Guilt Complex: Trump's Felony Convictions Are a Big Political Problem

Yes, it’s obviously true that a 34-count felony conviction would be enough to demolish the career of any normal politician.

Yes, it’s obviously true that former president Donald Trump is not a normal politician. His most devoted partisans will only become more so following Thursday’s guilty verdict. Just as they did after the Access Hollywood tape, the impeachments, the Jan. 6 riot and other examples too abundant to recount or, for many people, even to recall.

But these two obvious truths tend to obscure another one. Trump simply cannot beat President Joe Biden relying solely on the votes of people who think his legal travails are a politically motivated scam, and who cheer Trump not in spite of his transgressions but because of them. Or, more specifically, because they thrill to the outrage and indignation Trump inspires among his adversaries.

There are plenty of such people — enough to power this generation’s most important political movement — but still not enough to win the election. Trump’s only path to victory is a coalition that includes many Republicans and independents who find him deplorable but think a second Biden term would be even more so.

That is why — even as the full consequences likely will emerge slowly — this week was easily the worst so far this year for Trump and the best for Biden.

This doesn’t mean the Manhattan verdict will suddenly transform the race — nothing in Trump’s history of scandal suggests it will. This doesn’t mean huge legions of swing voters will suddenly agree with Biden’s argument that democracy itself is on the ballot this fall. If someone wasn’t buying that up until now, why would a case of document falsification to cover up an alleged sexual indiscretion change their mind?

It does mean that many voters who don’t much like Biden received an emphatic, unambiguous reminder of why they don’t like Trump. The movement of even a small percentage of voters in closely contested swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — all must-win for Biden — could echo decisively through the balance of the race.

Joe Biden has flogged one line mercilessly throughout his career: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative.”

It can be easy to forget that this is an essential pillar of Trump’s strategy as well. Polls show a majority of Americans are dissatisfied with their options. The only way either can win is with the support of nose-holders. His convictions — and the certainty that they will remain in the news through sentencing and likely appeals — means reluctant Trump backers will have to pinch even harder.

A Democratic pollster told my colleague Jonathan Martin after the verdict that Biden’s message should be: “It is always chaos with Trump, chaos and putting himself first. How can he do what is best for the country and do what is best for you when he will spend his entire four years obsessed with his legal issues, trying to settle scores, trying to stay out of prison?”

A Republican operative agreed that Trump does better when he is reacting opportunistically to events in the news — but not when he and his own actions are the primary subject of sustained news coverage. The last time that was the case was in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill riots.

That event, of course, shows the hazards of prediction. It was in the early hours of Jan. 7 that no less a political hand than Mitch McConnell, who had come to loathe the president even while promoting his court nominees and other parts of his agenda, crowed to Martin (in the book "This Will Not Pass," with co-author Alexander Burns) that Trump was “pretty thoroughly discredited” and his political career likely over: “He put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Couldn’t have happened at a better time.”

The records-falsification case isn’t as dramatic as the Jan. 6 riot. It’s not even like Trump’s famous boast that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his backers wouldn’t mind.

To the contrary, the damage from this case may be that by Trump standards what he was convicted of doing was not especially dramatic. The payoff from former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen to Stormy Daniels, who acted in pornographic movies — and the accounting legerdemain required to cover up the payment — was a window into what prosecutors described as a routine operating procedure in Trump’s retinue.

In that sense, the charges aren’t like the felony indictments Trump is facing from prosecutor Jack Smith over trying to overturn the 2020 election. They are more like the allegations Hillary Rodham Clinton was facing in 2016 — and which Trump ceaselessly exploited — of improperly conducting official business on her personal email account. That controversy was damaging not because the underlying crime was so grave but because for many people it painted a picture of someone who thought she operated above the rules.

The Manhattan conviction, according to operatives in both parties, allows Biden to put Trump in a similar box.

There are two demographic slices he’ll be aiming at with such an appeal. One is highly educated, highly informed traditional Republicans, who can reliably be expected to vote. They don’t like Trump but are open to voting for him because they regard Biden as too old or his administration as too anti-business. The conviction makes it harder for this group to rationalize a Trump vote as the best among bad alternatives.

The other is low-information, less reliable voters. They typically aren’t paying close attention to the news, but a big event like the conviction can penetrate their consciousness in lasting ways.

Among both groups the argument is less that Trump is a would-be dictator who could end democracy. It is that he is a self-absorbed agent of chaos who is too preoccupied with his own troubles to govern effectively.

In both cases, small movements could have large consequences. A new Cook Political Report poll of swing-state voters showed Biden leading 49 percent to 45 among the most reliable voters but trailing Trump by 10 points, 41 percent to 51, among less regular voters.

Trump defenders have dismissed the entire trial as a kangaroo court and argue most people dimly understand the details. But in an odd way that underscores the danger. Highly informed voters will know that the behavior illuminated in the case doesn’t fit their definition of presidential propriety, and low-information voters may know little beyond the bright neon top-line: Trump is now a convicted felon.