PRESS DEEPLY UPSET THAT THE DEM NARRATIVE ISN’T GETTING TRACTION: Americans’ Indifference About January 6 Is the Real Threat to Democracy.

So what has been the ultimate effect of all this high-visibility evidence of a rogue president gone insurrectionist? Well, the number of Republicans who agree with Trump’s “stolen election” fable has almost certainly gone up rather than down. The 45th president remains the leader of his party by any reasonable definition and is unquestionably the front-runner for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination if, as expected, he chooses to run. He actually leads Biden in averages of 2024 trial heats.

And the best efforts of the House select committee have failed to make the events of January 6 a significant campaign issue in the 2022 midterms.

But some unusually deep polling by the New York Times and Siena College about whether voters care about “threats to democracy,” and how they understand that term, might justify Democrats’ focus on other issues.

That recent survey asked an open-ended question about the “most important issue facing the country today.” Just 7 percent cited “the state of democracy.” That’s nothing compared with the 26 percent who offered “the economy” or the 19 percent who volunteered “inflation or the cost of living.” But concerns about democracy did top “abortion,” which was cited by 4 percent, and “crime,” which was called a top issue by 3 percent. Moreover, the pollsters later asked whether American democracy is “currently under threat,” and 71 percent said yes. That’s a big deal, right?

Maybe not. It’s when the pollsters dig into what people mean by “threats to democracy” that any focus on January 6 gets lost. Far and away the most popular complaint was about politicians and government generally being “corrupt.” . . .

This sure sounds a lot closer to MAGA folk calling Washington a “swamp” than it does to members of Congress expressing shock at the desecration of “the temple of democracy” on January 6.

Similarly, voters perceiving a “threat to democracy” are nearly as likely to view Biden as a “major threat” (38 percent) as Trump (45 percent). Forty-nine percent call “electronic voting machines” a major or minor threat (as opposed to no threat at all), and 54 percent feel the same way about voting by mail. The claim with the strongest bipartisan support is that “mainstream media” are a threat to democracy: 84 percent of respondents, including 83 percent of self-identified independents, consider the media a major or minor threat to democracy.

Sounds like the voters have a solid sense of reality, much to the dismay of this writer. And maybe voters don’t think of the Capitol as a “temple of democracy” because, well, it isn’t. And the Capitol LARP-fest was nothing compared to the bloody riots that Democrats and the media — but I repeat myself — tacitly, and even openly, approved. People noticed.