The 2020 U.S. presidential election was held early in November and December 2019 and Trump won by a landslide. Trump’s actual 2020 election win in one year will be but the period at the end of a sentence.

In the fourth quarter of 2019, the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives decided to hold impeachment hearings on the issue of whether Trump had sold out his country and its constitution that he was sworn to protect by bribing and extorting a foreign government, Ukraine, to investigate for corruption Trump’s assumed main political rival, Democrat and former Vice-President, Joe Biden. That was the Democrats first mistake, not that they should have held the hearings, they should have. It was their duty under the constitution. It was their job. Their first mistake was in limiting the impeachment hearings to that one issue. Trump has committed a series of impeachable offenses since his assumption of the presidency, the Ukraine bribery scandal is just the latest. Everything Trump has done should have been under scrutiny in the hearings, and the hearings should have been held for weeks, not days.

The Democrats second mistake, and the biggest one, was when they decided to hold the hearings. They held them during the day when everyone was at work and not watching the made-for-TV media spectacle play out. By holding the hearings when they did, Democrats communicated that they still have not learned the lesson of why Trump became President in the first place. Trump is the media’s bread and butter, their poster child and he knows it. He made it so by manipulating the media to draw all their attention to him and away from all of his political rivals by saying and doing the outrageous. All attention was focused on Trump, which is exactly what he wanted and needed to ensure he became the Republican candidate for President. And he continues to draw the media’s full attention to him as President because he is President but also and even more importantly because he is so outrageous as President. The media like flies drawn to a bright light is very willing, nee, is compelled to report and display all that he does and to do so with great glee.

While the media may hate Trump, the man, for his boorish behavior, his mendacity, his ignorance and ineptness as President, they love him because of what he does for their bottom line. The media—the press in all its forms—operates on one principle: man bites dog. People’s attention is attracted not to the normal or mundane, but to the spectacle, to the odd or weird, to that which is jaw-dropping and grotesque or horrific. Why is it when you are traveling down a highway and there is an accident on the other side do people slow down to gawk at the carnage? Trump more than anyone on the political scene, aside from Boris Johnson in Great Britain, soon to be little Britain, understands this all too well and feeds the media with this principle every day.

The Democrats in the House, on the other hand, did not and do not understand this principle, and they blew their moment. As George Santayana said, those who do not learn from the past are destined to repeat it. So, the House Democrats forgot or did not learn the lesson of Vietnam. That war was played out at the dinner tables of every American family. During that war every American family watched night after night while they ate their dinners in front of their television sets American troops get slaughtered on the battlefield of Vietnam and for why the American people could not understand. It was this daily display of grotesquerie of what actually was happening in Vietnam, not what the Johnson administration claimed was happening, that turned the country against that conflict. They could see with their very own eyes that American soldiers were dying by the thousands for what amounted to a spit of land thousands of miles away that no American gave a damn about and what is more they knew and understood was a country that was of no value or threat to them or their country. The people are not so dumb as to not believe what they can actually see for themselves. It was this history and the lesson that it taught that House Democrats failed to heed and to capitalize on in their impeachment hearings.

Had the House Democrats held their hearings at night when the people were not working but were watching their television sets they would have put on display for all the country to see just what Trump has done and the kind of person and President he truly is. The people would have seen with their own eyes a parade of very credible witnesses explain just exactly what Trump has done, and it would have played out night after night, just as the Vietnam war did. People would have been glued to their television sets; it was dramatic theater.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, because the hearings were held during the day, what people learned about the hearings they learned at night from snippets on the news from some talking head juxtaposed against Trump at his rallies denouncing the hearings and professing his innocence, and what is more his claim to be the victim of some giant conspiracy against him and against the American people and the results of the 2016 election. Which is the more powerful and convincing image, some talking head commenting matter-of-factly for 30 seconds to a minute at most on the daily proceedings in the House hearings or the spectacle that is Trump also displayed for 30 seconds to a minute thundering away at a political rally to the backdrop of cheering throngs about his victimhood? He would not have had that opportunity had the hearings been held at night. Of course, he could have held his rallies, but instead his thundering would have been a snippet of news juxtaposed against hours of a mesmerizing display of a parade of dedicated and convincing public servants laying out all that Trump had done to sell out his country for his own political and financial gain. The people would have seen this with their own eyes, they would have experienced it, not just heard about it for less than a minute from some talking head who they already suspected of political bias.

No, the referendum on Trump 2020 has already been held in November and December 2019, and Trump has won. His poll numbers went up during the hearings, not down. Prepare yourselves for another four years of Trump. There is no Democrat running for President who is Trump’s equal as spectacle and who knows and can manipulate the media as Trump can and does. He sucks all the air out of the room and will from his Democratic political rivals, and the media will be his accomplice and his vehicle as they were in 2016 and will thank him for it as they cash their checks at the bank.