Gillibrand Should Reconsider 2020 Run After Embarrassing Results Surface from CNN Town Hall Event
I admit that it’s early on in the game — we’re a little less than a year away from any real primary action — but I had assumed New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand would be doing better than she is.
The RealClearPolitics polling average has her in ninth place, behind a guy currently in trouble for inappropriate touching, a guy whose main qualification for the highest office in the land is apparently losing to Ted Cruz in a Senate race, a guy who called himself “Spartacus” for releasing classified information that had actually been declassified, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Amy Klobuchar, who’s apparently still in this race for reasons unbeknownst to God or man.
But again, it’s early. Surely she can turn that 1.1 percent polling average and, with a little bit of positive press and gumption, turn that utter lack of excitement into something resembling excitement. After all, we’ve collectively learned how to pronounce Pete Buttigieg’s name. There’s no real frontrunner and nobody seems to be making a huge impression. Stranger things have happened, right?
Well, maybe not, at least if television ratings are any indication.
Like many members of the 2020 Democrat field, Gillibrand had her own CNN town hall meeting this week. She’s not the first Democrat to have one of these useless softball batting practice sessions — as Mediaite notes, Cory Booker, Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Bernie Sanders have all had their turns so far — but she is the worst, at least when it comes to viewership.
“Gillibrand’s town hall bagged a paltry 491,000 in total viewers and 115,000 in the advertiser coveted A25-54 demographic,” Mediaite reported.
“For some context: in the first quarter of 2019, CNN’s 10 p.m. host Don Lemon doubled those numbers: on average, he bagged 1.16 million total viewers and 361,000 in the demo.
“Gillibrand’s town hall was also the lowest rated show on cable Tuesday night at 10 p.m. While less than half a million people watched Gillibrand, a whopping 2.5 million tuned in to watch Fox News host Laura Ingraham, while over on MSNBC Lawrence O’Donnell drew 1.9 million viewers.”
Losing to Ingraham isn’t a surprise. Losing to Lawrence O’Donnell — a pundit whose face seems stuck in a permanent rictus that suggests a man about to snarl, “How dare you, sir?” — well, is.
Keep in mind, when Kamala Harris did the same shindig back in January, her viewership was almost quadruple that of Gillibrand’s.
“The hourlong program, featuring Harris answering questions from a studio audience, drew nearly 2 million viewers — 75 percent above CNN’s four-week average in the 10 o’clock hour. The news channel says the audience of 1.95 million was the largest for a single-candidate town hall in CNN history,” The Hollywood Reporter noted.
Just like her poll numbers, Gillibrand’s ratings shouldn’t have been so low. This was a one-time protégé of Hillary Clinton’s — that is, before she dumped the Clintons during the heady days of the #MeToo scandals, saying she believed Bill ought to have resigned over the Monica Lewinsky affair. She’s a female senator from a large, populous state that started off as a moderate and took a sharp turn left.
In other words, she should be a marketer’s dream for the 2020 race. Instead, she’s pulling below Lawrence O’Donnell.
Again, it’s early, but the primary season starts earlier and earlier each quadrennial cycle and Gillibrand clearly isn’t attracting attention.
Even the takeaways from the town hall that CNN compiled on its website weren’t exactly compelling. The first two had to do with issues where Gillibrand had flip-flopped — guns and immigration.
“When I was a member of Congress from upstate New York, I was really focused on the priorities of my district. When I became senator of the entire state, I recognized that some of my views really did need to change,” Gillibrand told the audience on immigration.
“They were not thoughtful enough and didn’t care enough about people outside of the original upstate New York district that I represented. So, I learned.”
That’s a very pleasant way of saying, “I’ll be whatever you want me to be, America.”
The third takeaway is that she was willing to say “I don’t know” on several policy questions. This is apparently supposed to be something refreshing, like Robert Redford’s character in “The Candidate” before he succumbed to the temptations of politics, but if one of the six takeaways from a presidential aspirant’s television appearance is that they didn’t know stuff, that’s not a great augury.
According to The Washington Post, Gillibrand hasn’t released her early fundraising numbers. That’s not surprising given the utter lack of excitement her campaign is created. As for those who have given her money, I can only hope they kept their receipts.
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