I suppose that by next week we’ll have polls telling us whether or not the guilty verdicts against Donald Trump have had any impact on his numbers. I’m going to guess not.
Nothing Trump has done wrong or Joe Biden has done right has moved the needle at all. Trump once famously said that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn’t hurt his approval ratings. That’s not quite true. If his victim was Taylor Swift that’d cost him three, maybe four points, easy.
Maybe if the charges were serious and persuadable voters were watching the trial closely the verdict might have had some impact. But outside of partisans, Americans were not paying close attention and the charges themselves were penny ante. The guy falsified some records to cover up payments to a porn star to keep her quiet about an affair, as if cheating on his wife is the worst thing Trump ever did.
From the start I thought it was a mistake to bring this case because it feeds the notion that Trump is a victim and so it tarnishes the prosecution in the other more serious cases against him.
As a political matter, Trump will raise a ton of money off the convictions and his supporters will be more fired up than ever. The only question is how it might impact voters on the fence and that’s what the polling will soon tell us. My guess is that it won’t have much effect because those who will think again before voting for him will be balanced out by those who see what he was convicted of as just what you’d expect from this guy. Taylor Swift was unharmed in this story.
Moreover, any impact from the trial will fade to nothing by election day.
As someone who just wants Trump to go away, my only realistic hope is that this doesn’t actually improve his standing in the polls.
We’ve got the Q&Q for your Saturday morning. Otherwise, enjoy the weekend.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
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