Saw that coming
For those of us who closely follow politics on a daily basis, it may be hard to fathom, but the reality is that a whole lot of Americans simply don’t pay attention to politics daily. They don’t watch cable news. They don’t follow political accounts on social media. They decline to get into political conversations in the real world. And so what they do hear about politics is tangential, third hand, so old as to be outdated.
To put it another way, until Donald Trump’s first criminal trial actually started, the majority of Americans probably didn’t even know he was going on trial. Sure, they heard things about indictments and such. But there was also that persistent talk from the media that Trump’s trials would never happen.
Yet Trump’s trial is indeed now happening. More to the point, it’s been happening long enough now – a full week of jury selection plus a full week of witness testimony – that even the people who try not to follow politics are hearing about it. Moreover they’re hearing that the testimony against Trump is devastating.
So it’s not surprising that new polling says 82% of Americans now think Trump is going to be convicted of a felony before the election. This puts it into general consensus territory. The vast majority of Americans, anti-Trump and pro-Trump and everything in between, now expect Trump to be convicted.
Why does this matter? Because it influences everything that’s going to happen between now and November. If most of the public now understands that Trump is likely to be convicted, the mainstream media is now going to have to start admitting it, and so on. It also means that when Trump is convicted, the vast majority of Americans will see it as a fait accompli, not as a surprise. It’s not going to be seen as some kind of stunt conviction that’s coming out of nowhere. It’s going to be seen as confirmation that Trump is indeed a criminal.
Will this impact Trump’s die hard supporters? Of course not. But they’re not the story and never have been, because their votes are already counted. The election is going to come down to two groups of people: conservatives who are trying to decide whether to vote for Trump or stay home, and mainstream Americans who are trying to decide whether to vote for Biden or stay home. Trump’s conviction will influence both groups.
