WASHINGTON — Last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol left an indelible scar on politics in Washington and laid bare the country’s growing threat of political violence.
That doesn’t mean it’ll have a big influence on the next election.
In the year since the Jan. 6 riot, Democrats have grudgingly accepted that the unprecedented attack has been marginalized as an issue for many key voters, overtaken by broader kitchen-table concerns about the rising cost of living and culture war-inflected battles over schools and coronavirus restrictions.
Even if the party continues to talk about the attack — as President Joe Biden did during a speech Thursday in the Capitol marking the anniversary — Democratic strategists are skeptical it’ll play more than a minor role on the campaign trail later this year.
“I’m definitely in the school of thought that the politics of January 6th is probably pretty baked in,” said Steve Schale, a Florida-based Democratic strategist. “It’s either a big deal to you, and we already knew how you were going to vote, or you somehow think it’s not a thing.”
Schale and other Democrats insist that, given what they see as a catastrophic threat to democracy, that the party will still incorporate the riot in their message. And party strategists think the issue could still play a key role motivating Democratic voters — among whom concern about the attack runs the highest — to turn out in November.
The reaction among moderate and Republican voters, however, will likely be more muted. A poll from the non-partisan Morning Consult released this week found only 35% of independents thought last year’s attack had a “major impact” on their worldview, while only 24% of Republicans said the same.
Sixty-eight percent of Democrats, meanwhile, said Jan. 6 had a “major impact” on them.
“The economy has the ability to drive everything, as it always does,” said Wes Anderson, a Republican pollster. “I understand why they are going to try and make today as big a deal as possible. They get to their day. But they risk overstating their case here.”
Control of Congress at stake
Strategists in both parties see both the Senate and House majorities up for grabs in this year’s midterm election, given the slim majorities Democrats hold in each. Even a loss of a single seat would give the GOP control of the Senate, while Republicans would need to win only a handful of Democratic-held seats in the House to win a majority there.
Further increasing the GOP’s opportunity are the headwinds the president’s party traditionally faces during a midterm — the president’s party has lost control of at least one legislative chamber in every midterm dating back to 2006 — and Biden’s own low approval ratings, which slipped precipitously after a fall marked by the deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan, a resurgent coronavirus pandemic, and rising prices caused by inflation.
Biden’s approval sits at roughly 43%, according to the FiveThirtyEight.com poll tracker, almost 10 points lower than his approval in July.
Restoring voter faith in the Democrats’ ability to govern, political strategists say, doesn’t require ignoring the attack on the Capitol — but it does require the party’s candidates to talk about a lot of other issues, too.
“You can’t wish reality away, so you have to do both,” said Tim Miller, a former Republican strategist turned vocal critic of former President Donald Trump. ”You have to make them understand how important and dangerous January 6th was, and address concerns about the price of their milk has gone up 40% in the last year.”
Democrats “need to be careful about hyperbole” when speaking about the attack, Miller added, remembering that many voters think the riot was bad but not a mortal threat to American democracy.
“What I would caution Democrats about is to avoid speaking in a way that maximizes the most retweets from your resistance Twitter crowd at the expense of what will resonate with actual folks,” he said.
Some party officials remain convinced that the attacks can still play an important political role for the party, particularly as it tries to energize left-leaning liberals and others to turn out and vote again.
The Democratic super PAC Priorities USA, for instance, launched a digital ad campaign this week featuring the Jan. 6 riot and arguing that a vote against GOP candidates represents another vote to stop Trump. The Republican leader has endorsed a slate of GOP candidates running in the midterm election as he seeks to retain his influence atop the party.
Other party officials argue that, beyond the politics of the next election, the party has a moral responsibility to continue talking about Jan. 6.
“It’s up to all of us to make sure that this matters in the next election, while, of course, at the same time making sure families can bring food to their table and are healthy,” said former Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell of Miami.
