American democracy had near-death experience a year ago. This year will test its vital signs

American democracy had a near-death experience one year ago this week. There's no sign, a year later, that it's served as a habit-changing wake-up call.

The prognosis is bleaker yet.

Even this solemn anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol underscores the inability of the country's warring political tribes to set aside their loathing and inhabit a common reality for just one day.

There are opposing vigils. Democrats will mark the occasion with candlelight events; right-wing activists are holding vigils to honour the jailed attackers, calling them political prisoners.

Here's the key part: This is no fringe view. A new poll says most Republicans feel the rioters were defending democracy; on crowdfunding pages, millions of dollars in donations have flowed to cover the rioters' legal fees.

And the man who tried stealing a presidential election, who encouraged that mob, will hold his own Jan. 6 event — demonstrating how unrepentant he is.

Donald Trump remains the political leader of the Republican grassroots, and he'll mark Jan. 6 by repeating conspiracy theories about his election loss on Nov. 3, 2020.

Election norms are being rewritten. In one state after another, non-partisan election officials have needed police protection after fielding hundreds of threats.

Now their control of elections is under threat: Republican politicians in several states want their legislatures to claim power in declaring election winners.

"It's a constant barrage of attacks," said Ann Jacobs, a Democrat who currently heads Wisconsin's bipartisan — and increasingly embattled — election commission.

"A constant repetition of false claims [about 2020].... We still get people calling and hollering."

An academic who co-authored the book How Democracies Die now says he was too optimistic when he wrote it in 2018, as the U.S. has blown past the warning signs flagged there.

"I think we were insufficiently alarmist," said Harvard professor and author Steve Levitsky, a scholar of democratic decline.

What troubles him, he says, isn't so much Trump — he never expected the former president to play by normal democratic rules, but he did expect stronger opposition to Trump's antics from other Republicans.