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 also singles out one of Trump’s biggest critics, former Rep. Liz Cheney.
• It means that in the final weeks of the 2024 election, the focus is once again on what happened four years ago.

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

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

“Our republic is facing a threat unlike any we’ve faced before – a former president who tried to stay in power by unraveling the foundations of our republic, by refusing to accept the legal results of dozens of court-confirmed elections from 2020,” Cheney said. Thursday night in Ripon, Wis., the birthplace of the Republican Party.

Harris campaign efforts reminding voters of Trump’s final days in office will get a boost next week when an outside panel hosts Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump aide whose fiery testimony led the Jan. 6 House panel on Cheney , and two other former Trump aides. at an event in Pennsylvania. While this isn’t an official Harris rally, her campaign has already made waves in the key battleground, running an ad featuring a local couple who previously supported Trump.

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

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

“What happens when you run a vibe campaign like Kamala, devoid of most of the other stuff, and then run out of vibes?” Wolking told Business Insider. “Well, you go back to old crutches, and this is an old crutch left over from the Biden campaign. The January 6th campaign strategy is the Biden campaign strategy since the beginning of this year.”

Voters gave Harris better marks than Biden, but the topic still doesn’t carry the 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, which offers little risk in focusing on the 2020 election. Polls have shown Harris closing in on Trump’s lead on the economy. But the larger theme of democracy was not forgotten. A recent PBS News/NPR/Marist poll found that 95 percent of voters say the economy is a factor in their vote.

The same poll found that 89 percent of voters would say the same about “preserving democracy,” including 64 percent who say it would be a “decisive factor” in their decision. (The survey of US adults was conducted between September 27 and October 1, 2024. Marist surveyed 1,628 adults by phone, text and online. Margin of error for registered voters is +/- 3.5 percentage points.)

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

“The media is desperate to talk about anything but 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 workers’ strike — because issues today prove that Kamala Harris is the worst vice president in history,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Thursday. Late Thursday, dockworkers and the United States Maritime Alliance announced the suspension of the strike until Jan. 15 as contract negotiations continue.

Both campaigns tried to target democracy-related appeals. Trump has claimed that Democrats are the real threat, arguing without evidence that they are responsible for his assassination attempts. He has also repeatedly claimed that the White House is orchestrating the criminal cases against him, another claim that doesn’t hold up.

There is ample evidence that Trump should be worried if voters are voting with 2020 in mind. Voters have roundly rejected his allies who echoed their concerns about 2020 during the midterm elections two years ago late. Notably, those setbacks occurred in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona, all four states that remain battleground states in the presidential race.

According to a recent Washington Post poll, a majority of voters in Pennsylvania, which is considered the race’s biggest prize, think Biden has won the race in 2020. The numbers are different for Republicans, but rejection of the election denial is clear among Democrats and, the most critical, of the independents.

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

The 165-page dossier by special counsel Jack Smith was released earlier this week, providing new details about Trump’s actions as the riots stormed the Capitol. Smith’s team says it is prepared to call a top Trump adviser 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 to overturning the results.

“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.

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

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance replied. “Has Kamala Harris Censored Americans from Speaking Out in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?”

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

Asked again about his thoughts on the 2020 election, Vance remained defiant after a rally on Friday. The GOP vice presidential candidate accused journalists of being so interested in the last election that they “don’t give a damn about what happened after that.”

“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. “We are focused on the future in this election and this campaign.”