Trump Verdict: How the Narratives Could Play Out

As I noted before we had a verdict, we’re in completely uncharted territory trying to figure out how voters will react to Donald Trump’s conviction on trumped-up charges. Noah does the best he can to produce some educated guesswork based on the information we have, such as the fact that Trump’s current support is disproportionately among less-likely voters. Let me offer here some pure speculative punditry, unencumbered by the pretense that any of this can be predicted in a way that is anchored in evidence — in other words, not predictions of what will happen, but reasons why things might play out in different ways.

Hurting Trump

On balance, I suspect it is much likelier that the conviction hurts Trump rather than helps him. The biggest reason for that, which is obvious and one that Noah discusses, is simply that a lot of not-very-tuned-in voters will simply hear “they convicted him” and assume the charges are legit.

A second reason is that it will fortify wavering “respectability politics” voters (e.g., professionals and suburbanites) in their long-standing disdain for Trump, even if some of them have been giving him a second look in light of the disaster of the Biden presidency and the decrepitude of its leader.

There is also morale: The past few months have been almost unrelenting bad news for Democrats, with ugly polls and internal division over a Gaza war that now seems likely to keep going all the way through November. But one thing unites Democrats: They loathe Trump and wish to see him punished and humiliated. This is, for them, a moment of glorious, unifying catharsis in the same way that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat was glorious even for those of us Republicans who detest Trump and couldn’t vote for him. With things as grim as they have been lately, Team Biden can use the morale boost.

There’s also the nuclear possibility: that some incensed MAGA supporter will go and do something violent in response to this conviction, in which case, the anti-Trump backlash could be enormous.

Helping Trump

I can also envision a number of ways in which the conviction may help Trump, or at any rate continue dynamics that have already been helping him. As far as morale is concerned, Trump supporters don’t need more of that, and what we now see is Republicans unified and enraged regardless of how they feel about Trump himself. Ask Democrats about the aftermath of Dobbs: Electorally, would you rather be on the side that is smug and sated or the side that is furious and looking for payback? In a lot of ways, this is similar to the dynamic of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, which galvanized all different factions of Republicans in late September 2018 and led to a rally effect. It was already baked in that 2018 was a Democrat wave year, in which the party took the House and a number of statehouses, but Democrats ended up losing an unprecedented four incumbent senators and missing out on high-profile governors’ races in Florida and Georgia. (A caution: The Kavanaugh effect was pronounced in red states but not in the swingy Midwest.)

A conviction could also help by keeping Trump off the campaign trail further and keeping him silenced, thus imposing external discipline that Trump is incapable of imposing on himself. Trump has never been a believer in “always leave them wanting more,” but it might be better for him now.

Finally, there’s this: A huge amount of the focus of the Biden campaign is on making Trump appear dangerous. They tell us that he’s about to end democracy and throw his political opponents in jail. But right now, Donald Trump doesn’t look very dangerous. He looks like a man being picked apart by local government, humbled and shackled by a hack prosecutor and a hack judge and forced to submit to the judgment of twelve ordinary New Yorkers. That could make it harder for the Biden campaign to paint Trump as a rampaging beast.