Democrats are strongly rejecting the notion that convicting former President Trump will be in any way helpful to his run for president.
Only the term “convicted felon,” Democrats say, will dissuade voters from supporting the former president.
They also noted that Trump could be on probation when he accepts the Republican nomination in July, which they suggested would not be a good thing for a candidate running for the highest office in the land.
“There is no world where a presidential candidate convicted of 34 criminal charges is a political asset,” said Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons, who worked in the Biden White House until last year. “Republicans are asking us to believe something that defies the entire American political experience, which is that a convicted felon is a good candidate for president.
“You can’t tell me he’s better off with his mother in Sheboygan,” Simmons added, referring to the town in the battleground state of Wisconsin. “This defies all common sense.”
Simmons and more than a dozen Democrats interviewed by The Hill say the conviction complicates Trump’s efforts to win back the White House, even as they acknowledge the electoral lead Trump now enjoys over Biden in state polls.
They argued that the conviction is bad news for Trump and, because the verdict is so significant, it hits voters who don’t pay attention to the day-to-day action of the presidential race. They also said it would make it harder for Trump to win over the independents or conservative Democrats he needs to win a tight race.
“There are few political moments that reach a wide audience and define a candidate for a broad swath of voters, but Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 criminal charges is one of them,” said Democratic strategist Tim Hogan. “For soft Democrats or center-left independents, it is a strong marker of Trump’s selfishness and lawlessness. And many of these voters may be pushed to the polls or, more solidly, back into Biden’s column, as they are reminded of the chaos that follows Trump everywhere.”
“It’s a big brick in Trump’s backpack for the rest of the race,” Hogan added.
Republicans have rallied to Trump’s cause since the New York jury on Thursday found the former president guilty of 34 charges of falsifying business records to cover up matters that may have influenced the 2016 elections.
They argued that Trump’s accusation was politically motivated and sought to present Trump as a victim of that political system.
The former president himself tried to lubricate the ground for the discussion. For weeks, as the trial dragged on, he used the television cameras present to argue that the judicial system was being used against him.
On Friday, he continued to make that argument during a press event where he did not answer questions, blaming Biden for the trial even though the case was made by New York officials.
“All of this is done by Biden and his people. And perhaps his people are more important. I don’t know if Biden knows much about this because I don’t know if he knows much about anything,” Trump said.
Biden and the White House rejected such accusations on Friday, calling them dangerous.
“It’s reckless, it’s dangerous, it’s irresponsible for someone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict,” said the president. said from the White House.
Trump has sometimes had difficulty uniting the entire Republican Party, but the guilty verdict in New York appeared to have the effect of putting some of the former president’s GOP critics on the same page as his supporters.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), two of Trump’s biggest skeptics who have kept their distance from the trial, criticized the verdict. And the National Republican Senatorial Committee reported it had its biggest online fundraising day of the cycle on Thursday.
Some Democrats were less certain the verdict would hurt Trump, but questioned whether it would actually change the situation with voters focused on inflation and the economy.
“I’m not going to lie, it’s a big deal, a big deal,” one Democratic strategist said of Trump’s conviction. “But part of me wonders if anyone will care five months from now when they still can’t pay their bills or buy a house or a car and are upset about inflation and blame Biden for it.”
In his Friday speech, Trump sought to draw attention to Biden, blaming the president for political issues, including immigration.
“When you look at our country, what is happening where millions and millions of people come from all over the world. Not just South America. From Africa, Asia, the Middle East”, said the former president in his 33-minute speech in New York. “We have a president and a group of fascists who don’t want to do anything about it.”
But some Democrats said the conviction gave them a way to frame the election, and Biden should not allow Trump to frame it any other way.
As Democratic strategist Christy Setzer said, “Do you want to vote for the first felon for president?”
Setzer and other Democrats said it’s up to Biden to press home his base and undecided voters over the next five months.
She said the main reason Americans have “remembered the worst of the Trump presidency,” including 1 million deaths from COVID-19, family separation at the border and the January 2021 insurrection at the Capitol, is “because We stopped talking about it.”
“There is a tremendous opportunity to reshape the contours of the campaign [and] be on the offensive,” Setzer said. “But only if we are strong and vocal.”
Former Rep. Steve Israel (DN.Y.), who served as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, pointed to recent polls that showed voters might be moved a little more by a conviction than an indictment. He said that could be helpful to Biden and Democrats in the fall, even if only marginally.
At the same time, Israel added: “It is just a sad sign of our times that the words convicted criminal in front of a presidential candidate are not automatically disqualifying.”
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