If a political party nominates someone most voters think is a criminal — including most swing voters and most independent voters — that’s political suicide. But that is what Republican voters appear likely to do, by nominating Donald Trump rather than a more electable conservative candidate like Ron DeSantis.
As the conservative lawyer A.G. Hamilton notes about Donald Trump, “A majority of Americans believe he is guilty and should be convicted. If the election becomes a referendum on Donald Trump’s criminal cases, Republicans will lose. And lose big.”
Polls prove what Hamilton says. As pollster Navigator Research points out, “By a two-to-one margin, most Americans continue to believe Donald Trump has committed a crime (net +32; 62% committed a crime – 30% did not commit a crime), including independents by 49 points (67% committed a crime – 18% did not).”
Being President is an all-consuming task. So is being the Republican nominee for president, running against a well-funded incumbent like Joe Biden who has the media on his side. But Trump won’t be able to focus mostly on those tasks, because he will be focused on staying out of jail, or appealing his convictions. He is already being prosecuted in four different cases, some of which will feature progressive juries that will hate him (as in Washington, DC), or feature strong evidence against him (as in Florida).
Nominating someone facing four separate criminal prosecutions against him to run for president would be as unwise as hiring a bus driver who is being stung by bees to drive the bus in which you are a passenger, when there are four separate beehives on the bus stinging him as he tries to drive.
The New York state prosecution of Trump is bogus and political, but the Florida federal prosecution of Trump over mishandling government records is well-founded, supported by abundant evidence, and would likely lead to his conviction by an unbiased jury. The Washington, DC prosecution is a bit of a stretch, but it could succeed anyway because all, or nearly all, of the jurors are likely to be Democrats who hate Trump (More than 90% of Washington, DC residents vote for the Democrats in presidential elections), and the judge is a hardcore progressive who hates Trump. The Georgia state court prosecution of Trump sweeps in people who are likely innocent as Trump’s co-defendants, but some of its charges against Trump may be plausible — which puts him in jeopardy of conviction, because an Atlanta jury will be progressive-leaning, although not as much so as a Washington, DC jury.
So there is a real chance Trump will be in jail at the time the 2024 general election is held. Even if not, he is likely to be fighting to stay out of jail, which will distract him from fighting Joe Biden. He has been indicted in four different cases, and only one case needs to go wrong for him to end up in jail.
Why not vote for another Republican candidate instead — such as a conservative like Ron DeSantis? While in office, Trump really wasn’t all that conservative. Trump left in effect most of Obama’s bad regulatory policies that he could have rescinded, had he been more effective. Jeb Bush, who ran for the Republican nomination against Trump in 2016, would have moved to end racial preferences in education upon being elected, as he promised in his campaign. Trump didn’t. The Trump administration made only the feeblest efforts to rein in racial preferences, and only started doing so after half of Trump’s presidency had elapsed. Trump’s swamp-dwelling RINO Labor Secretary from 2017 to 2019, Alex Acosta, left in place Obama administration policies that encouraged government contractors to be woke, and have racial quotas. He left in place Obama’s progressive appointments to the Administrative Review Board that hears appeals from the OFCCP, the Labor Department entity that prodded government contractors to be woke and have racial quotas. Acosta’s successor as Labor Secretart from 2019-2021, Eugene Scalia, made mild improvements, but fewer than one would expect from a truly conservative administration.
Trump may be unable to undo many of Biden’s harmful policies if he is elected again, because he never understood government enough to undo most of the left-wing policies left behind by Obama. The limited deregulatory reforms Trump implemented in 2017-19 were mostly overturned by the courts — 93% of them, in whole or in part. Many of the Trump losses were due to ineptness by Trump appointees in drafting the Trump changes, such as procedural mistakes and sloppiness. Some of the losses were due to left-wing activist judges.
Trump talked about “draining the swamp,” but most of the time, he didn’t really know how. Trump never got the expertise to do that, in his administration. He didn’t hire most of the right people. He himself has complained about most of his key appointments! If you want to fix bad government rules and red tape, you have to hire experts, and know what you are doing. Trump didn’t do that, most of the time.
Due to COVID and his unpopularity with the independent voters who are the kingmakers in American elections, Trump managed to lose the 2020 election to the senile, left-wing Joe Biden. He really did lose the election. Over 60 court rulings rejected various challenges to the 2020 presidential election results. That includes over a dozen rulings by judges appointed by Donald Trump himself. Most of the election results Trump called suspicious were not suspicious, but totally predictable based on public opinion polls. For example, those polls showed Biden leading Trump by 1.1% in Georgia in November 2020, right before the election. And Trump in fact lost in Georgia by close to that margin.
Big GOP donors who gave to Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns wish that Trump had not lost the 2020 election, But they mostly believe he did lose the 2020 election — because they follow elections closely, are politically savvy, and know what happened: Trump did in fact lose the election.
After the 2020 election, Trump raised $250 million from donors by making vote fraud claims that his own aides told him were mostly false. He raised that money to supposedly bring lawsuits challenging the election outcome. But instead, he directed most of the money to an unrelated political action committee — rather than using it to challenge the election. Because in his heart, he knew he had lost the election.
