When the Democrats embarked on their January 6 media extravaganza earlier this year, there were two schools of thought.

If you read more Democratic-friendly press outlets, the series of sometimes-prime-time hearings were all part of a canny electoral strategy to fire up the party’s base, while also exposing to Republicans and Donald Trump–leaning independents just how criminal, irresponsible, and unfit for office the former president was. If you read left-wing outlets like Jacobin, the hearings, while no doubt revealing some important facts, were a failure of political theater that neglected to address the economic concerns that most preoccupied ordinary Americans, but cemented the Democrats as a party still obsessed with a year-ago riot that vanishingly few voters cared about.

Less than a month out from the midterms, the points made by Jacobin and other left critics seem to have aged far better. According to the latest Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party have both seen their approval plateau, while public approval of the GOP has ticked up four points in the last four months. Biden is now the third-most favored political figure in the country, trailing behind, astonishingly, Donald Trump himself and even former vice president Mike Pence.