Context from the episode shows that Sacks was arguing 2024 would be a referendum on 2020 and Trump’s prosecutions rather than a contest about substantive issues: he said he wanted the 2024 election “to be about issues” but that instead “it’s going to be a referendum on what happened in 2020,” and that the country should “move forward” but was being dragged back into criminal proceedings.(podscripts.co)

Post‑election data do not support the normalized prediction that the election primarily centered on 2020 disputes and Trump’s trials rather than forward‑looking issues:

• AP VoteCast found that voters’ top perceived problems were the economy and jobs, followed by immigration and abortion; when asked what most influenced their vote, about half of voters named the future of democracy, ahead of inflation, the border, abortion policy, or free speech.(ap.org) These are mainly forward‑looking policy or system‑governance concerns.
• The same VoteCast reporting notes that Trump voters were driven largely by high prices and the situation at the U.S.–Mexico border, while Harris voters focused on democracy, abortion, the economy, health care, and climate—again, issue agendas.(wtop.com)
• Critically, VoteCast reports that factors like the assassination attempts and Trump’s legal cases were secondary issues, with only about 1 in 10 voters saying his legal cases were the most important factor in their vote.(pressdemocrat.com) That directly contradicts the idea that prosecutions were the main axis of the election.
• Overviews of the 2024 elections list the major issues as the economy, abortion, immigration, democracy, and foreign policy.(en.wikipedia.org) The presidential‑election article’s campaign‑issues sections detail extensive policy debates on border security, economic strategy, climate/energy, and housing, indicating a campaign heavily structured around policy programs on both sides.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Trump’s various legal proceedings—his New York criminal conviction in May 2024 and the federal and Georgia cases tied to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election—were indeed prominent and framed by Trump as “election interference,” but retrospective accounts treat them as a major backdrop rather than the central substantive issue driving voter choice.(en.wikipedia.org)

Taken together, the best evidence shows that while 2020‑related concerns about democracy and Trump’s behavior were important, the 2024 election was not primarily organized around relitigating 2020 or around Trump’s prosecutions. Forward‑looking issues—especially the economy, immigration, abortion policy, and the broader future of democracy—dominated voter priorities and campaign messaging. On that basis, Sacks’s normalized prediction is overall wrong.