That argument, in my opinion, was usually put forth by the Right to slow down efforts to oppose Trump. “Y’all are overreacting. Just stay home and let things take their natural course.”
It really boggles my mind anyone would think differently. A month and a half will come and go, and Trump will be the nominee, as we’ve mostly all said he would be. There is abosolutely nothing pointing otherwise.
People keep making a huge deal out of him being “a convicted felon”, but there’s still a difference in a lot of minds between white collar financial crimes of easily obfuscated merit and a violent crime.
Republicans are largely caught up in the Trumpian narrative that the Party is pushing even if a lot of the actual politicians pushing it secretly don’t believe it. They see Trump being pursued by multiple criminal cases and buy the narrative that this must be politically motivated. They can’t accept that Trump might actually be a con man who the law is finally catching up with. Also, the timing is concatenated because things were on hold during his Presidential term.
I could see a bump in support from low info conservatives reacting to the notion of using the government to go after political rivals. How much of the independents are low info enough to accept that narrative over the idea that Trump committed financial fraud and deserves whatever punishment comes his way remains to be seen.
Also remember we have months where the Democrats can beat the drum over and over again.
Yes, the Republicans can lie over that same period of time but I don’t think it will have the same impact. Because Republicans are always lying about stuff and spreading conspiracies.
No, they’re going to have to pay for their propaganda. More than usual to counter all the negative facts that will be repeated. And they’ll have less money to spend with Trump’s legal fees sucking off of it.
However, in an unsurprising twist of hypocrisy, those same voters will be perfectly happy with Trump’s “revenge tour” where he explicitly uses whatever sycophant toady he puts into the Justice Office to go after his political rivals, DA’s he does not like, judges, jury members, and families of the above.
They literally won’t, for a lot of it. In fact, not only will a lot of television and radio stations put the propaganda out as news, they will create their own right-wing glurge and report it as news also.
At little to no cost to Trump, which frees up campaign money to use to pay some legal expenses while banking the rest for a rainy day.
There will be lots of free opportunities as reporters will constantly be asking how they feel about a convicted felon for a candidate, and that will give them the opportunity to once again cry Democrat bad politics and persecution.
Reporter: "Don’t you think independent voters will react negatively to voting for a convicted felon? "
Republican: "Independent voters are smart enough to see this conviction for what it is, Joe Biden weaponizing the Justice system to go after his political rival. This is a disgrace. I never thought we would see this in America.
We have to elect Trump and take control of Congress so we can pass reforms to ensure this kind of thing can never happen again."
Oh yes. They will happily support the slide into autocracy with Trump at the helm.
But it’s not going to be any greater volume of questions than a normal general election and they’re going to be pushing back against the narrative of the media. It’s not going to in any way be an advantage; it’s the opposite.
Trump is always being talked about in the media, as has been the case at least since he was nominated in 2016, but this time it will be for even worse reasons than usual.
The idea that “all publicity is good publicity” absolutely does not work in politics.
In anything like a sane world the reporter would come back with, “that is a lie and you know it. Biden had nothing to do with this, it was the state of New York.”