"First count...guilty...second count, guilty...third count..."
I've always been somewhere in the middle on how I feel about Democrats who have existed at various levels of "Losing My Shit" over the last six months.
I covered this in my post on May 20, Bad Vibes Nation. On one hand, I get that we all suffered a trauma in November 2016, one that we were assured never could happen in America. That jacked up a lot of people's views of America as the place where "it can't happen here." On the other hand, many of these same people refused to accept good news and wins. Progressive writers like Jeet Heer, Ryan Grim, and Anand Giridharadas have noted that Dems often stink at taking the win.
And friends, yesterday was a big win. So, we take. Donald Trump was found guilty 34 times over, and he is now a convicted felon. Given the man and his supporters are openly telling us their goal is to dismantle democracy, yesterday the system successfully defended itself.
Generally, guilty on 34 counts is not the ideal outcome for a presidential candidate, especially in a race that is currently a tossup. Various polls are showing that there will be a negative effect on the race for Trump in varying degrees. One note on any polls that come out in the next week or so, politically the trial is not over for Trump.
This gives the Biden campaign lots and lots of ammo that they can use to target low-information voters who were not paying much attention to the trial and will be seeing blaring headlines about Trump's conviction for days. Not only is the question "Are you really going to vote for a convicted felon for president of the United States?" but also "Are you really going to vote for a serial rapist?" given Stormy Daniels' description of how their sexual encounter unfolded. Biden can contrast this with his achievements (which really are many) and his vision for the future.
Meanwhile, it's pretty much a given that Trump will rant and rave about crooked judges and offer a vision of America as a broken nation based solely on his own convictions. Like his moronic defense strategy of going after Michael Cohen and disparaging Stormy Daniels, this is going to be one dopey campaign strategy. No one has a crystal ball but it is really hard to see how this will be a winning plan for the Lumpy Orange Hemmoroid. No matter how hard the usual suspects in the DC media will try to argue that this actually helps Trump.
So, buck up, my fellow Democrats. We still have a lot of work to do with a tough election in front of us, so we are not totally out of the woods. But we have something to celebrate, a tangible victory in a long battle against the cancer that is Trumpism. A victory that some of us needed. So feed off it, it's real.
The last word goes to John Hiatt.
No comments:
Post a Comment