A Real-Time Political-Science Experiment

There’s been a lot of punditry on what happens when and if Donald Trump gets convicted of a crime before the election. Much of it has been intelligent and well-informed — at least, as well-informed as it is possible to be on this topic. But as the old saying goes, “Nobody knows nothing.” We’re in completely uncharted territory here. Sure, this has happened in other countries, and it has happened in America to candidates for other offices. But we have not only a presidential candidate but a former president, with a record in the presidency, charged with a crime that is deeply tawdry but also victimless and completely unrelated to his official duties, in a case brought by an obviously partisan prosecutor. What we get as a result is therefore impossible to predict.

Sure, we know that — modern America being what it is — there are a lot of voters who are not persuadable by any means on each side, and that is all the more true when both sides are running de facto incumbents who have been national figures for four decades. But the election, as always, will be decided at the margins, by people who follow politics less closely and by people who already dislike both candidates. The only possible way to know how they will react is to wait and see. It’s a political-science experiment playing out in real time. It didn’t have to be this way — Republicans could have frustrated the entire Democratic strategy by nominating a different candidate — but here we are, with the election potentially about to be swung one way or the other by the decision of twelve voters in Manhattan that neither candidate can control.