2020 is back on the 2024 campaign trail

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

With roughly 30 days left before Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris and her allies are amplifying their focus on the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot and former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

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

“Our republic faces a threat unlike any we have faced before — a former president who attempted to stay in power by unraveling the foundations of our republic, by refusing to accept the lawful results confirmed by dozens of courts of the 2020 election,” Cheney said Thursday night in Ripon, Wisconsin, the birthplace of the Republican Party.

The Harris campaign’s efforts to remind voters of Trump’s final days in office 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 January 6 committee, Cheney, and two other former Trump aides at an event in Pennsylvania. While that is 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 entitled “Not Again.” “January 6 was a wake-up call for me.”

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

“What happens when you run a vibes campaign like Kamala has, devoid of most other substance and then you run out of vibes?” Wolking told Business Insider. “Well, you return to old crutches, and this is an old crutch that is leftover 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 topic still does not have the sheer weight that the economy does.

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, lending some slight risk to focusing on the 2020 election. Polls have shown that Harris has closed Trump’s commanding lead on the economy. But the broader theme of democracy hasn’t 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 “deciding factor” in their decision. (The poll of US adults was conducted from 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 Americans are facing today — from the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, to the crisis at our border, migrant crime, inflation, and the ongoing port worker strike — because the problems of today prove Kamala Harris is the worst vice president in history,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement issued on Thursday. On Thursday night, port 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 lean into democracy-related appeals. Trump has claimed that it’s the Democrats who are the true threat, arguing 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 doesn’t hold up.

There’s ample 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. Most notably, those setbacks occurred in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Arizona, all four states that remain battlegrounds in the presidential race.

According to a recent Washington Post poll, most of the voters in Pennsylvania, widely believed to be race’s biggest prize, believe Biden won the 2020 race fair and square. The numbers are different for Republicans, but the rejection of election denialism is clear 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 filing was released earlier in the week, providing 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 out his infamous tweet attacking Vice President Mike Pence for lacking “courage” by refusing to help overturn the results.

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

Sen. JD Vance of Ohio refused to answer directly to Gov. Tim Walz during Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate when he pressed Trump’s running mate about who won the 2020 election.

“Tim, I am focused on the future,” Vance replied. “Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?”

Harris’ campaign soon cut what Walz described as Vance’s “damning non-answer” into an attack ad.

Asked again about his views on the 2020 election, Vance remained defiant after a Friday rally. The GOP vice presidential nominee accused journalists of being so interested in the last election because “they don’t care a lick about what happened afterwards.”

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