AFTERMATHS: So far, the polls haven't changed a whole lot!

THURSDAY, JUNE 6, 2024

Blue voters, puzzled by Reds: On this important historical day, we start with a brief review of a short-term political aftermath. Our question:

Has Candidate Trump been hurt in the polls in the wake of last week's guilty verdicts? 

Kevin Drum says that maybe he has, though only a little bit:

Poll: Trump’s felony conviction has hurt him only slightly so far

At New York magazine, Ed Kilgore largely concurs:

Trump vs. Biden Polls: Conviction Not Having Big Impact Yet

So far, nothing much has changed in the polls in the wake of the guilty verdicts. This may fly in the face of earlier surveys which reported that a substantial portion of Trump's supporters were saying that they would refuse to vote for a convicted felon.

Such speculative surveys never made much sense. At any rate, a much more important event is only a few weeks away. Our guess would be this:

If the June 27 debate takes place, it could strongly settle the question, one way or the other, about Candidate Biden's ability to proceed toward a second term. If the scheduled debate occurs, this is the very large question which will be looming:

Candidate Trump can bullsh*t for hours—but how well will President Biden be able to perform?

In the wake of last week's verdicts, Trump may have suffered a small bump back in the polls. This morning, the New York Times runs several letters about his voters' reactions. 

Two of those letters are worth reviewing. They appear beneath this headline:

How Will Trump’s Conviction Affect the Election?

The first of these letters refers to a recent column by Frank Bruni. It starts with a perfectly decent question about Candidate Trump's many voters:

To the Editor: 

Mr. Bruni fears that Donald Trump’s newfound status as a convicted felon may not be enough for him to lose the election. Although Mr. Bruni may be right, he and the rest of us who desperately want to keep this despicable demagogue from returning to the White House should consider why so many millions would vote for a candidate with a criminal record.

The letter starts with a simple question. Why would so many millions of people vote for a convicted felon? 

Those of us in Blue America frequently seem to be puzzled by this situation. In our view, this is a sign of intellectual weakness within our own (imperfect) Blue tribe.

We're puzzled when Trump's voters refuse to switch! Why would such people vote for a felon? The letter continues like this:

(Continuing directly): Mr. Trump’s appeals to grievance and nostalgia for a bygone era have found fertile ground among the non-college-educated working class whose economic advancement has stalled over the past several decades. In many cases Mr. Trump simply exploits racism and xenophobia, but legitimate injury is there as well.

Income gains have stagnated despite rising productivity; good blue-collar, union jobs have been offshored, replaced by lower-paying nonunion jobs in the service sector; and the profit-driven health care system grows increasingly heartless.

With his declarations of a system rigged against both him and his supporters, Mr. Trump has cynically channeled anger at elites who have successfully ridden out or even engineered capitalism’s latest jolts.

Although Mr. Trump leads the party that has traditionally championed the interests of the moneyed elite, Democrats have largely failed to offer a compelling alternative for these disaffected voters. The Democrats need to start concentrating on progressive solutions to working-class woes, and President Biden must make a convincing case for the real-life impacts of his not-insignificant achievements.

If this does not happen, we could well see a second Trump presidency, no matter how many criminal counts he has against him.

Why would so many people vote for a convicted felon? The writer's various speculations may all have some merit. That said, we'll quickly suggest this aside:

Every time we Blues talk about "low-information voters"—in this case, when we talk about "the            non-college-educated working class"—another Trump voter gets his or her wings.

At any rate, as he starts, that letter writer seems puzzled by the fact that so many people are willing to vote for a man with a criminal record.  In our view, he failed to list some of the most obvious reasons for that phenomenon as his letter proceeded.

Correctly or otherwise, many voters in Red America regard the trial which ended last week as a sham and a fraud. That would be an obvious reason why the verdicts wouldn't lead them to change their votes. The writer of that first letter doesn't seem to be clear about this.

Alas! Given the way our journalism now works, those of us in Blue America may not understand the lay of the land over there among the Reds. 

Why aren't voters in Red America moving away from Candidate Trump? The second letter in today's Times collection starts with a winning irony. 

The writer then cites a report about one voter who has decided to switch her vote in the aftermath of the verdicts:

To the Editor:

It seems to me there are two important ironies underlying the reflections of the Times Opinion writers on the verdict. The first is that even though Donald Trump was worried that the revelation about Stormy Daniels might have harmed his election chances—and for that reason he bought her silence and falsified business records—it turns out that he apparently needn’t have bothered since, as the Opinion writers seem generally to agree, many voters are not particularly concerned by his conduct.

The second irony suggested by at least some of the Opinion writers is that not only may Mr. Trump’s conduct not harm his election chances, but the decision to prosecute him for that conduct may actually help his chances.

For example, Matthew Continetti argues that the prosecution “undermined confidence in the rule of law and rallied G.O.P. voters to Trump.” And Maureen Dowd reports her sister saying: “I wasn’t going to vote for Trump. But now I am because I thought this whole thing was a sham.”

[...]

For starters, we recommend the irony lodged in that opening paragraph. The irony runs like this:

According to the letter writer, many voters don't seem to care about the fact that Donald J. Trump is reported to have engaged in sexual congress, on one occasion ten years before the 2016 election, with a woman who wasn't his wife.

(Trump says it didn't happen.)

Many voters don't seem to care about that! For ourselves, we can't say that they should.

At this point, the writer moves to his first irony.  If Daniels had simply "told her story"—instead of seeking a sackful of cash—maybe that wouldn't have hurt Trump at all! 

(Who knows? It might even have helped him!)

As his letter continues, the writer goes on to cite a second irony. Maureen Dowd's sister is switching her vote because of the guilty verdicts.

She has decided to vote for Trump! Like many others, rightly or wrongly, she thinks the whole thing was "a sham!"

At any rate, how about it? Should voters in Red America care about the guilty verdicts? Why are so many people still willing to vote for Candidate Trump, who is now "a convicted felon?"

Many of us in Blue America seem to be puzzled by that second question. We may tend to fall back on our preapproved story—they're a bunch of racists and bigots!

Why might Trump voters refuse to switch in the wake of those verdicts?  That first letter writer skipped right past some obvious possible reasons. 

Tomorrow, we'll show you what two major legal figures said when they were asked, on Meet the Press and Face the Nation, if Candidate Trump has any basis for a successful appeal.

Is there any chance that Trump's convictions could be overturned on appeal?  On our own, we have no way of knowing—but we do know why so many Trump voters are paying no mind to those guilty verdicts:

They have been told, again and again, that the whole prosecution was a joke and a hoax and a scam. 

Is there any merit to what they've been told? Could it be that some part of the answer is yes?

Tomorrow, we'll look at what Cy Vance and Preet Bharara said last Sunday about Trump's chances to win on appeal. 

As we noted yesterday, Bharara said that some of the likely appeals are "non-frivolous." What did he mean by that?

What did Bharara mean by that? The subject was quickly dropped at that point, so we can't exactly tell you.

We can tell you this:

Almost surely, Maureen Dowd's sister isn't alone in her view of what happened. Rightly or wrong, a lot of people may believe that the prosecution was a sham.

We aren't saying that their view is right. (We also aren't saying they're wrong.) 

But others could maybe be shifting their votes in favor of Candidate Trump. Due to the way our discourse now works, many of us in Blue America may not be aware of such facts.

Tomorrow: What Vance and Bharara said