When it comes to election denialism, Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio has not always been shy. The year after Donald Trump’s defeat, for example, ahead of his own first bid for elected office, Vance claimed, in reference to the 2020 election: “There were certainly people voting illegally on a large-scale basis.”

That wasn’t even close to being true, but it was a sign of things to come. Indeed, in the months and years that followed, the Ohioan continued to publicly question — without, of course, presenting any evidence — the integrity of the last presidential race. As recently as last month, Vance admitted that if had he been vice president in January 2021, he would’ve ignored the legal path that then-Vice President Mike Pence followed and instead “asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors.”

But at this week’s vice presidential debate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz asked his GOP rival, “Did he [Trump] lose the 2020 election?” Vance refused to answer — and the Harris campaign quickly turned his dodge into a campaign ad.

A day later, as NBC News reported, Vance dodged the question again.

At an event in Michigan, Vance was asked about his dodging questions last night about who won the 2020 election. He said didn’t answer because he’s focused on the current election.

As part of the same exchange, the GOP vice presidential nominee accused news organizations of being “obsessed” with the election from four years ago.

I have a hunch the young senator is smart enough to know why his views on the 2020 race matter and that he’s only pretending to be confused, but just for the sake of conversation, let’s say Vance is genuinely baffled as to why his perspective matters. Maybe he sincerely has no idea why this question keeps coming up, and why people care about his refusal to answer.

So let’s explain it to him.

Part of the problem, of course, is Vance’s unexplained shift. He went from someone who was only too pleased to undermine public confidence in the integrity of the 2020 election to someone who no longer wants to talk about it. Why did he change his posture? As it turns out, he doesn’t want to talk about that, either.

Another piece of the puzzle is understanding the senator’s comfort levels with evidence and reality. Vance, by any fair measure, is still very new to politics, having only taken office last year. Before he’s elected to the nation’s second-highest office, Americans deserve to know whether he values the rule of law and the will of the electorate.

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These aren’t abstract concepts. Either he accepts election results or he doesn’t. Either he believes Americans settle their differences at the ballot box or he doesn’t. Either he’s prepared to honor legal guardrails or he isn’t. Given the weight of these issues, “I’m focused on the future” isn’t a credible response.

But perhaps most important of all is his refusal to acknowledge the simple fact that these underlying questions are not entirely retrospective in nature. Trump, right now, refuses to say whether he’ll accept the results of this year’s contest. On a routine basis, the former president falsely tells the public that his foes are cheaters and election results are suspect — unless he says otherwise.

Headed into Election Day 2020, Trump went to outrageous lengths to lay the groundwork to reject results he didn’t like, and four years later he’s doing it again. This time, he has plenty of company: House Speaker Mike Johnson, as recently as last week, said he’ll accept the 2024 results — but only if they meet his amorphous and undefined standards.

It’s against this backdrop that Trump’s running mate refuses to acknowledge the obvious outcome of the 2020 race, pretending the past irrelevant.

But if you’ll forgive a cliché, I believe it was Faulkner who famously wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”