Democrats and their compliant media have given us a roadmap to their strategy for the 2024 presidential and congressional elections.  The strategy is not subtle.  Democrats and their media handlers have spoken of little but “January 6” for almost three years.

Willa Cather once wrote that if you teach people a new word, they think they have learned a new fact.  The left wants to make “January 6” such a “new fact — an accusation, a symbol, a belief system, a strategy, and much more.  Politicians want to be the victims of January 6 and wear their victimhood like a badge of stolen honor.  They equate January 6 with September 11.  They claim to have been present when they were not.  No one yet claims to have said “let’s roll” on January 6, but that might be coming.

Defendants remain in jail awaiting trial.  Sentences have been imposed that far exceed any prior conviction for trespassing.  Video has been suppressed in a way that would make the Watergate defendants proud and envious.  Most important, January 6 has served as an accusation against every Republican who might win a federal election in 2024.  Republicans are accused of failing to prevent January 6.  They are accused of “conspiracy” because they question the many irregularities from the 2020 election.   Their phone records are seized.  Every statement they ever made is analyzed for possible hidden encouragement to commit January 6.  January 6 is conflated with the Russian collusion story in order to commit misrepresentation by accumulation.  By fighting Putin in Ukraine, we also obtain justice for January 6.

Investigators scour the country in search of multiple suspects who stole Nancy Pelosi’s laptop, leading observers to wonder how many laptops Nancy Pelosi actually possessed.  Statements that implored crowds to remain at peace are ignored.  Video evidence is ignored.  The accusers do not seem to care that the “insurrectionists” were unarmed.  January 6 is referred to as “deadly” even though the only death was among the “insurrectionists.”  Networks tout their news divisions for their coverage of an “insurrection” among the recent wars, elections, and pandemic(s).  The national media are keeping score, tallying the number of January 6 defendants from each state, as if January 6 were a pandemic or even the NFL college draft.

Congressional candidates in key races will be accused.  Evidence (or lack thereof) is of no concern to the accusers, the internet trolls, or “journalists.”  The word “traitor” has been and will be used more recklessly than at any time in U.S. history.  Republican candidates will seem like Republican judicial nominees facing the usual bizarre sexual allegations.  

At every opportunity, media figures will ask Republican candidates to denounce the January 6 insurrection and Donald Trump’s “treason.”  Reporters will push them to admit that the 2020 election was the “most secure in history.”  Refusal to say those words will mean that any such candidate is an “election denier” who supports insurrection and rebellion.  The left is not content simply to impose this narrative through censorship and “cancel culture.”  Leftists must also extract this phrase from our mouths like a forced confession in Stalinist Russia. 

Opportunist Republicans might begin their campaigns by denouncing January 6 in order to separate themselves from the other candidates (and, ultimately, their own base).  RINOs will attack their primary opponents over January 6 — using the same tactics as the Democrats.  If one somehow ends up as the nominee, he will find the Democrat media attacks on him to be no less brutal.  Any “Republican” using this strategy should be treated the same as one that supports other elements of the Democrat agenda. 

Some Republicans will advocate the nomination of someone other than Donald Trump in the presidential race in order to defuse or avoid these accusations.  They believe that if we abandon Trump, the leftists will forget about January 6 so that we can all focus on “the issues.”  But the left will never agree to any such deal.  Its followers are too energized and credulous for it to let go of this story.  Leftists didn’t nurture this story for almost three years just to abandon it now.

The left has never stopped talking about Watergate after fifty years.  President Nixon left office in 1974 and died in 1994.  Yet they still produce books and movies about Watergate.  There have been three Watergate movie and television releases in just the past five years, plus numerous new books and even a board game.  These numbers pale in comparison with the Watergate media industry’s productivity over the past fifty years.  The January 6 literary and cinematic genre is in its comparative infancy.   They will not stop any time soon.

Other Republicans will try to change the focus away from January 6 by ignoring the accusations.  That approach will not work, either.  The more we run from January 6, the harder the left will pursue.  If we do not speak up, leftists will control the narrative. 

That the Republicans have begun posting the previously suppressed video from that day is a hopeful sign.  The left has suppressed that video for a reason.  We can focus on why it was suppressed and what it shows.  Rather than simply release the videos and expect the public to watch them, we must analyze them in smaller, separate, bite-size pieces, with each piece emphasizing the Democrats’ security breaches and the innocuous nature of most of the film.  One congressional candidate has found himself on the video and uses that excerpt in his ads.  We must not cower from January 6.  There are many better alternatives. 

In another hopeful sign, the New York Times recently appeared to be less strident on this issue — possibly in response to the continued revelations that contradict the narrative.

It will not be sufficient simply to contrast January 6 with the Democrat riots of 2020.  That contrast is important but does not do justice to the fraud that we now experience.  The January 6 narrative is wrong not simply because the government allowed worse things to happen the year before, but because the government has suppressed video evidence, placed people in jail for extended periods based on lies, refused to investigate violent incidents from the day before that might shed light on the circumstances, shot and killed an unarmed woman with no repercussions, was forced to release a man from jail following a disclosure of additional video, ignored evidence of leftist incitement, etc.  Most important, the irrelevance of that riot to the campaign of any Republican office-seeker or holder has become manifest over the past nearly three years.  That the Democrats and their media persist in this twisted witch hunt is itself a campaign issue.

There can be no denying that leftists will use January 6 aggressively in 2024 and for many years thereafter.  The only question is whether the Democrats’ misrepresentations and politicization will become the real issue in the public arena.

Image via Picryl.