, computer displays, and other techniques that we have seen in these hearings applied to bad faith messaging: That’s the whole point of outfits like Project Veritas, which specializes in “investigative” misleading. report
But now that audiences have road-tested this stuff for a large national audience, we’re only going to get more, like it or not.
