2020 is back on the 2024 campaign trail

• Former President Donald Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021 are in the news again.
• Vice President Kamala Harris also elevated one of Trump’s biggest critics, former Rep. Liz Cheney.
• It means that in the final weeks of the 2024 elections, the focus is once again on what happened four years ago.

With about 30 days to go before Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris and her allies are increasing their focus on the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection and former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump, for his part, has never actually stopped talking about the 2020 election. He brings it up at almost every rally. But Harris’ final rebuttal takes shape in the form of a closing argument from former Congresswoman Liz Cheney and top Trump aides.

“Our republic is facing a threat unlike any we have ever faced before – a former president who tried to cling to power by unraveling the foundations of our republic, by refusing to accept the lawful results ordered by dozens of courts of elections of 2020 have been confirmed,” Cheney said. Thursday evening in Ripon, Wisconsin, the birthplace of the Republican Party.

The Harris campaign’s efforts to remind voters of Trump’s final days as president will get a boost next week when an outside group will host Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump aide whose searing testimony was at the forefront of the House of Representatives committee on 6 January, Cheney, and two other former Trump aides at an event in Pennsylvania. While that’s not an official Harris rally, her campaign has already made waves in the key battleground by airing an ad featuring a local couple who previously supported Trump.

“I voted for him twice, I won’t vote for him again,” Bob Lange says in the ad titled “Not Again.” “January 6 was a wake-up call for me.”

Former Trump 2020 staffer Matt Wolking said Harris’ campaign focus on Jan. 6 illustrates a return to the core of what made Biden’s campaign fight.

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“What happens when you run a vibes campaign like Kamala, without any other content, and then you run out of vibes?” Wolking told Business Insider. “Well, you go back to old stools, and this is an old stool left over from the Biden campaign. The January 6 campaign strategy is the Biden campaign strategy from earlier this year.”

Voters have given Harris better marks than Biden, but the issue still doesn’t carry as much weight as the economy.

The economy is still the most important issue in the race.

Voters have long said the economy is the most important issue in the race, which poses little risk to the focus on the 2020 election. Polls show Harris has narrowed Trump’s commanding lead on the economy. But the broader theme of democracy has not been forgotten. A recent PBS News/NPR/Marist poll found that 95% of voters say the economy is a factor in their vote.

The same survey found that 89% of voters would say the same about ‘preserving democracy’, including 64% who say it would be a ‘decisive factor’ in their decision. (The survey of U.S. adults was conducted September 27 through October 1, 2024. Marist interviewed 1,628 adults via phone, text and online. The margin of error for registered voters is +/- 3.5 percentage points.)

Trump’s campaign blamed the media for the renewed focus on January 6.

“The media is desperate to talk about anything other than the issues facing Americans today – from the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, to the crisis at our border, migrant crime, inflation and the ongoing dock worker strike – because Today’s issues prove that Kamala Harris is the worst vice president in history,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement released Thursday. On Thursday evening, dock workers and the United States Maritime Alliance announced the suspension of the strike until January 15 as contract negotiations continue.

Both campaigns have tried to capitalize on democracy-related calls. Trump has claimed that it is Democrats who pose the real threat, without evidence that they are responsible for his assassination attempts. He also repeatedly claimed that the White House is orchestrating the criminal cases against him, another claim that does not hold water.

There is plenty of evidence that Trump should be concerned if voters cast their ballots with 2020 in mind. Voters thoroughly rejected his allies, who echoed his concerns about 2020 during the midterm elections two years later. These setbacks occurred mainly in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona, all four states that remain battleground states in the presidential race.

According to a recent Washington Post poll, most voters in Pennsylvania, widely considered to be the race’s biggest prize, believe Biden won the 2020 Fair and Square race. The numbers are different for Republicans, but the rejection of election denialism is evident among Democrats and, most critically, independents.

Harris’ efforts aren’t the only reason 2020 is back in the news

Special counsel Jack Smith’s 165-page dossier was released earlier this week and included new details about Trump’s actions as rioters stormed the Capitol. Smith’s team says it is prepared to call a top Trump aide to testify that only the then-president himself could have sent his infamous tweet attacking Vice President Mike Pence for lacking “courage” by refusing to help deliver the results to undo.

“The defendant personally posted the tweet on the afternoon of January 6, at a time when he already understood that the Capitol had been breached,” Smith’s team wrote in the filing.

Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance declined to answer Gov. Tim Walz directly during Tuesday’s vice presidential debate as he pressed Trump’s running mate on who won the 2020 election.

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance replied. “Did Kamala Harris Censor Americans from Expressing Their Opinions in the Wake of the 2020 COVID Situation?”

Harris’ campaign quickly turned what Walz described as Vance’s “damn non-answer” into an attack ad.

When asked again about his thoughts on the 2020 election, Vance remained defiant after a meeting on Friday. The Republican Party’s vice presidential candidate accused journalists of being so interested in the last election because “they didn’t care about what happened next.”

“I’m from Ohio, I’m not from the South, but I think there’s a phrase that really works: bless your heart,” he said. “In this election and this campaign, we are focused on the future.”