It’s hard to believe, but exactly year ago, the big news story was U.S. President Donald Trump’s impeachment. Twelve months later, a viral pandemic is killing thousands of Americans every day and Republicans are still so loyal to Trump that it took until this week for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to acknowledge that he’d lost the November election.

So it seems worth asking: Did impeachment matter? And what, if anything, was it worth?

For one thing, it looks unlikely that the investigation, the impeachment itself or the Senate trial meaningfully affected the outcome of the 2020 vote. Trump emerged with his support from his base roughly intact.