by Julie Kelly
If there is a poster child for the Democrats’ humiliating failure to make the events surrounding January 6, 2021 a winning issue in the midterm elections, it is U.S. Representative Elaine Luria (D-Va.).
The two-term congresswoman is fighting for her political life in a race now categorized as a toss-up; a recent poll showed Luria tied with Republican State Senator Jen Kiggans just a few weeks before an expected red wave election, despite Luria outspending Kiggans by a more than 2-1 margin. (Before the state’s remap process, Luria represented a district that voted for Joe Biden by 5 percentage points and Hillary Clinton by 6 percentage points. Her new district now has a 3-point Democratic advantage.)
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. No doubt anticipating a tough reelection for Luria, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) appointed her to the January 6 select committee—an exercise sold to the American people as a way to investigate what happened that day and prevent future “insurrections.” Primetime televised coverage promised to make Luria a national star, a defender of “democracy,” and a voice of reason in a country purportedly under siege by domestic terrorists—i.e., Trump voters.
“We must leave behind any veil of partisanship at the door because the American people deserve answers on what happened on that day and how we can ensure this does not happen again,” Luria said in July 2021, before the committee’s first public hearing.
But that, of course, didn’t happen. The committee instead descended into the latest iteration of the “Get Trump” crusade; rather than press law enforcement and congressional leadership to explain why they failed to secure the Capitol or identify the alleged “pipe bomber,” or release thousands of hours of surveillance video, the committee, including Luria, fixated on the former president and his inner circle.
The public tuned out—rightly concluding Biden-created crises, such as the wide open border and exploding inflation pose far greater threats to the republic than the dude with the furry horn hat. This confounds the regime’s corporate media lackeys, who have devoted more coverage to the four-hour disturbance than perhaps any other event in American history.
Scott MacFarlane, a CBS News national correspondent assigned exclusively to the January 6 beat, traveled to Luria’s district to find out why her constituents don’t care about it. Claiming Luria had something “unique” to talk about—“what she calls her effort to prevent another attempted insurrection and attack on democracy,” MacFarlane explained—the reporter seemed gobsmacked that voters were more concerned with rising gas and food prices. The January 6 committee, MacFarlane lamented, is not “top of mind.”
Vox reporter Ben Jacobs shared MacFarlane’s mortification over voters’ lack of interest in a story that has monopolized the media’s attention for nearly two years. “In the first major federal elections after the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the concerted effort by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election seems to be having little impact on voters,” Jacobs whined. “That’s even the case here in Virginia’s heavily military Second Congressional District, where one might think voters would feel even more protective about democracy than those in other parts of the country.”
Or maybe, Ben, just maybe voters are a lot smarter than you and understand a four-hour disturbance that briefly delayed the certification of the presidential election doesn’t pose any danger to “democracy.”
To the contrary, plenty of Americans believe retaliatory criminal and congressional investigations intended to criminalize political speech and activity represent an unprecedented abuse of power by a regime with no accountability, no decency, and no mercy.
But what really confuses the official commentariat is not only does poll after poll show Americans don’t care about January 6, their focus on it is actually backfiring on Democrats and the media.
For example, a panel of Pennsylvania voters recently dismantled the prevailing narrative right before the stupefied eyes of MSNBC dunce Elise Jordan. Asking the panel if it was acceptable that Doug Mastriano, Republican candidate for governor, was at the “insurrection” that day, Jordan immediately got her lazy butt handed to her. All 10 panelists took turns schooling Jordan on the facts: Capitol police allowed protesters inside the building, citizens are being held as political prisoners, and the riots of 2020 produced far greater destruction than the Capitol protest.
When one panelist correctly reminded Jordan that no Capitol police officer died on January 6, she interrupted. “A police officer did die,” Jordan insisted.
She was, of course, referring to Officer Brian Sicknick, who died on January 7 of two strokes caused by a blood clot near his brain. The coroner concluded Sicknick died of natural causes, not at the hands of a Trump supporter, but that hasn’t stopped ghouls like Jordan, Joe Biden, and other Democrats from lying about it. Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), running for U.S. Senate, just this week accused Trump supporters of killing a police officer on January 6. “We all watched the video,” Ryan argued amid boos and shouts of “liar!” from the audience.
Sadly, even Sicknick’s loved ones are exploiting his untimely death at age 42 for political purposes. Sicknick’s mother is featured in a new ad produced by the Republican Accountability Project—a NeverTrump group run by former Republican and perpetual sore loser Bill Kristol—accusing Kari Lake, Republican candidate for Arizona governor, of contributing to her son’s death. Gladys Sicknick said her son was killed “defending the country” and condemned Lake for “spreading the Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen. “My son died because of people like Kari Lake.” (Lake, to her immense credit, offered a compassionate response to Mrs. Sicknick’s claims.)
In another example of the party’s desperation to make January 6 a decisive factor in next week’s election, Joe Biden arranged a hastily scheduled speech at Union Station on Wednesday night to compare January 6 with the attack on Paul Pelosi.
Biden began his rant with unsubstantiated reports that David DePape, the man involved in the incident, attempted to take Pelosi hostage and yelled “Where’s Nancy?” before he was apprehended by police. “Those are the very same words used by the mob when they stormed the United State Capitol on January the sixth.” Americans shouldn’t settle their differences, Biden warned, “with a riot, a mob or a bullet or a hammer” then implored Americans to vote for continued one-party rule in support of democracy or something.
It was an appropriately angry and incoherent closing argument by Biden—a failed president who helped launch the “insurrection” narrative as the chaos unfolded that day in an effort to deflect attention away from the numerous ways in which he unfairly found himself in the White House. Since then, Biden and Democrats including Elaine Luria gambled that voters would share their faux outrage over the faux insurrection, a losing bet that voters likely will settle next week. Turns out, the “Big Lie” is that January 6 ever mattered to anyone outside the Beltway.
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Julie Kelly is a political commentator and senior contributor to American Greatness. She is the author of January 6: How Democrats Used the Capitol Protest to Launch a War on Terror Against the Political Right and Disloyal Opposition: How the NeverTrump Right Tried―And Failed―To Take Down the President. Her past work can be found at The Federalist and National Review. She also has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and Genetic Literacy Project. She is the co-host of the “Happy Hour Podcast with Julie and Liz.” She is a graduate of Eastern Illinois University and lives in suburban Chicago with her husband and two daughters.
Photo “Donald Trump” by Trump White House Archived. Background Photo “January 6” by Tyler Merbler. CC BY 2.0.
