Oh, I thought him going to jail would be one more bump for him and his "they're out to get me" crusade.
This Trial is helping Trump immensely, if he gets acquitted
- Thread starter FAUlty Gator
- Start date
Oh, I thought him going to jail would be one more bump for him and his "they're out to get me" crusade.
Nah. I'm talking mostly about this has prevented him from being out there saying crazy shit and has forced him to be succinct. Three minute snippet with just the talking points and none of the crazy helps him, IMO.
I confess I read it the same way. The trial was helping him either way, and that an acquittal helps him even more.
You're not the only one who thinks it may end up being helpful. This was a guest opinion in yesterday's NYT:
For the next several weeks, the presumptive Republican nominee for president will be spending his days in a New York City courthouse. By any normal campaign standard, taking your candidate off the road for much of April and May of a presidential year would be devastating. But “normal” and Donald Trump live in different countries. The trial will afford Mr. Trump the opportunity to define the essence of his candidacy: I am a victim.
The very competent operatives running the Trump campaign didn’t draw this up as their ideal campaign plan, but they will appreciate its potential. The Manhattan courtroom will be the setting for Mr. Trump to play the role of a familiar American archetype: the wronged man seeking justice from corrupt, powerful forces. The former president is good in this role, and that’s no small thing.
Presidential campaigns pay a great deal of attention to scheduling — where, when and how many events should a candidate do on any given day. But here’s the most important element of scheduling: putting a candidate in a setting that provides a chance to excel. In George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign, our default event was to put him at a school, preferably one not in a wealthy ZIP code. Education was his signature issue as governor of Texas. He knew a lot about it and cared about it passionately, and the odds were it would be a successful event. It was not surprising to me that when planes struck the twin towers, President Bush was in an elementary school reading to students.
Mr. Trump loves big rallies. He feeds off the crowd like a vampire at a blood bank. But his act is getting a little old. Cable news no longer cuts live to these invariably repetitive events, and they don’t seem to drive as much conversation among voters as they once did. By contrast, the trial gives Mr. Trump the benefits of renewed interest from voters and the media with no burden on his team to increase campaigning or produce a newsworthy event.
I feel like I have spent half my life in campaign headquarters, staring at a map and a calendar. The map is always too large, and the calendar too short. Time is the one resource allocated to campaigns in exactly the same amounts. But there’s a dirty little secret to presidential campaigns: Where you campaign may be of little consequence. A courthouse could be as valuable as the swingiest swing district in the swingiest swing state.
When Joe Biden received more votes than any presidential candidate in history while largely campaigning from his basement, the MAGA world saw it as proof the campaign was stolen. But I wasn’t surprised. Struck by how much time and energy was spent in racing to campaign events, I asked a basic question in the 2012 Mitt Romney campaign: Does it matter where he goes? We started polling in markets a few days before and after an event, and the results were consistent. There was a three-to-four-point bump immediately after a big rally but it quickly evaporated. A week after the event, the market had reset to where it was before.
It was depressing but not particularly useful information. Any slowing of a campaign’s pace would have been perceived as weakness or surrender. Covid gave Mr. Biden a chance to opt out without penalty and put the focus instead where he wanted it (on the Trump White House’s disastrous handling of the pandemic). In its own way, the New York trial is offering an opt-out to Mr. Trump as well as a strategic opportunity.
The Trump campaign is not about persuasion. It’s about stirring up anger inside every possible Trump supporter so that voting is a righteous act of fury, not a mere civic duty. If you believe the deep state stole the last election, the legal persecution of Mr. Trump is further proof of the state’s desperation to keep him from reassuming his rightful place in the Oval Office. Combine all of that with a less-than-inspiring Biden coalition, and it’s a blueprint for a Trump Electoral College victory.
Relying on turning out an existing base of supporters (rather than broadening that base) is not new to the Trump campaign. And I get it: In 2004, we found it difficult to persuade new voters in the Bush campaign. I remember sitting in focus groups and showing ads about women voting in Afghanistan that would bring the room to tears. Followed by them saying, “But you know I’m not voting for the guy.” Out of that reality came the plan known as “fortress precincts.” The focus became increasing the turnout percentage of Bush supporters and how to get a precinct that went 60 percent for Mr. Bush in 2000 to increase to 64 percent.
It worked, if barely. Had fewer people than at an Ohio State football home game changed their votes, Ohio would have made John Kerry the 44th president. What’s different about Mr. Trump’s approach is that polarization is the key to his turnout strategy, which creates energy for Mr. Trump by enraging non-Trump voters. Everything about the Trump campaign is about driving Americans apart. Mr. Trump opens his rallies with a rendition of the national anthem by a group of men imprisoned for their parts in the Jan. 6 insurrection, on which he also recites the Pledge of Allegiance. “I am your retribution” is a long way from “I am a uniter, not a divider” and “Hope and Change.”
In this strategic paradigm, indictments and subsequent court appearances are a gift from the political gods. Mr. Trump is a candidate of anger and grievance, which has always had a strange quality for someone who was a millionaire in high school. How can the man with a golden toilet be a victim? White grievance was Mr. Trump’s on ramp to the victim podium in his previous runs. That’s still essential to the Trump candidacy, but now, in his telling, he can add the burden of persecution by corrupt (and mostly nonwhite) prosecutors to the cross he carries to that Calvary hill called the White House.
Six weeks or more is a long run for a 77-year-old performer in a one-man show with no understudy. The judge has correctly made it clear he will not allow the looming election to affect the proceedings. The energy of the opening days will fade in the long grind of a trial. To me, this trial is really about whether Mr. Trump actually paid $130,000 to a porn star without any sex to show for it. That absurdity may begin to sink in with the few voters still in play. But we should not normalize how extraordinary it is that Mr. Trump is still a viable candidate for president. The Biden campaign will watch the spectacle unfold, asking, “How is this guy still in the race?”
It’s a good question. But he is. And he can win.
I see that. Seems like common sense that a gag order, confinement and limited press time forces him to be disciplined.
What's fascinating about Trump and Trump supporters is how easily they dismiss Trump's actions/behavior on issues that they represent are important to them. For example, OP opines that it's bad in the country right now and refers to a list of overtly bad things: including rampant antisemitism. And, further, how Trump makes a speech pointing these things out and how he's going to make it better. But not a single Trump voter ever refers to the fact that Trump has had meetings and a dinner with Nick Fuentes. It used to be paying of porn stars and playboy models that you slept with while your wife was pregnant AND having dinner with a rabid racist and antisemite would disqualify you, but not with this guy....it's really fascinating.
Do you think for a second that a hush money trial on something that we've known about for 8 years matters more to the average voter than the cost of gas or chicken wings or the fact they can't buy a house or that the border is a mess? Whether we like it or not, Trump's millions of character flaws are all baked into the Trump cake by now. what specifically is it that I said that you disagree with?
I think Trump's character flaws (if that is what we are going to reduce it to) should have disqualified him within the GOP. However, his populist rhetoric influences that working poor and the poorly educated--motivates them to vote--but ignores his policies. Can you explain how his plan to devalue the dollar, increase tariffs on all Chinese goods 60% and increase government spending to carry on his first four years will solve these issues?
I am not advocating, voting for nor ever have voted for Trump. Are you unable to objectively look at something and understand that whether you agree with them or not, things can happen?
I don’t have to like Trump to see things are going his way. Hell, Michael Moore said the same shit in 2012 and the Dems all gave him shit about it.
I don’t know why it’s so hard to understand that to defeat an opponent you better understand that they are a legit threat to beat you.
Is your post talking about those things. I don't think it is. Why can't you stay on topic?
I wasn't suggesting you were advocating for Trump. I just find the occurrence (i.e., identifying burning bush issues and suggesting Trump has a policy that will fix them) fascinating. I agree, Trump may win the race. It will be brutal and a few people in 3 states will decide the race. It's likely the votes of less than 100,000 people will decide who wins the presidency.
So, in my OP when I said "Then at the end of every day he comes out to cheers where he just gives a three minute synopsis of all of the bad shit happening in the country", you didn't think it included Crime, the border, inflation, interest rates and rampant anti-Semitism?
Also the other poster I responded to there said, "Hanging out his dirty laundry isn't going to win him any independent vote." So I explained to him that he's gained 13 points in NY since the last election so it's obvious he's winning some of that independent vote back.
Why was this so hard to follow and why are you so mad about it?
Latest posts
-
-
The Youngest DeJean: Jaxx Earns All-State Honors, Begins Recruitment
- Latest: Eliot Clough
-
-
Source Confirms to Rivals, Iowa has been in Contact with General Booty
- Latest: Eliot Clough