Dear Weekend Jolter,
Let that sink in. Yes, the polls that President Biden insists have been “wrong all along” show a consistently tight contest. But the word that should (and does) alarm Democrats is “consistently.” The incumbent president, in battleground polls in particular, is consistently trailing the former president, who as of Thursday afternoon is a convicted felon. (For the record, Andy McCarthy called it.)
To say the least, it bodes poorly for Biden if, a month from now, the polls are unmoved. And despite Democrats’ dogged efforts to sideline Donald Trump — it is entirely possible that is the case.
Of course, as Dan McLaughlin cautioned at the start of the week, we have no earthly idea how voters are going to react to Thursday’s historic verdict. Will casual Trump supporters and undecideds at last tilt to the Democrats out of frustration with his endless legal battles and tawdry personal life? Will they see Alvin Bragg’s prosecution as inherently partisan and flawed, and therefore the convictions that resulted as tainted? Dan writes,
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. . . . It’s a political-science experiment playing out in real time.
On the one hand, Rich Lowry writes, Democrats will have succeeded in affixing the “convicted felon” label to their presumptive rival for the presidency. That’s no small thing. Voters will hear this over and over between now and November 5. Trump’s sentencing is set for right before the Republican convention; jail is a (very) remote possibility. On the other hand, pollsters and politicos tell NR’s Horse Race that the outcome is unlikely to have a decisive impact on voter perceptions of Trump. As John Yoo notes, a Quinnipiac poll found “a conviction would make only 6 percent of self-identified Trump voters less likely to vote for him.” Ramesh Ponnuru argues that the trial, if anything, may have helped Trump to “shore up his support by illustrating and dramatizing his central theme of his victimization by weaponized government.” (You can read all about the myriad legal problems with Bragg’s case at the Andy McCarthy archives, and here.)
Recent developments in Trump’s multifarious other criminal cases, meanwhile, could push off any more trials until after the election. In early May, a judge postponed Trump’s trial over his alleged mishandling of classified files. His election-interference case in Georgia was delayed when an appeals court agreed to review a ruling that kept on prosecutor Fani Willis. The U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing Trump’s immunity claims in the federal election-interference case, and the speed and nature of that decision could determine whether the case goes to trial before or after November.
This means the Republican’s courtroom battles — the cases built on sturdier foundations than Bragg’s — could fade to the background, relatively speaking, as the news cycle turns to those of the Biden family. Hunter Biden’s federal gun trial is slated to begin next week in Delaware. As with the testimony about Trump’s alleged infidelity and payoff schemes to hide it, the details that emerge in Delaware will not be flattering for the defendant, who is accused of lying about his drug addiction on gun-purchase forms. Adding to the family drama (and its potential political fallout), the mother of Hunter Biden’s born-out-of-wedlock child is apparently coming out with a memoir billed as containing “revelations that could well impact the outcome of the 2024 election.” As David Zimmermann reports, it will be released the week of the Democratic National Convention.
Democrats are said to be having a “freakout” over Biden. Thursday’s verdict may restore some confidence, for a while. But this is the long-winded way of saying, again, that nobody has any idea what the NDA from Hell, and all it has wrought, does to this presidential race.
There are no heroes here. As Jeff Blehar writes, “We will now discover what unsightly horrors are preparing to scuttle out of a Pandora’s box that, once opened, can never be shut again.”
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
You don’t have to like Trump to worry about what Alvin Bragg’s prosecution has just done to the rule of law in America: The Horrendous Trump Verdict
Perfect-metaphor alert: Biden’s Pier-less Incompetence
Do the obviously right thing, Ohio Republicans: Let Joe Biden on the Ohio Presidential Ballot
Our Memorial Day editorial: Remember the Fallen
ARTICLES
Noah Rothman: There Are No Heroes Here
Brittany Bernstein: What Happens Next after Trump Hush-Money Conviction
John Yoo: Trump’s Trial Has Already Damaged the Office of the Presidency
Rich Lowry: Yes, It Was Rigged
Rich Lowry: Tear It Down, and They Will Come
Jim Geraghty: We Have the Worst Political Leaders
Ryan Mills: Embattled S.F. Mayor Proposes Record Law-Enforcement Budget Four Years after Slashing Funding
Tevi Troy: Why the Republican Party Needs a Platform
John Kennedy: Protect Women’s Sports from Transgender ‘Inclusion’
Dan McLaughlin: The Total Collapse of the Alito Flag Stories
Dan McLaughlin: List of Top 100 Albums Compares Apples to Oranges
Madeleine Kearns: The Brave Patriots Who Helped Save Europe from Hitler
Caroline Downey: Female Prison Guards Traumatized after Being Forced to Strip-Search Male Inmates under California Gender Policy
Tim Burchett: Declassify the UAP Files
John Fund: Be Careful What You Wish for, James Cameron
Haley Strack: Pro-Palestinian Protesters Shut Down Sacramento Memorial Day Service
Haley Strack: ‘Texans Want School Choice’: Abbott Declares Victory after Ousting Anti-Voucher GOP Incumbents in Heated Primaries
CAPITAL MATTERS
Kevin Hassett poses a fundamental question with regard to the anti-Israel campus protests: Negotiating with Terrorists: Campus Edition
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Armond White makes the Prince-Trump connection we’ve all been waiting for: ‘Donald Trump (Black Version)’ Hits the Charts Anew
Brian Allen’s got a potpourri column, starting with that bleeding-red King Charles portrait: A Red King, a Hacked Auction House, and Museum Pickpockets in Orlando
AN EXCERPT IN THE INBOX IS WORTH TWO ON THE INTERNET
John Yoo explains the true damage the Bragg case has done to — and here’s a word you might have heard before — norms:
The superficiality of the facts and the vagueness of the crimes magnify the harm that Democrats have inflicted on our political norms. Make no mistake, Democrats have crossed a constitutional Rubicon. For the first time in American history, they have brought criminal charges against a former president. For the first time in American history, they have brought criminal charges against the major (and leading) opposition candidate for president during the campaign. If elected leaders, whom our constitutional system vests with the authority over prosecution, must break American political practice that goes back to 1789, they should do so for a compelling reason and an airtight case. Instead, they’ve brought a prosecution in which the facts presented had almost nothing to do with the charges and the charges are unconstitutionally vague and beyond the authority of the district attorney. The weakness of the case against Trump lowers the bar for prosecuting future presidents below that for prosecuting garden-variety criminals in New York City. While Bragg scrutinizes Trump for alleged accounting misdeeds, he has sought no bail and little jail time for such crimes as theft and assault.
. . . [The trial’s] consequences will have a profound effect on the presidency. The weaker the Trump cases are, the more open the invitation is to future prosecutors of presidents of the opposite party. After this Trump trial, any city, county, or state prosecutor might be encouraged to prosecute any federal officer for conjured violations of a state’s criminal law or other patently partisan reasons. A state DA in upstate New York, for example, could prosecute former president Barack Obama for murder for having ordered a drone strike on al-Qaeda leaders that included an American from Buffalo. A California DA could prosecute George W. Bush for kidnapping a San Francisco resident who was captured by American forces while fighting for the Taliban. Future presidents will now have to worry about their personal legal liability every time they make a decision, which can often involve the most difficult conflicts of values, costs, and benefits. The prospect of future prosecution will encourage risk-averse thinking — a presidency filled with insurance-claims adjusters.
Even without any constitutional text, judicial rulings, or congressional legislation that immunizes presidents, American leaders for 235 years have refused to pursue departing presidents. Gerald Ford, in a great act of statesmanship, pardoned Richard Nixon even though it doomed his chances in the close 1976 election. Bush did not prosecute Bill Clinton for lying to the Whitewater special counsel, even though Clinton’s Justice Department had conceded that he would become legally liable once he left office. Obama did not attempt to relitigate the difficult policy decisions made during the War on Terror by prosecuting Bush and his aides (of which I was one). Trump did not order the investigation of Hillary Clinton, even though her intentional, illegal diversion of thousands of classified emails to her home computer network was a central theme during his campaign.
Zooming out from the day-to-day doings of the campaign trail, Tevi Troy urges the GOP not to let the party-platform tradition die:
For more than a century, going back to the origins of the GOP, the Republican Party has issued a platform telling voters what it planned to do in the years ahead. In 2020, this tradition was broken, and it is not clear that it will restart in 2024. The potential demise of a party platform should worry conservatives.
There were a number of reasons for what happened in 2020. First was the Covid outbreak, which made it hard to hold the meetings to deliberate over the platform. At the time, the party claimed that it “did not want a small contingent of delegates formulating a new platform without the breadth of perspectives within the ever-growing Republican movement.” But something else was going on as well. The Trump team wanted to rethink the platform, and the coronavirus challenge gave it an excuse for doing so. . . .
Trump aide and son-in-law Jared Kushner had been pushing a pocket-card-size platform as early as December of 2019, even before Covid became a serious concern. This suggests that the Covid explanation for the short platform may have merely been an excuse for what they were trying to do anyway.
This effort to create a new kind of platform succeeded in 2020, as the Trump campaign, not the RNC, put out a 600-word compilation of policy preferences. This statement did not so much resemble a platform as a list filled with aspirations. One item, “Made in America Tax Credits,” came with no explanation whatsoever, leaving readers to wonder what exactly these were, and whether the party was for or against them.
The reason to avoid a platform is simple. It prevents the candidate from having to be tied down to any specific policy. It gives the party and its nominee maximum flexibility in governing. Changes in direction are relatively cost-free, as they will not entail the violation of any pledged positions.
Despite this understandable desire for flexibility, a vague platform is also a liability. A platform tells voters what a party aspires to do. A compelling platform can attract new voters and excite base voters. It does not lock in the party to a course of action, but it does force the party to explain itself if it acts in ways contrary to what it laid out in the platform.
And ICYMI, Haley Strack reports on an important intraparty, school-choice battle in Texas:
Texas governor Greg Abbott now has enough votes in the state house to advance his ambitious school-choice agenda, after six Republican incumbents who were vocally opposed to school vouchers lost their primary runoff elections on Tuesday.
“While we did not win every race we fought in, the overall message from this year’s primaries is clear: Texans want school choice,” Abbott said. “Opponents can no loner ignore the will of the people.”
The governor’s electoral crusade for school choice came to a head this week, as eleven out of the 15 Republican challengers Abbott backed this cycle defeated House incumbents in their primaries. Abbott also worked to boot seven anti-voucher Republicans off the ballot in the state’s March Republican primaries.
Voucher bills have failed in Texas, most notably, last year, when 21 House Republicans voted against expanding school choice as part of an education-funding bill. Abbott’s push to oust school-choice dissidents was backed by major Republican donors and groups, such as Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children Victory Fund, which spent $4.5 million on the races altogether, Club for Growth, which poured $4 million into targeting anti-voucher runoff candidates, and Jeff Yass, an investor and mega-donor, who made about $12 million in contributions to both Abbott and the AFC Victory Fund. Abbott spent an unprecedented $8 million of his own campaign funds to support pro-voucher candidates.
Shout-Outs
Sean Trende, at RealClearPolitics: Are We Too Bearish on Trump?
Aaron Garth Smith, at Reason: K-12 Schools Crippled by Covid Cash
Christopher Cadelago, Sally Goldenberg, & Elena Schneider, at Politico: Dems in full-blown ‘freakout’ over Biden
CODA
Following up on Dan’s flabbergasted Corner post on Apple’s “100 Best Albums,” which as Dan mentioned was missing the Who entirely, here’s a deep track from that scorned band. It won’t make any Top 100 list, and that’s fine. From their second album, “I Need You” is just one of those perfect ’60s-sounding songs. Hope you enjoy.