Democrats haven’t had a very happy new year, thanks to a stalled agenda, mediocre poll numbers, and an increasingly dim outlook for their party in the November elections.
Lacking many significant accomplishments they can tout to voters, Democratic lawmakers have instead intensified attacks on the GOP, who otherwise stand poised to reclaim the House majority and perhaps the Senate 10 months from now.
The party seized on the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol to resurrect their effort to tie Republicans to the violent throng who stormed the Capitol and to link the GOP to former President Donald Trump, who they blame for inciting the attack by perpetuating, to this day, the claim that the 2020 election was rigged.
While party leaders said the daylong remembrance at the Capitol was to focus on those who defended the building or endured the attack, Democrats ensured Trump and Republicans loomed large.
President Joe Biden delivered a broadside against Trump in a speech marking the one-year anniversary.
Biden dedicated a significant chunk of his Capitol address to blaming Trump and his supporters for contesting the election results and inciting the mob who forced their way into the Capitol.
“The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election,” Biden said. “He’s done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interests as more important than this country’s interest than America’s interest, and because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution.”
While Biden didn’t name Trump or any Republican lawmakers, Democrats have been ramping up a messaging tactic tying Republicans to the former president.
The Republican Party, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a speech marking the Jan. 6 anniversary, “was taken over by Donald Trump.”
Democrats and Biden could use a little political distraction right now.
Biden’s disapproval rating hit a new high last week from voters who frowned on his handling of the economy and the drawn-out COVID-19 pandemic.
Democrats in Congress are spinning their wheels, unable to advance Biden’s $1.75 trillion Build Back Better plan that was to serve as the centerpiece of his economic agenda and failing to promote the more popular, $1 trillion infrastructure bill Biden signed into law last year.
Centrist Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin is blocking the Build Back Better measure in the evenly split Senate, and he is poised, along with Arizona Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, to stall a bid to rewrite the Senate rules so that Democrats can pass two partisan election overhaul bills.
Republicans are currently favored to retake the Senate and the House, where Democrats cling to a three-seat majority.
“Democrats haven’t properly explained their agenda,” nonpartisan pollster Ron Faucheux told the Washington Examiner. “Even their most popular proposals are getting lost in the shuffle.”
Democrats argued it was essential to hold the ceremony commemorating the Jan. 6 riot to deter it from happening in the future. They also insist the riot at the Capitol is among the reasons Congress should pass their election overhaul bills, which would end red-state voter integrity laws passed after the 2020 election and make other significant changes opposed by Republicans.
“We must pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act so that our country’s destiny is determined by the voice of the people and not by the violent whims of lies and even mob rule,” Schumer said Thursday.
Republicans slammed Democrats for using the Jan. 6 attack to push their partisan election overhaul legislation.
But Democrats are hoping the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, now a year old, will remain on the minds of voters in the coming year, along with Trump’s culpability and his present ties to the GOP.
Vice President Kamala Harris helped set the tone, comparing Jan. 6 to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, two of the biggest horrors in U.S. history.
“We cannot let our future be decided by those bent on silencing our voices, overturning our votes, and peddling lies and misinformation by some radical faction that may be newly resurgent but whose roots run old and deep,” Harris told the crowd gathered for the anniversary inside the Capitol.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who has long blamed Trump for the mob attack at the Capitol, wasn’t in the building to commemorate the anniversary of the attack. He joined other GOP lawmakers at the funeral of Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia. He issued a statement condemning the attack, praising those who defended the building that day, and accusing Democrats of using Jan. 6 to push for the passage of election overhaul bills that the GOP believes will promote voter fraud and give Democrats an advantage at the polls.
“It has been stunning to see some Washington Democrats try to exploit this anniversary to advance partisan policy goals that long predated this event,” McConnell said. “It is especially jaw-dropping to hear some Senate Democrats invoke the mob’s attempt to disrupt our country’s norms, rules, and institutions as a justification to discard our norms, rules, and institutions themselves.”
