Yeah I remember all those lectures about over reaction and we ended up with an insurrection and an entire half of our country convinced an election was stolen.
But more seriously it looks like the government is having a hell of a time convicting anyone there of more than mischief and trespassing.
Snark aside, the danger of Jan 6 was not shoving - It was people deciding to do the wrong thing in the name of gaining power.
The insurrectionists who organized January 6 (yes it was planned) were at the Willard Hotel in a number of suites they called a "War Room" (yes, their words). The entire plan was to delay certification of Joe Biden's victory to give state legislatures time to arrange an alternate slate of electors to be sent to the Capitol. This delay was achieved via a violent mob directed at the Capitol. A delay happened by it wasn't long enough, so the effort failed.
But it almost succeeded. They wanted to push Pence in the direction of refusing to certify Biden's 2020 win, thereby kicking the decision to state delegates, of which Republicans controlled a majority. Obviously they would have voted for Trump over Biden.
This is how autocracy happens in America: a president who loses both the popular vote and electoral college, appointed by a political party on the basis of fraudulent claims of fraud. No elections will be trusted by either side after that happens.
And the fact that the Democrats argued that Trumps 2016 election and Bush’s election was “suspect” if not “fradulent” doesn’t do much to bolster your argument.
The pearl clutching is pretty obvious.
This is the Democrats fault. Their shoe-in candidate lost and they spent four years bleating that Trump was illegitimate and failed to prove it with a far reaching investigation. _That_ is where trust started to be lost.
I mean, this isn't even the product of some partisan hit job on Trump. This is the result of two Republican-led investigations. One, led by a fmr Republican FBI director appointed by a Republican deputy AG, who in turn was appointed by Trump himself; the other written by the Republican majority and chaired Senate Intel committee. It's really easy to dismiss this as a "conspiracy theory" or "witch hunt" as the then President tried very hard to call it, but Republicans and Democrats both agree on the facts in these reports. They are not lies. They are not conspiracy theories. And yes, they are also a nothing-burger, because the behavior is now normalized. That's how presidential campaigns will be run from here on out basically thanks to this whole issue, and no one should be surprised when Democrats do it.
I'm gonna go ahead and put that "shoving" into the not-cool category.
Pretty crappy insurrection.
Still, america is a nation of extremes, and if something doesn't go their way they're all very quick to jump to "its a conspiracy against us" conclusion. A union bound together by nothing is doomed to fall apart from the slightest push.
Given how crappy USA election practices are (no voter IDs? mail ballot? workers counting ballots without witnesses?) I'm pretty sure there were instances of election fraud in both cases, it's just hard to establish how much it affected the result.