It took the jury just 10 hours to decide that he was guilty of all counts— not a single holdout on a single count. Trump looked glum and the case will be appealed and will likely stretch out for years. He’ll probably be sentenced to a few years in prison— 4 would be the max— but he’d also probably get probation even from a judge who detests him. He can still run for president and serve as president if people decide he’s the lesser evil. His campaign was ready with a fundraising e-mail calling him a “political prisoner.”
Democratic congressional candidates were just as fast to tie their MAGAty opponents to him. San Bernardino progressive Derek Marshall sent out this reminder to voters:
Convicted felon Donald Trump chose Rep. Jay Obernolte for Congress. Then, Jay took one of his first votes in office to overturn the 2020 election and keep Trump in power. Let’s take our country back. Let's restore honor and dignity to our government. Get convicted felon Donald Trump’s favorite California Republican OUT of Congress.
On the other side of the country, New Jersey progressive Sue Altman had a similar message for voters in a swath of 6 counties in northern New Jersey, Union, Somerset, Hunterdon, Morris, Warren and Sussex:
It was the same day the DCCC named her to their Red to Blue program but it was a less auspicious day for Junior. “On the very same day Kean endorsed Trump,” she told me after the guilt verdict, “Trump was convicted. Will Kean stand by his man?”
Ted Lieu summed up the feeling that most Democrats— and no Republicans— were feeling in Congress: “In America, no one is above the law: not the rich, not the powerful, and certainly not any former presidents.”
Dan Pfeiffer looked at the unfolding politics tied to the unprecedented conviction, noting that polls show that more than enough voters are concerned about sending a convict— one who “has always believed that the rules do not apply to him and that his money, fame and power will forever shield him from accountability”— to the White House. He believes the condition has the potential to shake up the election, even if polling doesn’t dramatically shift overnight.
A lot of polling shows that a conviction is bad news for Trump. The highly respected Marquette University Law School poll recently did a split-sample. The first group was asked “If it turns out that Donald Trump is found guilty in his New York trial, would you vote for Joe Biden or for Donald Trump?” Biden led Trump 43-39. The other group was asked “If it turns out that Donald Trump is found not guilty in his New York trial, would you vote for Joe Biden or for Donald Trump?” In that group, Trump led 44-38.
Other polls are similar. The exit polls from the Republican Primary repeatedly showed that about a third of GOP primary voters would see Trump as unfit if convicted.
… CNN released a poll in late April that offered some interesting details on the voters who could abandon Trump if convicted:
They tend to be younger than other Trump supporters (64% are younger than 50 compared with 37% of those who would not reconsider), are less likely to be White (49% are people of color compared with 17% of those who would not reconsider), are more apt to report being Biden voters in 2020 (20% of them say they backed Biden in 2020 vs. 6% of those who would not reconsider) and are likelier to acknowledge that Biden legitimately won enough votes to win the presidency four years ago (63% vs. 22% among those who would not reconsider). They are also more apt to be political independents (49% vs. 31%) and ideologically moderate (50% vs. 38%).
…In a poll from earlier this year, Gallup asked respondents about their willingness to vote for certain types of presidential candidates. Only 29% said they would vote for a candidate charged with a felony and only 23% said they would vote for someone convicted of a felony.
One way to make the decision to elect a convicted felon seem more tangible is to connect it to real world situations. To that end, this ad from Republican Voters Against Trump was a clever way to focus on the absolutely absurd thing Trump is asking of voters.
For all of his false bravado, Trump was clearly about to wet himself with fear over this verdict. He knows political death may be imminent. It will be in the first paragraph of his obituary no matter what happens in November. Being branded a felon bothers him.
Democratic messaging doesn’t need to trigger Trump into reacting, but calling him a convicted felon at every opportunity has the added benefit of being persuasive with voters (and royally pissing off the convict at the same time).
Trying other Republicans to him is the job of every Democratic candidate. Arizona progressive Conor O’Callaghan did a masterful job yesterday:
"Although David Schweikert's 11 ethics convictions were from the House Ethics Committee and not a court of law, both he and Donald Trump have shown they will stop at nothing to win at all costs, even if it means breaking the rules. Well as they have both learned, doing the wrong thing ends badly. And it may end in prison time for the former President..."
Eric Wilson, the only progressive Democrat in teh race to take on western Wisconsin Trumpist Derrick Van Orden, told ys that “Yesterday, a New York court house verdict made something very clear. No one is above the law, not even a former president. It is also very clear that insurrectionist and authoritarian wannabe Derrick Van Orden has no respect for the law either. Anybody that brags about exposing another man’s genitals to a female nurse in a failed to launch book about ‘manhood’ clearly has no respect for the rule of law. Sexually assaulting women, breaking the law, and wanting to be ‘alpha male’ is a shared characteristic among both of them. Trump is committed to bringing authoritarianism to America. Derrick Van Orden tweeted comparing the judge presiding over the trial with a Nazi leader. Again, there seems to be a common theme between this duo and it’s not good for democracy. Neither is good for this country and we need to do everything we can to shut them down and get them out.”
If you’d like to contribute to the campaign’s of Eric Wilson and the other progressive Democrats whose names are bolded in this post, please go to the Flip Congress ActBlue page.
David Frum’s reaction was edifying: “Trump will not be held accountable before the 2024 presidential election for his violent attempt to overturn the previous election. He will not be held accountable before the election for absconding with classified government documents and showing them off at his pay-for-access vacation club. He will not be held accountable before the election for his elaborate conspiracy to manipulate state governments to install fake electors. But he is now a convicted felon all the same. It says something dark about the American legal system that it cannot deal promptly and effectively with a coup d’état. But it says something bright and hopeful that even an ex-president must face justice for ordinary crimes under the laws of the state in which he chose to live and operate his business. Over his long career as the most disreputable name in New York real estate, Trump committed many wrongs and frauds. Those wrongs and frauds are beginning to catch up with him, including his sexual assault upon the writer E. Jean Carroll, and then his defamation of her for reporting the assault. Today, the catch-up leaped the barrier from the civil justice system to the criminal justice system.”
He concluded that “If Trump does somehow return to the presidency, his highest priority will be smashing up the American legal system to punish it for holding him to some kind of account—and to prevent it from holding him to higher account for the yet-more-terrible charges pending before state and federal courts. The United States can have a second Trump presidency, or it can retain the rule of law, but not both. No matter how much spluttering and spin-doctoring and outright deception you may hear from the desperate co-partisans of the first Felon American to stand as the presumptive presidential nominee of a major U.S. political party— there is no denying that now.”
more predictable nonsense from hater. but this is america. the land of nonsense, haters and idiots.
Which is why this page exists and there is so much material about which to write.
sane societies tend to have much more mundane concerns to discuss.
thing is, I'm doing nothing more than collating disparate passages written by Howie, Noah and a few guests. hater sees russians behind every verb from me, but not from them. you figure it out.
Guestcrapper is taking this so hard that he can barely maintain his cover.
Yous better HOPE that this hurts trump/nazis (it will only make his cult worship him more) and/or helps biden/democraps (it won't as previous postings on this page prove that they'll lose far more due to gaza). Yous had Dobbs in 2022 and still lost the hou$e. And Dobbs is largely forgotten already. Other than that, yous got nuthin to run on.
I'm just waiting to see if this judge has any balls and sentences trump to prison. Most "experts" on "media" are saying it won't be any more than probation. If that's the case, then the whole thing is pointless.
And he is still unindicted for treason and insurrection. you and he can thank your pussy democraps for that.
It was a very good thing that Trump was finally convicted of SOMETHING. In the context of his other misdeeds, it was the contemporary equivalent of Al Capone getting convicted of tax evasion.
NO ONE knows what impact this conviction will ultimately have on his electoral process. Forecasts, by their very nature, attempt to extrapolate reasonably similar past events to current events. There is no remotely similar past event to extrapolate from here. It will take at least 2-3 weeks to allow the dust to settle and polling data start to emerge before anyone can make any halfway accurate forecasts or analyses.
For now, the following points are worth pondering:
Trump spent his entire trial publicly challenging the integrity of…