Sean Trende
When former prime minister Harold Macmillan was once asked by a reporter to identify his greatest challenge as prime minister, he supposedly responded, “Events, dear boy, events.” So too, it seems, with writing a weekly newsletter. We ended last week’s analysis of “Are we underrating Trump’s chances?” with a promise to look at the positive scenarios for Biden in this week’s edition. But we’d be completely remiss in our duties as an elections analyst were we to spend this week discussing something other than the fallout from the jury’s verdict in New York City. Of course, this is potentially one of the scenarios where things end up going well for Biden, so we aren’t completely off course. Regardless, we’ll return next week with the second part of our two-part series.
In the interest of full disclosure, this author is extremely skeptical regarding the merits of this case, as well as the conduct of the trial. That’s another column altogether, but it is sufficient to say here that if we believe Trump should be treated like any other defendant (a low bar for a former president, in my view), then this is a matter that clearly should never have been charged. This author is also on record stating that the other crimes with which Trump is charged are far more worthy and serious. However, because we can’t have nice things, it is extremely unlikely that they will go to trial before the election.