During the heyday of American vaudeville, the answer to the question “Will it play in Peoria?” determined whether a show would be a hit or a flop.  It was generally understood that if the production wasn’t acceptable to those in heartland America, there was no chance it would succeed anywhere else in the country.  So how is the Nancy Pelosi vaudeville production of “The Impeachment Follies” starring Adam Schiff and his merry mélange of marionettes playing in Peoria?

Polling, which took place two weeks prior to the opening act of the public impeachment performance and more facts favorable to Trump thus being exposed, revealed some interesting results in six pivotal battleground states:

Take an examination of the battleground states that Democrats almost certainly need to make inroads into in 2020.  The New York Times and Sienna College, 2018’s most accurate pollster, took a poll of voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Arizona.  These were the closest states in the country that cast their votes for Trump in 2016…Just 43% of voters in these six states want to impeach Trump and remove him from office.  The majority 53% do not.  This means that the margin for not impeaching Trump in these states (+10 points) is running well ahead of Trump’s margin in these states of 1.5 percentage points.  Put another way, impeaching and removing Trump is not a popular position.

Further, per The Daily Caller, America First Policies (AFP) held 18 focus groups over the past two months in Charlotte, Columbus, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Des Moines, Orlando, Phoenix and Miami with self-identified independent voters on the 2020 election and impeachment. The voters did not know they would be talking about politics when they were selected for the focus groups.  The voters did not mention Ukraine, the alleged quid pro quo, Rudy Giuliani or any other key details about the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.  Instead, the focus groups expressed concerns about the unfair process and the fact that the inquiry is a distraction from other issues.  Some salient points:

“I don’t think the majority of the country cares.  They want the problems solved,” one focus group member said, while another questioned, “Why the focus on impeachment when you can vote Trump next year.”   “The more they try the more they fail.  It’s a waste of funds,” another individual said.

Several focus group members compared the current impeachment inquiry to the Russian collusion narrative, pointing out that there was no “smoking gun” in the Mueller probe, and accused Democrats of using the process to further divide the country.  Others said the Democrats are not going about the inquiry “in the right way” asserting the “sneaky process” proves they don’t have anything.

Per Matt Margolis at PJ Media:  

CNN reported Thursday evening that top Democrats are privately acknowledging that the impeachment hearings will do little to persuade the vast majority of the public that President Trump committed an impeachable offense. According to CNN in a private meeting earlier this week, “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her top lieutenants were skeptical about the prospects of a dramatic shift in public opinion even as public hearings began this week, according to multiple reliable sources familiar with the matter.”  Nevertheless, they intend to carry on, in the hopes that things might change.

Thus, the change in impeachable nomenclature from “quid pro quo” to “bribery” in the hopes the deplorables in fly-over country, too ignorant to grasp the meaning of quid pro quo, would understand bribery -- as only the Democrats in the House define it.  But that change is not moving the needle either as the first days of open hearings have been a public relations disaster in proving bribery by the Adam Schiff led Intelligence Committee. 

Enter “Abuse of Power” as another attempt to convince the unwashed masses.  Per CNN: “Abuse of Power is not necessarily a concept that most Americans run around thinking about,” said Jim Hines, a Connecticut Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.  “The point is we are working to try to make a fairly unusual concept to most Americans -- abuse of power -- understandable.”

Based on the reaction of the American public to impeachment, the facts presented to date and nothing but hearsay witnesses combined with the star chamber process, that attempt will not be successful either, particularly when evidence emerges that the President’s opponents have abused their power in pursuit of impeachment.

However, there is another show about to debut on stage.  The Barr, Horowitz and Durham probes of the machinations that led to the two-year Russia collusion hoax.   This production will play in Peoria as it will not be based on gossip, innuendo, fabrications and crude propagandizing by the Democrats and the mainstream media.

In the days of vaudeville when a show was destined to not play well in Peoria the producers would cut their losses and shelve the production.  So, Nancy Pelosi what are you going to do?  Stick with The Ukraine debacle to the bitter end rather than admit a mistake?  Try and create out of whole cloth yet another impeachment theory?  Slink off into the shadows and not have an impeachment vote?  You have spent three years building the gallows for Donald Trump but you and your compatriots in the House of Representatives may well be the only ones hanging from it on November 3, 2020.

Graphic credit: Blue Diamond Gallery