“He’s going to have good days”
In the final season of The West Wing, two candidates are running against each other for President, and one of them becomes frustrated because the other is coming off a positive news cycle. That candidate’s aide then tries to keep him grounded by saying something like this about the other candidate: “He’s going to have good days.”
Of course that was a fictional presidential general election between two candidates who both knew what they were doing and each wanted to do what they thought was right for America. We don’t really have those anymore, do we? Come to think of it, neither of those fictional candidates was facing eighty-eight felony charges.
But even in this unprecedented and bizarre 2024 general election in which a moderately popular incumbent is running against a despised career criminal who’s about to go on trial, this week still stands out as being remarkably good for Joe Biden and jarringly bad for Donald Trump.
Biden keeps getting mixed to good economic news. The polls keep trending slightly in Biden’s favor. And while the Arizona Supreme Court ruling is a tragedy, it’s undoubtedly good for Biden’s reelection prospects. So Biden would be having a really good week even if nothing were happening with Trump one way or the other.
Yet plenty is indeed happening with Trump. His last ditch efforts to delay the start of his first criminal trial have failed, and jury selection will begin on Monday. Trump also had terrible political luck with the Arizona Supreme Court ruling, and he ineptly made the whole thing even worse for himself than it needed to be.
Trump is having a bad week on all fronts. But what does a good day even look like for him at this point? The closest thing to good day he’s had in quite awhile was when his bond was reduced from $464 million to $175 million. That’s supposed to be good news? And of course the bond he posted was so problematic that it could end up getting rejected, which would fully negate the one piece of good news Trump has received this year.
Presidential elections in the United States, by faulty design, end up being so unpredictably close that you can’t just sit back and assume you’re going to win even when the other side is falling to pieces. But make no mistake, Donald Trump is falling to pieces. He’s having one of the worst weeks that any presidential nominee has ever had. And next week, which will see him go on criminal trial, will undoubtedly be even worse for him. Even the weakest of candidates occasionally have good days. But at this rate it’s hard to imagine Trump ever having a good day again.
