A Matter of Conviction

It is getting increasingly difficult to watch the news, especially if one does not wish to kickstart a drug or alcohol problem.  CNN, MSNBC, and FOX do not agree on very much, but each of these networks seem to be insisting that Donald Trump’s thirty-four felony convictions were the best thing that ever happened to him and have ensured his return to the White House next January.

All we see are stories detailing his fundraising haul, the reinvigoration of his worshippers, and condemnation of the verdict by virtually every Republican officeholder or aspirant—that coupled with tales of Biden’s unpopularity and his weakening hold on both his supporters and his cognitive abilities.  It is as if these networks have gone Trump one better—not only would shooting someone dead on Fifth Avenue not lose him voters, but he would instead gain some.

Particularly alarming is the evidence supplied by the networks’ quantitative analysts, such as CNN’s Harry Enten.  Whenever Enten makes an appearance, he supplies polling data that demonstrates how enormously, incredibly difficult it will be for Biden to win re-election.  The president is behind in every swing state; the voters in key blocs have deserted him; most of the country views the economy as in recession; he has bungled the Israeli-Hamas war; Hunter’s trial will be a millstone; and probably the Biden dog is a threat to national security, although I think I missed that segment.

All of this is true.  No, that isn’t quite right.

All of this is half-true.

That Biden is faced with this litany of problems is not in dispute.  What is lacking, however, is the view from the other end of the tunnel, Trump’s end.  To fully appreciate how the coming contest stands, it is necessary to look past the numbers, or at least most of the numbers since some of the less advertised polling has indicated the convictions might have had a small but significant effect.

Despite all the foreboding, the state of the election remains pretty much the same.  In order to win back the presidency, Trump must hold all the states he won and flip either three or four of the Big Six.  To do so, he must either persuade 2020 Biden voters to switch or Biden will have to lose more votes in these states than does Trump. 

Either of these scenarios is possible, of course.  Biden is not the strongest of candidates.  But to assume that one or both has already become a near certainty is just silly.  While Biden may not generate the same anti-Trump passions as he did four years ago—itself not a given—extrapolating from current polls that key constituencies have irretrievably turned against him is a mistake.  Those constituencies remain very much in play, to say nothing of the serious problems Trump faces within his own party.

To begin with simple demographics, since Trump’s voters skew older, many of his supporters in 2016 and 2020 are not around anymore, while the number of younger voters, especially in states with large student populations, such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, has greatly increased.

This trend has been minimized in the many dire predictions, most from pollsters, that the Gaza protests would destroy Biden’s chances of prompting the sort of turnout among young voters that he needs to offset losses among Blacks and Latinos.  Gaza is a volatile issue to be sure, but not nearly as potent as reproductive rights.  This goes beyond abortion, which is incendiary enough on its own.  With Senate Republicans refusing to guarantee a right to contraception, in addition to losing the ability to end an unwanted pregnancy, conservatives would now deny women the right even to prevent one. 

It will not take a media genius to exploit that possibility enough to dull the impact of Biden’s Gaza problem, for which support beyond the relatively few actual protestors is not clear.  Even in Michigan, where the Arab American vote is genuinely at risk, Biden is in a favorable position.  He won Michigan by 140,000 votes and, since few Arab Americans will likely pull the lever for an Islamophobe like Trump, a few thousand votes from women who want to control when—and if—they have a child will go a long way.

Trump’s sentencing will provide another opportunity to shift voter sentiment.  If he is sentenced to jail time but the sentence is deferred, as it certainly would be for the remainder of the campaign, it might help convince Black voters that Trump connives treatment from the legal system that would be denied to them.  (He is, after all, the man who demanded the death penalty for the now-exonerated Central Park Five.) If he is sentenced to probation, which, given his contempt citations, would only be because he is a candidate, Democrats can make much the same argument on a broader scale, especially since Biden has made a point of not intruding on the federal case against his son, including promising to decline to pardon him if he is convicted.

Still another opportunity for Biden will be the June 27 debate, assuming Trump shows up.  Trump is famously thin-skinned and it might not take a great deal of goading from Biden—who is much tougher than he is usually given credit for—to provoke Trump into the sort of outburst that would be the story of the night and might deter some of the ten to twenty percent of primary voters who continue to choose Nikki Haley.  Political pros generally agree that Trump cannot lose more than five percent of his support if he hopes to win.

Another reason current polls should be distrusted is the unusually large portion of the electorate whose votes will be cast grudgingly, regardless of for which candidate.  Many will likely wait until much closer to the election to decide which one they dislike the least.  That is when Trump’s legal status might have its greatest impact, nudging enough undecided voters away from Trump to prevent him from winning key swing states.

None of these rosy predictions are guaranteed, of course, in same way that none of the apocalyptic ones are.  But, to goose ratings, pretending that Trump’s felony convictions will help oil his way into office, as the cable news channels and other media outlets seem determined to do, says more about the sorry state of the news business than the sorry state of the Biden campaign.