The Verdict
People are working very hard to make sure this doesn't change the polls
Just a few quick thoughts at the end of a highly consequential day.
First, regardless of what is to come, we should not lose sight of the fact that a wealthy and powerful white American man — one of the most famous people on the planet, a former president of the United States — has been convicted of 34 felonies by a jury. This does not happen every day. He may well never actually see the inside of a prison cell, but for all those who saw him as untouchable or made of teflon, this is an important corrective.
That all said, what will come of this? That is, will this actually affect the election’s outcome? Probably not, and quite a few political actors are working very hard to make sure that it doesn’t.
Several months ago, polls were consistently showing that voters would turn against Trump should he actually be convicted of a crime. Sure, Republicans generally thought the indictments were politically motivated, but if a judge and jury actually looked at the case and decided to convict him, they’d take that seriously, and it could turn a narrow Trump win into a Biden romp. (I was skeptical of this at the time, for what it’s worth.)
Why might it not actually change people’s minds? Well, for one thing, we know that most events in presidential campaigns just don’t. It was less than a month ago that Robert Kennedy, Jr. announced that a worm had eaten some of his brain and died inside his skull; this was not exactly a game-changer:
Similarly, the number of voters who will actually change their votes as a result of today’s conviction is likely quite small, in large part because the conviction doesn’t really tell us anything we didn’t already know. If you were inclined to believe that the Deep State (or some other vague shadowy conspiracy) had it in for Trump, chances are this conviction doesn’t change that, and it’s pretty easy to just see it as more evidence backing your conspiratorial world view.
Trump is not very popular outside the Republican Party. For his numbers to go down, it would require Republicans to turn against him, and the only way that’s really going to happen is if Republican opinion leaders criticize him following this ruling. Overwhelmingly, they’re not doing that. Indeed, they’re rallying to his defense.
Republican leaders including Speaker Mike Johnson, Mitch McConnell, Steve Scalise, Elise Stefanik, and more rallied to Trump’s defense and went all in on his rhetoric undermining the court, the jury, and the criminal justice system. Even Susan Collins, not always much of a Trump ally, joined in to disparage the judicial process.
This shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Many Republican leaders have been publicly demonstrating their support for Trump throughout this trial, and indeed have repeatedly backed his word over that of the justice system since his first indictments last year. This is a check Republicans wrote some time ago and they’re not about to stop it.
That doesn’t mean his numbers will go up, either, of course. There’s a chance it could rally Biden’s supporters to some extent, although we really haven’t seen much of that during this campaign, either.
There are other more subtle ways this could affect the presidential campaign. Trump will be sentenced right before the Republican National Convention. He may well be placed on probation and require the consent of a probation officer to travel from state to state. There may be limits on his travel and other constraints on his campaigning. There will be numerous ways that he, and his opponent, will be reminding the electorate from now until November that he is a convicted felon, and for those not yet paying close attention to the contest, that could be an important data point.
But any effect this has on the election is not going to be as dramatic as today’s headlines were.
I am delighted that a clear blow was taken at the efforts being made to destroy democracy and the rule of law in the US. It an important message to governments across the planet that decent people will not tolerate this. Whatever happens in the future, this verdict is about as important as it gets. I applaud the jury for their courage and decency. Well done to the court and its process.
My essay concludes:
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https://decencyandsense.substack.com/p/conviction
Following the announcement of the guilty verdict, knaves who have tied their hopes and ambitions to the fortunes of the 45th president were quick to engage in the same pattern of malignant, deceitful, farcical attacks on American institutions – in this case, the judiciary – in which they have engaged lo these many years. A disconcertingly large portion of the American electorate that is utterly in thrall to the 45th president is eager to believe the nonsense that the knaves spew. Indeed, they demand it.
It is my fervent conviction that the most constructive path forward in these waning months is to adopt an outlook consistent with the serenity prayer: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
In our daily lives, there is little prospect of changing either a knave or the knave’s manipulated/propitiated target. It is urgent that one energetically seek out and attempt to persuade those who can be reached.
We all have a role to play in this.