Will the Trump verdict matter?
By 
I should say that my inclination is to agree with Erik that Trump being found guilty on all counts will probably not materially affect the 2024 presidential election. It definitely will not have any effect on Trump’s base, obviously. The question is whether it will have any impact on the small but critical number of low-information incoherent swing voters. I have no idea, but I don’t think that Josh Chafetz’s case is entirely unreasonable, so I thought I’d throw it out there for discussion:
2/ First of all, in a closely divided electorate, changing a few minds is significant.— Josh Chafetz (@joshchafetz) May 30, 2024
4/ Biden wants to paint Trump as both a chaos candidate and as a candidate who imperils democracy. This verdict can play into both narratives. By itself, it won't do all the work.— Josh Chafetz (@joshchafetz) May 30, 2024
6/ Think about the way that the Bush campaign created a narrative of Gore as a serial stretcher of the truth, or the way the Trump campaign created a narrative of Clinton as untrustworthy. It wasn't one thing; rather, it was a steady drip.— Josh Chafetz (@joshchafetz) May 30, 2024
8/8 But it is a resource for the Biden campaign. What they do with it, is up to them. /Fin/— Josh Chafetz (@joshchafetz) May 30, 2024
“LOL nothing matters” has a lot of explanatory power in American politics circa 2024, but there’s no downside in trying to make something of it.
And of course:
Do we have a live cam on Martha-Ann Alito's flagpole?— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) May 30, 2024