Do you think media coverage + public consumption of the Mueller report, for instance, is commensurate with media coverage + public consumption of the Starr report? Because I definitely don't. Hell, one of the chief arguments people have made for why Mueller needs to testify to the House is because just his public reiterating of the report's findings was more impactful than the report itself, because most people flat out did not read the report or even internalize its conclusions based on the coverage. This was definitely not the case in 1998, when the Starr Report itself was a best seller. I feel pretty confident that the number of people who have read the Mueller report is infinitesimally smaller than the audience who read the Starr Report.
This is not an argument against impeachment btw, I'm not anti-impeachment. But my expectation is that the gamechanging power of impeachment hearings is vastly overhyped by many, based in part on faulty comparisons to extremely different media landscapes surrounding the last two impeachment proceedings.
