ANALYSIS | Why reliving the horrors of January 6 may not affect the elections

() – Donald Trump’s attempt to undo American democracy to stay in power four years ago is suddenly back at the epicenter of another election, weeks before the former president could pull off a stunning return to the White House.

The special prosecutor Jack Smith and former Republican representative Liz Cheney have put the issue of the GOP candidate’s false 2020 election fraud claims in the final stretch of Trump’s head-to-head showdown with Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, as they revive memories of a day that will stain American history.

At an appearance with Harris in Wisconsin on Thursday, Cheney presented herself as part of a bipartisan movement to block Trump from the White House. But four years later, the mob of Trump supporters’ assault on the US Capitol, the former president’s attempt to subvert a free and fair vote, and his relentless efforts to fracture trust in the US democratic system may not prevent his return to power. .

This is a reality that reflects both the divided state of the nation and the Republican Party’s willingness to put power first. But above all, it is a testament to the often malevolent magnetism that has made Trump a historic and enduring political figure.

Cheney, a hardline conservative, appeared with the vice president on the battlefield to urge independents and Republicans wary of Trump to vote for the Democrat despite their stark policy differences.

“The most conservative of conservative values ​​is fidelity to our Constitution,” Cheney said in Ripon, Wisconsin. “As we gather here today, our republic faces a threat unlike any we have faced before.” And he added: “In these elections, putting patriotism before partisanship is not an aspiration: it is our duty.”

“What January 6 shows us is that there is not one ounce, not one iota of compassion in Donald Trump. “He is petty, vindictive and cruel, and Donald Trump is unfit to lead this good and great nation.”

It was an extraordinary scene, only made possible by the political earthquake unleashed by Trump’s behavior four years ago. A sign of how much things have changed in American politics: Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney – vilified by Democrats, especially for the Iraq war – also supported Harris. Her daughter declared: “I have never voted for a Democrat, but this year I am proudly casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.”

The former Wyoming congresswoman lost her House GOP leadership position and ultimately her seat in a landslide to a primary challenger after standing up to Trump’s attempt to defy the will of voters in 2020. And while still in the House, he helped lead a bipartisan special committee that recommended criminal charges for the twice-indicted former president over the Jan. 6, 2021, riot. In Wisconsin, a state that could be decided by narrow margins next month, Cheney could have a big impact if she is able to move even a few hundred votes.

Next week, Cheney and former Trump White House advisers Alyssa Farah Griffin, Cassidy Hutchinson and Sarah Matthews will make their case against Trump at a fireside chat in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, according to has learned exclusively.

Harris praised Cheney’s courage on Thursday and promised: “Anyone who called for, quote, the termination of the Constitution of the United States, like Donald Trump, must never again stand, must never again stand behind the seal of the president of the United States.” .

Cheney’s appearance came after Smith returned to the spotlight on Wednesday, with an unsealed court filing offering the most detailed look yet into her federal election interference case against Trump, which has thwarted attempts to put him on trial before the elections.

The special counsel alleged that Trump told members of his family: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.” The filing represents an attempt by Smith to salvage a case badly damaged by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, which granted Trump and other former presidents broad immunity for acts in office.

The new focus on Trump’s refusal to accept the result of the last election and the January 6 attack on the Capitol could look like a political disaster for the former president. But it is a mark of Trump’s success in rewriting history so that this is not necessarily an election-defining issue.

When Trump left Washington in January 2021, without attending Joe Biden’s inauguration and with the city divided by iron security fences, it would have been absurd to think that he would have much chance of returning to power in a second non-consecutive term.

His prospects for next month show that, while horrifying to many Americans, his conduct after the last election is not seen as disqualifying by millions of others. Trump has refuted his opponents’ claims that he represents a grave danger to the Constitution, arguing that Biden and Harris are the real threat and has blamed their rhetoric for two assassination attempts against him. “I probably took a bullet in the head because of the things they say about me,” Trump said in his debate with Harris last month. “They talk about democracy. I am a threat to democracy. “They are the threat to democracy.”

Trump’s dominance over the Republican base has also allowed him to intimidate most of the party’s leaders into supporting him and joining his effort to whitewash his conduct after the last election. He is also again raising questions about the integrity of the electoral system as early voting begins this year to guard against another possible defeat.

Trump’s success in convincing Republicans that he was the victim of political persecution helped him overcome the Republican primaries. And the prospect of another Democratic president is even papering over some of the deepest Republican scars left from 2020. This Friday, for example, the former president is scheduled to appear with Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a swing state, for a briefing about Hurricane Helene. Trump has been vilifying Kemp for years for not joining his attempt to overturn Biden’s victory there.

The prospect of Trump returning to power is especially ominous for many Americans because he has promised to undertake a second term of “retribution” and threatens to imprison his political opponents.

Yet Trump’s strongman instincts are exactly what makes him attractive to many Republican voters who he has convinced that the Biden administration has weaponized justice against him. There is no evidence to support Trump’s claims, although some of the prosecutors in several of his criminal and civil cases, notably in Georgia and New York, were political figures who had previously criticized the former president.

Still, all of Trump’s criminal charges arose from grand juries or genuine court proceedings. And he was tried by a jury of his peers, like any other citizen, when he was convicted in a Manhattan trial stemming from a hush money payment to an adult film actress.

In addition to the federal election case, the former president faces a similar one in Georgia based on organized crime statutes. A Trump-appointed judge dismissed another allegation by Smith – about Trump’s handling of classified documents at his Florida club – although the special counsel is appealing his decision.

In his latest appearance in district court in Washington, Smith accused the former president of trying to overturn legitimate election results in seven states he lost. The former president, who has pleaded innocent in this and all criminal cases opened against him, has the right to the presumption of innocence.

In such a toxic political environment, the special counsel had to face accusations of partisanship, since, despite his nominal independence, he works under the auspices of Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland. But not prosecuting the former president, who escaped political responsibility when Republican senators refused to convict him in his second impeachment trial, would have created a precedent that could convince a future president to try to ignore an electoral defeat.

Although Smith has yet to convince a jury that Trump broke the law, the historical facts are not in dispute.

The former president refused to accept the result of the elections he lost in 2020. His cases alleging fraud – often lacking evidence – were dismissed by multiple judges and even the Supreme Court of Justice. He called a crowd in Washington and incited his supporters, who broke into the Capitol and beat police officers. The former president called those who tried to block the electoral certification heroes and has promised to pardon them if he returns to power. His actions not only represented a threat to the sacred American principle of peaceful transfers of power between presidents. They shattered the trust of millions of Americans in the legal and electoral system.

Biden made Trump’s threat to democracy the centerpiece of his now-shelved presidential bid, warning that his predecessor represents an unprecedented threat to the soul of America. But Harris, while warning of the dangers of Trump, has tried to focus primarily on the generational change he offers.

Their tactics are an acknowledgment that there are many other issues – including high grocery prices, the cost of housing and the cost of daycare – that occupy voters’ minds as much as the somewhat intangible warnings of a democracy on the brink. from the abyss

In a /SSRS poll conducted in September, about 4 in 10 voters said the economy was the most important issue in choosing a candidate. Protecting democracy was second at 21%, immigration at 12%, and abortion at 11%. Harris voters were more likely than others to choose protecting democracy as most important (37%) over the economy (21%).

Therefore, although the scenes of January 6, 2021 were horrifying, four years later they are not the dominant theme.

But if Trump wins, historians of the future might wonder why a former president who tried to burn down democracy to stay in power was able to use the same system to regain the White House.