Nevertheless, Democrats would rather have a commission, for three reasons. First, they know the public would regard congressional committee hearings and reports that they control as a partisan exercise rather than good-faith investigation. Don’t be fooled, though: Democrats fully intend to conduct a partisan exercise under the commission camouflage. They’d prefer to package the effort as a bipartisan cavalcade of subject-matter experts dispassionately seeking the truth . . . while, behind the scenes, they ensure the Democrat-appointed chair of the commission gets to hire and fire the staff that would do the actual work. Second, Democrats see a commission as an opportunity to exploit Republican fissures. When it comes to their “insurrection” mantra, and the closely related trope that white supremacism, supposedly instantiated by the January 6 mayhem, is the most perilous “violent extremist” threat facing the United States, Democrats are completely unified. Republicans, by contrast, are divided into competing camps of Trump loyalists, Trump opponents, and those who see Trump as a headache whose influence will dissipate over time if people just stop talking about him — which, naturally, Democrats have no intention of doing. Since they are in harmony while the opposition party is arrayed in a circular firing squad, Democrats know they would have a working majority to steer the course of any commission (just as they called the tune on the “bipartisan” impeachment article against Trump back in January — and, in elevating their partisan messaging over the national interest, undermined the drafting of a strong, accurate set of allegations).