Conjecture, in some minds, might be one tenth of the law but time will only tell what lies in store for Trump the presumed nominee for the Republican presidential contest is certainly now for the history books: the first time a former president has been criminally convicted of a crime, this one to pay hush money of $130,000 to the actress through his fixit man, Micahel Cohen, and disguised as attorney fees, but both the falsification of the records coupled with the attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election, illegal under New York State law, brought the 34 count indictment and conviction.
Faith in the often fraught American judicial system has won, say many observers, while those in the Trump camp cry foul politics instead of justice and some are calling it a witch hunt brought to bear on an innocent man. Politics may provide the backdrop, but it does not provide the fullest picture.
Trump himself said, “It’s a rigged trial, it was a rigged trial,” stating another falsehood of the many that has been captured by the national media. He added that Judge Juan Merchan was conflicted, “we had a conflicted judge, highly conflicted. There's never been a more conflicted judge.”
In a further hyperbole he added that whole the judge, “looks like an angel, but he’s really the devil.”
No matter whose side one is on, the verdict does signal that many of the suspicions that many people had about Trump, his business dealings and his extramarital affairs have now been brought to light.
In the scheme of his other suits, both state and federal, this is merely an opening salvo, as Trump faces federal charges for the illegal confiscation of government papers when he left office, which prompted an FBI raid on his home in Florida, and attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, plus state charges in Georgia of election interference.
What may also follow are charges against underpaying employees, and contractors and also overinflating the value of individual properties to take a tax deduction. In short this is only the beginning.
The question of many minds is how will this conviction, since he is now a felon, affect his standing for the presidency; and, perhaps a surprise, there is nothing to suggest that he cannot, and furthermore he can vote for himself, since under New York State law felons can vote after filling the terms of his conviction, be they probation, prison term, highly unlikely in a white collar crime for a first time offender, but it should be noted that Trump like Eugene Debs in the 1920s could run for office from prison.
For voters, both Democratic and Republican many have already made up their minds, but the one area to be determined is how swing or independent voters will be affected, but before we get there, let’s look at what an NPR/PBSNewsHour/Marist poll that said:
“Overall, two-thirds (67%) said a guilty verdict would make no difference to their vote; three-quarters (76%) said the same of a not guilty verdict.
Roughly 1 in 6 voters (17%) said a guilty verdict would make them less likely to vote for Trump. That was true of a quarter of nonwhites and 1 in 5 voters who make less than $50,000 a year and those under 45.”
Then there is the money, following the money might lead to some surfeit of predictions and in the hours following the conviction, the Trump campaign said that they had raised $52.8 million in the 24 hours after the conviction, reported CBS News.
Next up besides the independent and swing voters are the Nikki Haley supporters, who have voted for her by 20 percent in the primaries of Indiana, Maryland and Nebraska, as a protest vote.
There have been attempts by some in the Biden campaign to lure them to their side and there may be an inroad since many of her supporters are college educated, suburban professionals, many of whom are women, who might be turned off by the unsavory details of the Daniels encounter.
An Economist/YouGov poll found that some voters felt that the trial and the conviction were unfair, with 10 percent fair, and 16 percent neutral, but have also noted that the distance between Trump and Biden is close, and averaging the data they find that the median result is 45 percent for Trump and 44 percent for Biden but they do give the cautionary note “that pre election polls have limited predictive power for the final result until the end of the summer in an election year.”
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