I have seen a good number of people responding to Donald Trump’s conviction by saying that it is likely to guarantee him the presidency. Indeed, online yesterday, that seemed to be the consensus view — at least among those whom I follow closely. I don’t think it’s true. I don’t think that the opposite is true; certainly, Trump still has a shot in November. But I think this will hurt him, as it was designed to.
Trump’s biggest problem is that he remains unpalatable to the sort of people who vote reliably in every election. In part, this is because the Republican Party has decided that, despite having won them almost every year since the late 1960s, it doesn’t want those people any more. Mostly, this is because Donald Trump is a walking disaster. As such, Trump’s best chance at winning these voters in spite of their animosity toward him is highly negative in nature; his best asset is that he’s not Joe Biden. To prevail, Trump needs enough “normal” voters to say, “Yeah, the guy is a catastrophe, but America was peaceful and prosperous while he was president, and Joe Biden looks as if he’s about to die.” Because Joe Biden has been a terrible president — and because he really does look as if he’s half dead — there are more of these voters than the Democrats likely imagined there would be, which is a big problem for Biden’s prospects.
Except now those voters have been reminded of one of the things that they hated about Donald Trump. Now, Donald Trump is a “convicted felon.” Now, there’s one more thing on the near-infinite pile of things about Donald Trump that make him unsuitable to the presidency. Perhaps some other voters think that what happened to Trump was unfair. I certainly do, although that doesn’t change my view of his candidacy. But if you were choosing voters, you’d want the ones who always vote over the ones who rarely vote. This latest round of news is likely to hurt Trump with the ones who always vote. That isn’t lethal, but it’s not good, either.