Hindsight is 2020 Vision... Well, Except for Smith

By Juan Fermin

December 24, 2025 | NoSocialism.com

Special Counsel Jack Smith has spent years hammering the drum that Donald Trump tried to "steal" the 2020 election from Joe Biden—a contest Smith and his team insist was a pristine, "fair and square" victory for the then-Vice President. In his recent closed-door testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on December 17, 2025, Smith doubled down, claiming his probe uncovered "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" of Trump's criminal conspiracy to obstruct the "lawful transfer of power." It's a narrative that's as selective as it is selective amnesia-inducing. If 2020 was so bulletproof, why does the data—especially in hindsight from the 2024 blowout—paint a picture of an election riddled with anomalies that no other cycle came close to matching?

Let's rewind. The 2020 election wasn't your grandfather's vote-fest. COVID lockdowns birthed a mail-in ballot explosion, with no-excuse absentee voting in 46 states and automatic applications in places like Pennsylvania. Chain-of-custody rules? Spotty at best in urban hubs, where drop boxes sprouted like weeds and signature verification got the side-eye from watchdogs. Turnout hit a record 66.4% of voting-eligible Americans, but the real eyebrow-raiser was the bulge in key swing counties across Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—the very Blue Wall states that tipped the scales for Biden by a combined 44,000 votes. These weren't statewide anomalies; they were hyper-local spikes in Democratic strongholds like Philadelphia, Wayne (Detroit), and Milwaukee, where mail-in ballots flowed like Niagara.

Fast-forward to 2024, and Trump's sweep of all seven battlegrounds (including reclaiming PA, MI, and WI) exposes the fragility. Statewide, these Rust Belt gems saw more raw votes in 2024 than 2020—Michigan up 2.6%, Pennsylvania 2.1%, Wisconsin 4%—but the growth was lopsided, surging in pro-Trump rural and suburban areas while urban Democratic bastions shrank. Philadelphia shed 20,000 voters (down 2.9%), Wayne County saw a 4% turnout drop in Detroit, and even Milwaukee's city core had 58% of precincts with lower participation than 2020. If those key counties had turned out at 2016 or 2024 levels instead of the 2020 frenzy? Simple math says Trump flips the trio, netting 270+ electoral votes and the White House.

To drive it home, consider this table of vote totals in those pivotal Democratic counties (data from state election offices, Ballotpedia, and NBC analyses). The 2020 spike is glaring—up 20-25% in raw ballots from 2016, far outpacing population growth (~1-2% annually). Then 2024 normalizes closer to pre-pandemic baselines, helping Trump eke out wins by under 1% statewide.

County (Key Urban Hub)	2016 Total Votes	2020 Total Votes (Spike)	2024 Total Votes	Notes on 2020 Anomaly
Philadelphia, PA	1,100,000	1,412,000 (+28%)	1,392,000	Mail-in: 80% of ballots; Biden 81% share. 2024 drop: 73% precincts lower turnout.
Wayne, MI (Detroit)	1,012,000	1,227,000 (+21%)	1,187,000	Absentee: 65%; Biden 68% share. 2024: 4% turnout dip in city core.
Milwaukee, WI	383,000	480,000 (+25%)	466,000	Mail-in: 75%; Biden 79% share. 2024: 89% turnout (highest in U.S. large cities), but statewide rural surge flipped it.

If even one county per state dialed back to 2016/2024 norms—say, Philadelphia's 1.1M instead of 1.4M—Biden's margins evaporate. Smith dismisses this as "impossible," peddling a fairy tale of an unassailable win. But reality whispers otherwise: a system strained by untested mail-in mechanics, where grandma's ballot could vanish into a family "helper's" hands, and urban spikes smelled more like enthusiasm than epidemic.

And let's not pretend 2020's "stolen" gripes were a Trump invention. Election sore-loser-ism is as American as apple pie—minus the charges. In 1960, Nixon's camp cried foul over Texas's Box 13 scandal (one county's late-night ballot dump flipped the state to JFK by 2 votes), but Tricky Dick waved it off to "national interest." No special counsel, no cuffs. Fast-forward to 2000: Al Gore's hanging-chad saga in Florida's punch-card counties had him conceding then un-conceding, calling Bush's win a "miscount" that "stole" the presidency. SCOTUS stopped the recount circus, but Gore took the high road—no indictments for "obstruction." Then 2016: Hillary Clinton conceded on stage but spent years in books and interviews branding Trump "illegitimate," blaming Russian meddling, Comey's letter, and "voter suppression." "He knows he didn't really win it," she told ABC in 2019. Zero charges, zero special counsels—just salty op-eds.

Smith's selective sword—swinging at Trump while ignoring this bipartisan tradition of doubt—reeks of weaponized justice. If questioning close calls is suddenly a felony, drag out the docket for Gore, Hillary, and every operative who's ever whispered "rigged." But no, it's all about settling scores with the guy who wouldn't bend the knee. Hindsight's 20/20, alright—except when it's Jack Smith's funhouse mirror, where one man's "conspiracy" is another's legitimate beef.

At NoSocialism.com, we call it like we see it: Elections thrive on transparency, not two-tiered prosecutions or mail-in mysteries. Demand chain-of-custody reforms, voter ID nationwide, and an end to the elite echo chamber that crowns "winners" before the chads settle. Because if 2020 taught us anything, it's that trust isn't rebuilt with indictments—it's earned with votes that can't be questioned.

Juan Fermin is a contributing editor at NoSocialism.com, specializing in election integrity and the failures of big-government overreach.