Who Saw This Coming? A Lot of Liberals Seem Depressed and Uninterested Right Now

Morning Jolt . . . with Jim Geraghty May 31, 2013 Wow. Thanks to everyone who came out for last night's happy hour — our D.C. offices were packed, we ran out of beer, we ran through a bunch of bottles of wine, I'm told Jonah handled his duties with mixed drinks in a dramatic and exciting manner that evoked Tom Cruise in Cocktail, and everyone seemed to have a good time.  My ego was already having a hard time fitting through the door frame, and now I'm going to be utterly insufferable. Who Saw This Coming? A Lot of Liberals Seem Depressed and Uninterested Right Now My thought was that every politics-focused news-media entity is going to see their audience shrink after an election year. But ratings and audience size of three of the four cable news networks are actually up in May, compared to a year earlier. Guess which one is limping along? HLN's wall-to-wall coverage of the Jodi Arias trial has had substantial ratings legs. Surging around the time of the May 8 verdict, the network notched an extremely rare monthly victory: It topped MSNBC in total day and primetime. And with CNN posting its second consecutive month as a distant primetime runner-up to Fox News Channel, MSNBC is in a very precarious fourth place. Averaging 539,000 viewers in primetime and 175,000 viewers in the adults 25-54 demographic, MSNBC suffered double-digit drops from last May -- down a respective 20 and 19 percent. Losses were less substantial in total day, down 10 percent to an average 346,000 viewers and down 7 percent to 115,000 adults 25-54, while all other nets pulled growth in multiple categories. The soft start for All In With Chris Hayes has not helped. Hayes, down 32 percent in total viewers from The Ed Show last May, has offered a poor lead-in for MSNBC's primetime flagship, The Rachel Maddow Show, at 9 p.m. The show delivered its lowest-rated month since it debuted in September 2008 (717,000 total viewers) and its second lowest with adults 25-54 (210,000). Maddow was topped by typical time slot victor Sean Hannity and CNN's Piers Morgan. Read the complete rankings, May 2013 versus May 2012, via Nielsen: Total Day FNC: 1,246,000 total viewers, up 24 percent (236,000 in 25-54, down 5 percent) CNN: 465,000 total viewers, up 61 percent (161,000 in 25-54, up 92 percent) MSNBC: 346,000 total viewers, down 10 percent (115,000 in 25-54, down 7 percent) HLN: 494,000 total viewers, up 111 percent (175,000 in 25-54, up 90 percent)   Primetime FNC: 1,973,000 total viewers, up 17 percent (308,000 in 25-54, down 6 percent) CNN: 660,000 total viewers, up 70 percent (225,000 in 25-54, up 97 percent) MSNBC: 539,000 total viewers, down 20 percent (175,000 in 25-54, down 19 percent) HLN: 624,000 total viewers, up 91 percent (209,000 in 25-54, up 97 percent) Over at Breitbart, John Nolte is gloating: As we saw during the Boston Marathon Bombing, when people want actual news, they do not turn to MSNBC. What good is liberal-talk-radio-with-pictures hosted by unlikable hipsters who all share the same pair of glasses, when you want news, facts, and information? It is no good whatsoever. This is why, for the second time this year, the bottom has fallen out of MSNBC's ratings. Last week, between May 13-17, MSNBC averaged 350,000 overall viewers and only 94,000 in the all-important 25-54 demo. One day last week, in that demo, MSNBC averaged only 83,000 viewers, a low not seen since July of 2006. But the phenomenon may extend well beyond MSNBC's ratings. There's some anecdotal evidence that a significant chunk of the Left's rank-and-file started tuning out shortly after Obama's second term began, and they're not re-engaging. Let me point to Digby, a liberal blogger: The online left has seen a steep decline in traffic since the election as well, which indicates to me that our audience in general is simply not interested in following politics at the moment . . . My impression is that liberals are either bored or disillusioned right now for any number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that a liberal majority has been effectively obstructed and the president seems to be ineffectual.  (I realize that political scientists tell us that the presidency isn't very powerful, but most people don't believe that since we've extolled the office as the most powerful on earth for decades.) We've been through a number of elections, crises, other ups and downs over the past decade but I've not seen anything like the drop in interest over the past few months.  If it was just me I'd attribute it to my little project having run its course but it's happening across the liberal media spectrum. I don't [k]now what the answer is, but it isn't that there isn't a permanent audience. There was until very recently.  It's that the liberal audience is tuning out and one can only assume it's because they don't like what they see in our politics. It makes me a little bit more concerned for 2014/2016 than I otherwise would be. A lot of possible reasons for this — scandal disillusionment, the crash after the high of Hope-ium, a public starting to feel like they've heard of all of Obama's rhetorical tropes before, overall exhaustion and boredom with politics as a whole — but this is not a development that the Washington conventional wisdom has even noticed, much less even begun to analyze or explain. Hey, Try Not to Need an Emergency Room in 2014, Okay? Maybe the depression on the left relates to their increasingly hard-to-deny, well-founded sense of foreboding about Obamacare, as evidence mounts that once this space station dizzyingly complicated regulatory labyrinth is fully operational, American health care is going to stink to high heaven: On any given Saturday night, all 36 beds at UC San Diego Medical Center's Hillcrest emergency room are likely to be occupied, and incoming patients can often be found lying on gurneys in the corridor. A grimacing patient with a gaping knee wound holds the screen of his mobile phone over the gash for extra illumination one weekend this spring as a doctor stitches him up. "There's nothing more appalling than being treated in a hallway," says James Dunford, medical director of the city of San Diego's Emergency Medical Services system, who also works at Hillcrest. "Soon," he says, "it's going to be worse." Dunford anticipates that the Affordable Care Act will bring a surge of patients to his ER and those around the country—the opposite of what's supposed to happen. The law's backers argued it would help alleviate stress on overcrowded emergency rooms. The 25 million people expected to receive insurance under Obamacare, they reasoned, would make appointments with a doctor instead of turning to ERs for care. Yet a nationwide shortage of primary-care doctors, especially in poor and rural areas, will make it difficult for many of the newly insured to find a personal physician. ER managers say they're bracing for previously uninsured patients who came to the hospital when they needed acute medical attention to begin showing up, insurance cards in hand, for routine medical care. The overcrowding "we see now is going to pale in comparison with what we'll see" once the health-care overhaul takes full effect starting in 2014, says Ryan Stanton, director of emergency medicine at UK HealthCare Good Samaritan Hospital in Lexington, Ky. Dear Americans: You remember which party passed this monstrosity, right? Hail to the . . . Well, You'll See I have voted for a few Democrats in the past; one of my favorites was voting to re-elect the relatively competent and un-corrupt Tony Williams for Mayor of Washington, D.C., over his (effectively token) Republican rival, Carol Schwartz, was asked about her top priorities and she included changing the name of the Washington Redskins football team. If I were interviewing a candidate and they offered that response, I think I would have exploded from incredulity. I just think that this ought to be nowhere near the top 100 priorities of a mayoral candidate, never mind among their top five or six. It's not like the schools were achieving or crime was off the streets, you know. Anyway, now some members of Congress are making another push for the team to change its name: Ten members of Congress are urging the Washington Redskins to change their name because it is offensive to many Native Americans. The representatives said Tuesday that they've sent letters to Redskins owner Dan Snyder, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, Redskins sponsor FedEx, and the other 31 NFL franchises. The letter to Snyder says that "Native Americans throughout the country consider the 'R-word' a racial, derogatory slur akin to the 'N-word' among African Americans or the 'W-word' among Latinos." Among the group sending the letters are the leaders of the Congressional Native American Caucus, Tom Cole, R-Okla., and Betty McCollum, D-Minn. Granted, this is a silly topic for members of Congress to spend much time on, and a relatively small problem for football fans, Native Americans, or the country at large. (Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist Paul Woody reached out to the chiefs of the Patawomeck, Pamunkey and Rappahannock tribes in Virginia and found they didn't mind the name, and are, in fact, Redskins fans.) Having said that . . . If you were starting an expansion NFL team in Washington, D.C., today, you would never pick the name "Redskins", right?* It's different from the Kansas City Chiefs, the Cleveland Indians, the Atlanta Braves, the Florida State Seminoles, or most other team nicknames based on ethnic groups because "Redskins" is clearly a slur. There is no tribe called "the Redskins." So if there was no tradition with the name, there would be a broader consensus to change it, right? Yet as any sports fans knows, football fans love their team, and they recoil and deny the notion that they've been rooting for an ethnic slur since childhood. So, let me offer a solution. Keep the name "Redskins"  . . . . . . and bring in a potato mascot. Idaho's got one already: Thus, they remain the "Washington Redskins" . . . but the name refers to redskin potatoes. But Jim, what about the Native-American-head helmet logo? Simple: Go to the throwback uniforms of 1970-1971, with a burgundy "R" on a yellow background (and trim the feather). The team gets to keep the "Redskins" name, nobody gets to claim it's offensive, the team's heritage is honored by using the throwback uniforms, and Dan Snyder continues to make gobs and gobs of money. Boy, Washington has some generic team names, huh? Bullets/Wizards, Nationals, Capitals, United . . . The only D.C. team whose name is a noun associated with the city is the Washington Generals, the designated punching bags for the Harlem Globetrotters. Don't get me wrong, I've grown attached to the Caps and Nats by living here (and notice they're usually referred to by their abbreviated nicknames) but they almost sound like generic placeholders. Think about the names you could have used for Washington-based teams if you started over: the Defenders, the Dukes (for Duke Ellington), the Fightin' Bureaucrats, the Beltway Bandits, the Agents, the Auditors . . . ADDENDA: In the latest issue of NRO, Jonah reviewed Kevin Williamson's The End Is Near and It's Going to Be Awesome. Finally, Naked DC presents, "Behind the Scandalabra." Warning: It includes Photoshopped graphics that depict Eric Holder as you've never seen him before . . . NRO Digest — May 31, 2013 Today on National Review Online . . . JONAH GOLDBERG: The State faces humiliation and bankruptcy, and that's the good news. Leviathan Fail. THE EDITORS: The governor of Arizona's blackmailing the state legislature over implementation of Obamacare is unbecoming a chief executive.  Brewer's Tantrum. RICH LOWRY: The faceless shock troops of the bureaucracy march on and on and on. The Lois Lerner State. CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Declaring the War on Terror over won't make it so. Obama's Dorothy Doctrine. ANDREW STILES: Obama bypassed Congress to implement another policy, and the GOP has given up on fighting it. DREAM Act Full Steam Ahead. PATRICK BRENNAN: Republicans should not sell out their base on immigration for hope of electoral advantage — because it's probably not there. The Gang of Eight's Electoral Fraud. W. BRADFORD WILCOX: The latest Pew report does not show that we're an androgynous utopia (even if we wanted such a thing). The Rise of the Breadwinner Moms. MONA CHAREN: The Pew study points to the breakdown of the family more than anything else. Breadwinner Moms. DANIEL FOSTER: Felon Harvey Whitmore fraudulently funneled money into the Senate majority leader's campaign. Harry Reid's Friend. RICK SCOTT: Florida should be as proud of providing affordable higher ed as it is of its low business tax. Raising College Tuition Is a Tax Increase. JONAH GOLDBERG: "Could so-and-so make it in today's Republican party" is a silly exercise. Bob Dole's Parlor Game. KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: In On Heaven and Earth, then–Cardinal Bergoglio discusses the need for dialogue about life and religion. Pope Francis vs. the Devil. To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com Save 75%... Subscribe to National Review magazine today and get 75% off the newsstand price. Click here for the print edition or here for the digital. National Review also makes a great gift! Click here to send a full-year of NR Digital or here to send the print edition to family, friends, and fellow conservatives. Conservatives — stay healthy! Get plenty of Vitamin Sea on the next National Review cruise. Visit www.NRCruise.com for complete information. National Review, Inc. Manage your National Review subscriptions. We respect your right to privacy. View our policy. This email was sent by: National Review, Inc. 215 Lexington Avenue, 11th Floor New York, NY 10016