A guilty verdict is likely to motivate a large section of his own base to vote for him, but will also hurt his chances to sway undecided voters to vote for him.
In the end, it's going to depend on how many are motivated to vote for the democrats, and how many are motivated to vote for/against trump.
I don't think so. I think more people are going to see this as a politically motivated kangaroo show trial than not. It takes some votes away, but it gives him others, at best I think it chsnges the calculus by roughly 0.
I think you underestimate the number of people who thought "they can't impeach a president for getting a blowjob" and actually meant it rather than using it as a tool of political expediency. Those people don't see this as justice. I think more people are principled than not.
Idk, you'd think there would come a point when enough people say he's a fraud that it gets through to his base. He's now a convicted felon, representing the party of "law and order". That shouldn't end well.
I think the more interesting question is how many of the people who aren’t ardent supporters will still vote for him. There are enough Republicans who didn’t like him but still wanted their party to win to shift an election which was already tight. This goes double for anyone who is not a complete diehard on the subject of abortion and might be asking themselves why they’re carrying water for a convicted felon, especially since they already got the tax cuts.
Trump supporters aren't going to sway the election.
They were always going to vote for him and will always vote for him.
The election is going to get decided at the margins by the kind of people who can still get swayed one way or the other to vote or not vote for one or the other candidate.
Actually convicting him can give a solid reason for someone who would have only very reluctantly voted for him to switch to Biden or just not vote at all. Old school Reagan conservatives who find that voting for an actual convicted felon is something they just won't do. It does create an additional nice red line of illegality, which should still matter to a few folks. It will cause some ethical problems with some Republicans for voting for him, and it really doesn't take much. The 2016 election was decided by a few 10,000s of people in 3-4 different states.
Where it can backfire, though, is if the conviction is overturned on appeal.
I think you're missing a big factor here: both candidates have a track record as president. We haven't had that in a long time, often it's only the incumbent with a record, which we usually associate as in their favor. Part of that record, for both of them, isn't due to anything they did, but the times they ran things are associated with them. And of course part of it they're each responsible for.
Despite all the rhetoric, Trump has a pretty good track record to the average american. Wars ending, dollar a gallon gas. In contrast, Biden doesn't look too good. Wars starting, groceries going up weekly. We can say what is who's fault and what is out of their control and whatever, that is just noise to all but decided voters. I think that this case will sway some away, sway some for that don't like what they see as political weaponization of the justice system, and all in all it stays in Trumps favor.
> Despite all the rhetoric, Trump has a pretty good track record to the average american. Wars ending, dollar a gallon gas. In contrast, Biden doesn't look too good. Wars starting, groceries going up weekly. We can say what is who's fault and what is out of their control and whatever, that is just noise to all but decided voters.
Voters are able to assign fault to some degree, or they'd also assign "global pandemic starting" to Trump's record.
That's the thing, I think he gets a pass on that. Probably doesn't get a pass on the lockdown or money printing, but no reasonable person blames the president for an illness. A war between foreign countries, lots of people have it in their heads that the president is very powerful and can start or stop stuff like that, true or not, but an illness...
Do you think Alexey Navalny‘s conviction for embezzlement caused him to lose any supporters? Probably not. It was a transparently political use of the justice system to sideline an opponent.
People I’ve talked to feel the same way about Trump. I’ve asked why vote in the primary for a candidate who lost the midterms and his last election, and the sentiment is that “We can’t let them get away with it” meaning the lawfare against Trump.
It almost certainly won't sway very many. But the Electoral College means that a small number of voters in the right place can radically change the outcome.
His supporters can't "vote harder", so it's entirely a question of how the marginal voters comes down on it. They don't have to switch their vote, but just decide to stay home.
I doubt the effect will be measurable, given the vast number of confounding variables. But should he lose, they will almost certainly ascribe it at least in part to the conviction.
>People I’ve talked to feel the same way about Trump
You should tell them they're mistaken. He isn't being sidelined or kept off the ballot. That's a blatant lie that he is spreading himself. The case was supposed to happen last year until him and his lawyers used procedural tactics to delay it into this year. At any point he could have quietly chosen to settle, publicly declare innocence and then let the news pass just like he did with the Trump University case. But again, he chose not to for this one.
1. Those are unrelated to the falsifying business records case, and those efforts weren't what Trump and his campaign have been referring to for these past few days anyway.
2. Those cases happened because Trump is alleged to have led a violent coup against his own government in violation of the 14th amendment. Something we all seem to have forgot with this constant distraction of courtrooms that this individual finds himself in.
3. Several of those cases were in states that Trump won. Of the several states that Biden won, the challenges were dismissed. Based on your link, it is entirely unfounded to claim this was political retribution.
4. In March the Supreme Court ruled none of them can proceed anyway and the map is irrelevant now, the article says this too. The 14th amendment can't be enforced by state courts, it has to be enforced by Congress.
In my opinion, you have to ignore a staggering number of facts and disregard all the actions of every single person in the courtroom all this month, including the actions of Trump and his own lawyers, to believe that this case in any way a political hit job. The judge actually went out of his way to prevent the prosecution from making it about that; the case was entirely about the illegal ways he conducted business along with his subordinates. Read the transcripts yourself if you don't believe me. https://pdfs.nycourts.gov/PeopleVs.DTrump-71543/transcripts/
His base thinks he's a victim of a conspiracy by the "deep state" to convict him on fraudulent charges by a kangaroo court. They don't for a second believe he's guilty of anything except being too much of a radical iconoclast for "the man" to handle.
I mean, I assume his base know he's a fraud. He has never made all that much of a secret of it. They just don't care. Like, approximately no-one, you'd assume, is, at this point, saying: "I'm voting for Trump, the noted honest legitimate businessman... wait, he was convicted of a CRIME? Well then I'm not voting for him." His voters know he's a crook.
A significant number of people who told pollsters they were planning to vote for Trump said they would change their mind if he was convicted in court. The question is whether these voters are in swing states.
All 34 charges are first degree felonies. Falsifying business records, up to four years per count, with a maximum sentence of 20 if served consecutively.
And past the statute of limitations unless they can be presented as felonies. Stand by for things to get very weird... I just hope they don’t get “kinetic.”
Eligibility to be on the ballot varies from state to state.
But he can of course be written in, and it will be interesting to see what happens if he becomes the People's choice via write-in on the ballot of states where a felony bars you from the ballot.
I believe in general he could still be elected because there's no federal law against a felon holding the presidency and technically in States, you vote for the slate of electors (all of whom are eligible to serve), not the person they are voting for.
Even assuming the case where it was indeed politically motivated to bring a case forwards in the first place, a jury of peers had to be selected by the lawyers of both sides.
And that jury of his peers found him guilty, unanimously, on all counts.
Thanks to that jury selection process, there's no informed way to claim that the jury was politically motivated so in the end his loss is going to hurt his chances.
Agreed. For all the craziness of American politics, I generally believe our jury system is the "shining star" of our country's institutions.
I'm not saying it's perfect, but I generally believe that when you get 12 well-intentioned people together, the outcome is much better than when you have politicians giving quips to the cameras. Every single person I know that has served on a jury has said they were very impressed with the thoughtfulness and professionalism of their fellow jurors.
I was on a jury and some of them were reasonable, competent people, but I was shocked by a couple of them at how clueless and careless they were. They basically made a choice at the beginning of the trial and didn't seem to listen to anything after that.
What is asserted without evidence can be denied without evidence.
So far as I saw from following the trial (not super closely, so I may have missed something), no defense witnesses were prevented from testifying if they had relevant evidence. (You don't just get to put, say, Trump's hairstylist on the stand, unless they have something to say that touches on admissible evidence.)
The part that seems more in line with the claim by the green account was not about witnesses, but lines of argument.
There's a claim called "advice of counsel". In this case, it would be claiming that Trump's lawyers told him to do this. Well, in a criminal trial, you don't get to just claim "my lawyer told me to do it" and that's automatically a get-out-of-jail-free card. No, the prosecution gets to examine that claim. In particular, they get to put your lawyers on the stand and ask them questions, under oath, even though those questions touch on matters that would normally be covered by attorney-client confidentiality. [That is, asserting that defense leads to loss of attorney-client confidentiality in areas covered by the claim of advise of counsel.]
Trump's attorneys chose not to assert that defense. They told the judge, before the trial, that they weren't going to use that defense. Then, during the trial, they wanted to make an argument that was something like "recommendation of counsel", where it would sound to the jury like "advice of counsel", but the prosecution wouldn't get to grill the lawyers. That is, they wanted to have their cake and eat it too.
The judge didn't let them do it. Trump's lawyers tried, at least twice with different wording, and the judge blocked it. Rightly so - you don't get to skirt the restrictions by trying to re-word the label.
I despise this guy as much as any sane person. And for sure he did everything he was judged for, and much more actually, even before becoming president.
But for better or worse, people in power have some kind of immunity, especially for minor things. When political opponents are pursued for those minor things, it's a bad sign for democracy.
Committing felonies to deprive voters of information which could change the outcome an election isn’t exactly a minor crime, and it’s at least as bad for a democracy to have people everyone knows are guilty skate free because of their political power. I think the idea that no man is above the law is highly important so the correct path here should be having those cases be meaningful and carefully prosecuted, as was the case here.
> But for better or worse, people in power have some kind of immunity,
Varies a lot by country.
> especially for minor things.
Interestingly it's almost always intended to only apply to official actions taken as part of the duty of office, although it's often watered down and extended.
eg: "A sitting president of the United States is granted immunity for Official Acts taken as President."
however "It is under legal dispute whether he also enjoys immunity from criminal liability or prosecution."
and " Neither civil nor criminal immunity is explicitly granted in the Constitution or any federal statute".
It's certainly not the case that US founders intended to extend immunity to random US citizens who are merely running for POTUS, nor that immunity should be extended backwards in time should they end up as POTUS.
In other contexts, eg: Australia, the matter of Executive Immunities leads with
It is a fundamental tenet of the rule of law that no one is above the law. This principle applies to the government, its officers and instrumentalities: their conduct should be ruled by the law.
and goes on to describe why there are exceptions for the "big stuff" and not for minor things (shoplifting is still a crime).
How was it politically motivated? He was guilty. If anything is politically motivated it's the Florida judge appointed by Trump delaying his secret document stealing trial past the election.
The Administration is bound by the Due Care clause, but that's a huge window, so you can just intentionally create a dysfunctional and incompetent group of people and give them the responsibility for enforcing this nations laws.
This Administration, although it would hate to actually admit it out loud, actually put someone competent in charge of the agency with this enforcement responsibility and then.. to everyone's absolute surprise.. let them do their job effectively.
Effectiveness is debatable, because they’re not winning cases. I like the targets they’re aiming at, but trying and failing prevents someone more competent from winning the case in the future. Results matter.
It’s been noted by a few folks that anything the administration says out loud immediately becomes gristle for the Fox News-o-verse and therefore something for Congress to yell loudly at and try to block. The Biden administration has consequently become very good at being very quiet about the things it’s doing well, with the distinct drawback in an election year that everyone seems to be quite surprised when they discover the administration has been rather good, actually.
The Biden administration is a textbook example of how to not control any narratives whatsoever and never be able to get any credit. They lost the narrative after Kabul and then just never got it back, despite being one of the most legislatively successful and executively impactful administrations in the last 50 years. Case in point - recent poll that had 50% of voters that listed "climate" as their top priority didn't think this administration has done anything on climate change.
According to Gallop only 2% of Americans list climate as the top priority. by far the most important priority is the economy. For non economic issues immigration ranks #1, climate being #11.
Again, my statement was referring to ignorance among those 2%, not the general population.
However, if you are interested in the economy, it seems the American people are aggressively misinformed about the quantitative state of the economy too [0]. Seems like many people are out of touch with the reality of a booming economy.
Yes. It's _incredibly_ frustrating. I was not a Biden supporter, but he's gotten some absolutely incredible things accomplished - the IRA alone is so far outside what I thought would've been possible. The word from the actual people actually doing climate work is that, as far as they're concerned, the IRA solves the financing problem and the rest is implementation now, but the average voter apparently has no idea what's been done in that space. Antitrust is another area where the administration is reshaping how the economy works - they're getting a bit more credit here, but it's still widely underappreciated.
I think there was strategic value in keeping things close to the vest, and I'm not sure how much is in their hands and how much is how the media's reporting on all of this, but you're right, their inability to do messaging is going to lead the most economically progressive administration in half a century to be a one-term affair because their own voters haven't updated their priors.
I worked in the ticketing industry in 2007-2010. I remember when the CEO of our small org told us that he talked to the FTC as an industry expert when they were approving the deal. He said he didn't think it would harm competition.
Everyone else, including myself, could see where this was going. I don't know how folks could be that bone-headed even back then.
I dont agree with your criticism. It is a unified cache for multiple microservices, deployed in multiple regions, has at least 20 million DAU. Not hard to imagine that peak can hit 40M total reads.
This is not a conspiracy anymore. Just open top 100 companies, compare 3 years back locations with this years. You will see a rise of non-US locations.
That said, after working with small teams. I observed Its kind of hard to maintain all team member enthusiasm and drive without feeling like getting burnt out.
It's privately-owned infrastructure, for the most part. And if the companies could, they'd charge you simply for the privilege of existing in the same universe as the infrastructure even if no one ever used it, and just send that money to their shareholders.
> And if the companies could, they'd charge you simply for the privilege of existing in the same universe as the infrastructure even if no one ever used it, and just send that money to their shareholders.
Of course. If I could I'd draw a salary from every employer on the planet. People be peoplin'.
It's going to the FCC, of course. If they ever solved robocalls, what would be there for them to do? Literally, this agency has been trying to solve spam calls for half a century now. They are the most incompetent people in history.
Appeal easily takes him to 2025.
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