The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and co-author with John B. Judis of the new Book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Well, he finally did it. After dithering for months, Biden has finally issued an executive order (temporarily) closing the southern border if a trigger number of illegal crossings is hit. (The details may be found here.)

This is a step in the right direction on an issue that is both highly salient and on which voter sentiment toward Biden and the Democrats is heavily negative. But will it work?

I am skeptical that by itself it will yield big political benefits. This is for a very simple reason: it’s just taken too long for Biden to do this. As wave after wave of illegal immigrants entered the country on his watch and voter concern about the crisis at the border spiked, he did nothing. That has allowed voter attitudes on the issue to harden in a way that is both highly disadvantageous to Biden and difficult to change this late in his term. He has, after all, been in office for three years and four and a half months, with a mere five months to go until the November election.

So: what took him so long? The progressive left is the culprit. They have, in a sense, been holding him prisoner and preventing him from responding to a worsening situation earlier. Consider how this whole mess started.

When Biden came into office, he immediately issued a series of executive orders dramatically loosening the rules for handling illegal immigrants. This was rapturously applauded by the progressive left and the various immigration advocacy groups. As summarized by the invaluable David Leonhardt:

Biden tried to pause deportations. He changed the definition of asylum to include fear of gang violence. He used immigration parole—which the law says should be used “on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons”—to admit hundreds of thousands of people. The parole programs alone amounted to “the largest expansion of legal immigration in modern U.S. history,” Camilo Montoya-Galvez of CBS News wrote.

Would-be migrants, as well as the Mexican cartels that run transit networks, heard a clear message: Entering the United States had become easier. The number of people attempting to do so spiked almost immediately.

Another Times reporter, Miriam Jordan, crisply explained why so many migrants came:

It is not just because they believe they will be able to make it across the 2,000 mile southern frontier. They are also certain that once they make it to the United States they will be able to stay.

Forever.

And by and large, they are not wrong …

Now, who could have seen this coming? The answer is: practically anyone who was not under pressure from the progressive left not to see it. At the time, and even more now, the reality of American public opinion and politics is that border security is a huge issue that cannot be elided in any attempt to reform the immigration system. Public opinion polling over the years has consistently shown overwhelming majorities in favor of more spending and emphasis on border security.

Therefore, even though the public had become more sympathetic to immigrants and immigration, partially as a thermostatic reaction to the practices of the Trump administration, that did not mean that Democrats could simply be the opposite of Trump on this issue. He was closed; we’re open! He was mean; we’re nice! Any moves toward greater leniency at the border raised the possibility of knock-on effects and unintended consequences that would be highly unpopular. How did you prevent people from gaming the system? How did you handle the possibility of surges at the border to take advantage of lenient rules?

These questions were not asked by Democrats and, as the situation worsened, still could not be asked because the progressive left, inside and outside of the administration, would not permit it. The implicit mantra was “more is better and less is racist.” The result was inaction: Biden was the prisoner of progressive left forces who threatened to scream bloody murder if he tried to clamp down on the porous border. And claimed that the mighty armies of progressive voters they allegedly controlled would punish Biden and his party by withdrawing their support or simply failing to turn out in elections.

Now Biden is attempting his jailbreak. Predictably, the progressive left is not happy. A sampling:

It’s disappointing and I’ve made that clear to the White House as well. It does not solve the problem at the border…It makes it so that we have bought into sort of this idea that you can fix the border without fixing the legal immigration system. What you need is more resources, more legal pathways, modernization of the system—none of those things are happening with this.

—Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Seattle), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus

You can build a wall as high as you want. You can make it hard to receive asylum if you want. It’s not going to sustainably reduce the number of people wanting to come to the United States for a number of reasons until you identify and address root causes.

—Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California)

I’m disappointed that this is a direction that the President has decided to take. We think it needs to be paired with positive actions and protections for undocumented folks that have been here for a long time.

—Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-Los Angeles), chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus

Translation: if you can’t do everything, do nothing. More resources and legal pathways! Root causes! Positive actions and protections! This is a country where people are so freaked out by uncontrolled illegal immigration that half now support mass deportations of illegal immigrants, including 45 percent of Hispanics and 42 of percent of Democrats. What part of, “We need to get a lot tougher on border security,” don’t these Democrats understand?

The progressive left would clearly like to put Biden back in prison. And of course, the ACLU, the progressive left’s reliable attack dog, is suingto stop Biden’s executive order and re-open the floodgates at the southern border. They may well succeed, which would be another headache for Biden. With friends like these…

Biden would be well-advised to enjoy his freedom, even if it is perhaps too little, too late. In fact, he should extend his jailbreak to other issues, from crime to climate to race and gender, where the progressive left seeks to enforce epistemic closure and prevent sensible moves to the center. That would help him rebuild the normie image which helped him so much in 2020, but is now so tattered thanks to his “friends’ on the progressive left.

Five months left and Trump is still ahead. Maybe the New York verdict will help Biden. Maybe an intensified campaign focusing on Trump’s vulnerabilities will move low information, low engagement voters from key demographics back towards Biden. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But fixing Biden’s vulnerabilities clearly needs to be part of the strategy.

In short, the jailbreak should continue!

Some excerpts from “Showing Contempt for Young Voters Is a Great Way for Democrats to Lose in November” by Jeet Heer at The Nation: “Contempt for the Democratic Party’s progressive base is a sure path to Donald Trump’s return. A specter haunts the Democratic Party: the ghost of Clintonism, an ideology that’s been discredited at the ballot box yet still retains a mysteriously powerful hold on party elders. Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016, when she lost a winnable election to a political novice who scored the highest disapproval polling numbers in modern American history, should have sounded the death knell for her brand of politics….This disdain, both for working-class whites whose lives had become precarious as a result of the neoliberalism championed by her husband and for young progressives who sought to break the neoliberal consensus, was matched by an eager courting of suburban Republicans. Corporate Democrats thought this overwhelmingly white constituency could be won over by a mixture of performative revulsion at Trump’s personal vulgarity and nationalist celebrations of foreign-policy hawkishness….Trump’s victory had many causes, but the Clintons’ hostility toward large parts of the Democratic coalition stands out as an unforced error, especially egregious because it was a choice….Joe Biden’s success in 2020 was due in no small part to his deliberate rejection of Clinton’s failed strategy. “Scranton Joe” courted both Sanders voters and blue-collar whites. He promised expanded infrastructure spending and tougher trade deals. Progressive young people might not have given Biden their votes in the primaries, but he campaigned as a candidate who saw them as part of his coalition and duly won their votes on Election Day….Until early May, Biden gave Israel a virtual blank check to fight a ferocious war with massive civilian casualties. This has been enormously unpopular with young people and nonwhite voters, splintering the Democratic coalition anew.” Heer’s article is very hard on Clinton, who I believe probably would have made a good president. But her blind spots, as Heer argues so effectively, made her a lousy candidate in too many working-class precincts. But let’s not lose track of Heer’s larger point – Democrats should reject bashing young voters and other lefty groups, who could help in a close election. That’s an unforced error worth avoiding.

Not to dwell excessively on elections past, but Tom McGrath has a provocatively-titled article, “How 1980s Yuppies Gave Us Donald Trump. If it weren’t for the young urban professionals of the 1980s, we’d never have MAGA,” at Politico, in which he argues: “If you really want to understand Trump’s appeal, you need to go back a few decades to examine the social forces that shaped his rise as a real estate developer and remade American politics in the 1980s. Specifically, you need to wind back the tape to the 1984 Democratic primary, the almost-pulled-it-off candidacy of Colorado Senator Gary Hart and the emerging yuppie demographic that made up his base. They don’t remotely resemble the working-class base we associate with Trump today. But together, they helped shift the Democratic Party’s focus away from its labor coalition and toward the hyper-educated liberal voters it largely represents today, eventually creating an opening for Trump to cast Democrats as out-of-touch elites and draw the white working class away from them. In fact, if it weren’t for 1980s yuppies and the way they shifted America’s political parties, the modern MAGA GOP might never have arisen in the first place….Ironically, it was Donald Trump — if not a yuppie himself, then at least a walking symbol of 1980s glitz and excess — who spotted the political opportunity, persuading many working‐class Americans that he was on their side. In office, Trump’s only significant legislative accomplishment was a massive tax cut for wealthy Americans, though he also imposed significant trade tariffs on China….Democrats have tried to win back the working class in recent years — this past September, President Joe Biden made history as the first sitting commander in chief to join a picket line when he expressed solidarity with United Auto Workers on strike in Detroit — but they continue to struggle with college-educated liberals’ takeover of the party. It’s a hard road after so many years of neglect.” While Trump was emblematic of the more narcissistic yuppies of the 1980s, that doesn’t tell you how he mobilized contempt for liberals from 2016 to today and won over so many white working-class voters. That’s a different – and more relevant – story.

Florida Daily reports “Currently, the abortion and the marijuana amendment on this year’s Florida ballot aren’t a top concern for Florida voters. Instead, it’s insurance and inflation according to a new survey by the Associated Industries of Florida (AIF) Center for Political Strategy….Results revealed that 26% of Florida voters rank property insurance costs as their top issue, followed by inflation at 21%. Illegal immigration (13%) and housing costs (10%). “Its economic kitchen table issues,” said AIF….When it came to political candidates, AIF found that voters chose a generic Republican candidate over a generic Democratic candidate by a 47%-43% margin, 10% of voters said they were undecided. But registered Independents said they preferred a generic Democrat over a generic Republican by a 43%-36% margin….On issues facing the state, the GOP outperformed Democrats on most issues….The economy, (44%-23%), reducing inflation/everyday costs (35%-25%), crime (46%-16%), education (38%-31%), and protecting personal freedoms (45%-37%)…. But on the state’s top issue, the plurality of voters (44%) believes both parties aren’t doing a productive job lowering property insurance costs….“The average Floridian is really feeling the effects of the insurance crisis and higher prices,” said AIF Vice President of Political Operations Jeremy Sheftel. “With hurricane season officially underway, it will be worth monitoring to see how voters will respond as the season progresses.” AIF notes that as of April of this year, there are 13,477,715 total registered voters in Florida. Republicans lead with 5,248,509 (39%) followed by Democrats with 4,344,377 (32%) and Independents with 3,884,829 (29%). Since the 2020 voter registration book closing, Republicans have seen a net gain of +50,083 voters while Democrats and Independents have seen net losses of -978,896 and -111,793, respectively.”

In “President vs. Senate: What to Watch in the Polls, and What History Suggests,” Kyle Kondik observes at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “In both the 2016 and 2020 elections, the party that won each Senate race was the same as the party that won that state for president, with just one exception: In 2020, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) won reelection despite President Biden winning her state for president. Our J. Miles Coleman tracked the history of split Senate/presidential results in the post-World War II era; such split results used to be common but have been rare in the past two presidential election cycles. In another Crystal Ball article, Miles documented the decline of Senate/presidential ticket-splitting over the last six presidential cycles….The presidency will likely be decided by how many of the following six states Biden can hang onto, all of which he carried in 2020 but by less than his 4.5-point edge in the national popular vote: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Of these states, 5 of the 6 have Senate races (all but Georgia). Democratic Senate candidates generally lead in those states while Joe Biden does not (more on the specifics below in Table 3)….Just to reiterate the basic math, Democrats have a 51-49 Senate majority now (that includes the independents who caucus with them). West Virginia is effectively already lost for Democrats with Manchin’s retirement, unless he uses his new independent status to run for reelection (but that seems like more of a consideration for a late run for governor based on recent reporting, and Manchin would be an underdog in the context of any 2024 statewide bid in West Virginia). So that reduces the Democratic margin to 50-50, and they don’t have any clear offensive targets. In addition to holding all of the swing state seats, Democrats also need to defend Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Jon Tester (D-MT) in states that are going to vote for Trump by, respectively, 5-10 (or more) and 15-20 (or more) points. We didn’t include these races in Table 3 because there’s little recent nonpartisan polling in either race. Brown and Tester have both waded carefully in the aftermath of Trump’s conviction in a New York trial last week, which makes sense given the potential for the conviction to further nationalize the electorate at a time when Brown and Tester both need a lot of crossover support to win….Overall, it will be important to continue to monitor the differences between the presidential and the Senate polling. We suspect that actual margins in the key states will be closer than polls currently show, but it’s not unimaginable that we’ll get some split presidential-Senate results this year. And Democrats will almost certainly need to produce at least two such results—in Montana and Ohio—to salvage even a 50-50 split in the Senate.”

Examining the evidence we have so far about the impact of Trump’s criminal conviction, I’m becoming worried that Democrats are assuming too much about Trump’s vulnerabilities, so I wrote a warning at New York:

For months now, many political observers have stared at polls that show Donald Trump with a modest lead over Joe Biden and have placed a mental thumb on the scales for the incumbent due to “Trump’s legal problems.” This was particularly common (and justifiable) back when it looked as though Trump could be on trial for multiple criminal charges in different cases before Election Day. And even when it turned out the (arguably) weakest case against him was the only one that would reach fruition before November, the available evidence and plain logic suggested that being officially branded as a “convicted criminal” could knock Trump’s candidacy off-balance in a serious way.

Anyone holding their breath to see if a guilty verdict in the Trump hush-money trial would impact the election can now exhale. While it’s possible to look at the data and see a glass that is half-empty or half-full, the overall indication is that Trump’s conviction has not changed the race. And on balance, that’s good for the 45th president.

Yes, the “story” that emerged from a Manhattan courtroom on May 30 has concluding chapters yet to come, particularly on July 11 when Judge Juan Merchan has scheduled a sentencing hearing for Trump. And we can anticipate hundreds of millions of dollars in paid messages from the Biden campaign reminding voters the president’s opponent is a felon. But in a way, that’s a partial victory for Trump since it reinforces his campaign’s argument that his indictment, trial, and conviction in the hush-money case were a piece of partisan jobbery and not a legitimate criminal proceeding at all. Ideally, the Biden campaign would have liked the conviction to speak for itself without any goosing from a White House that stands accused (without a bit of documentation) of orchestrating the entire prosecution.

In other words, facts aside, Trump’s conviction and his overall status as a man perpetually on the wrong side of the law are being perceived through partisan lenses, which in turn will tend to encourage unaffiliated voters to discount them. It’s not fair and it’s not right, but it’s reality.

What this means more broadly is that Trump may once again defy expectations based on the available precedents. This has happened an awful lot in the man’s relatively short but eventful career in elected politics, beginning with the moment when many of us were certain that career was about to abruptly end — when he blithely disrespected the very sacred cow of America’s favorite POW war hero, John McCain, and paid no price for it.

You can argue all day about why Trump seems to be “Teflon Don” or even conclude that it’s not about him but about his feckless opponents in both parties or about an atmosphere of partisan polarization (to which he has definitely and self-servingly contributed) that nothing can penetrate. But whatever it is, we’re in a presidential contest that appears to be all but impervious to the kinds of things that used to be called “game changers.” It’s time to accept at least as a rebuttable presumption that the game isn’t changing. And that has implications for future events like the presidential debates, the two major-party conventions, and the cut-and-thrust of the campaign competition as the November election grows nigh.

That doesn’t mean Trump’s going to win, to be clear. “Convicted criminal” or not, he remains relatively very unpopular: He’s incapable of moderating his savage and vengeful message, and this year’s turnout dynamics could make Biden’s base of support more reliable. And Trump’s polling lead, even though it has induced regular panic in some Democratic ranks, has never been more than a few ticks away from vanishing altogether. But no one should expect Trump to self-destruct or persuadable voters to wake up some morning and realize what a terrible man he is.

If, late on Election Night, Trump appears on TVs and computer screens as the president-elect of the United States, as he did to the horror of Blue America in 2016 — or worse yet, if he loses and claims victory anyway as he did in 2020 — no one should be that surprised. We’ve been here before.

The following article by Digby is cross-posted from Digby’s Hullabaloo:

In the NY Times post-verdict survey of 2,000 people they’d surveyed before there was a perceptible shift toward Biden. It was only a couple of points but what’s meaningful about it is who shifted. Nate Cohn wrote:

Perhaps not surprisingly, the swings were relatively pronounced among young, nonwhite, less engaged and low-turnout voters. In fact, 20 percent of Mr. Trump’s previous supporters who are Black now say they back Mr. Biden.

Only 2% of non-Black swing voters shifted to Biden. Apparently, Trump’s racist belief that Black voters would like him more because he’s a convicted criminal may not be such a great idea after all.

Dan Pfeiffer writes:

This comports with my most optimistic take on this election. Trump’s lead is very fragile because it depends on people who disagree with him on most issues, don’t particularly like him, and have a history of voting for Democrats, including Joe Biden.

The defining characteristic of the persuadable voter universe is their disdain for politics and their abstention from political news. While the conviction was the biggest news event in the 2024 campaign, large swathes of the electorate saw little to no coverage of the verdict. In this era, you have to actively seek out the news. It is no longer fed to you via social media IV. In fact, Meta is actively suppressing political news as they try to pivot away from politics.

According to Data for Progress:

Notably, as of the time this poll was fielded between May 31 and June 1, only 37% of swing voters said they had heard, seen, or read “a lot” about Trump being convicted, compared with 61% of likely voters overall.

Democrats have an imperative to keep Trump’s verdict in the headlines and relate it to the larger story we are telling about why Trump is the wrong choice. We absolutely cannot let the felony conviction of the potential next President get memory-holed like so many of Trump’s previous transgressions.

I agree with this. In order to penetrate the minds of swing voters who are tuned out, apathetic and pessimistic you have to repeat things over and over again. Convicted felon Donald Trump understands this and it works.

Check out the new union peeps for Biden ad:

Bearing in mind that swing state polls are more relevant than national polls, your inner optimist will enjoy this report from Simon Rosenberg’s Hopium Chronicles: “It’s pretty clear the race has a moved a few points towards Biden in recent weeks, and that we are now in a close, competitive election where neither candidate has a firm lead….It is wrong now to say that Trump leads, and the media needs to not replicate their 2022 red wave mistake of dismissing or ignoring data that doesn’t fit the Republicans are strong/Dems are weak narrative – particularly when we’ve been winning election after election of all kinds since Dobbs, and it’s been the Republican Party which has repeatedly struggled….when you expand your consideration of the strength of the two candidates and two parties to include other ways of evaluating political strength, I think Trump is in trouble. His party is broke, and broken. It’s an unprecedented dumpster fire, not a juggernaut. From the Washington Post this morning, Trump lags behind Biden in cash reserves while legal bills mount….There has been much discussion about whether this election will be a referendum on Biden or Trump….one of the biggest political developments in recent days has been the drying up of the GOP’s big attacks on Biden. Consider:

• The economy is remarkably strong, not weak
• Inflation has come way down, not soaring
• Crime, violent crime and murder rates are down across the US, not raging
• Domestic oil and renewable production is setting records, and US is more energy independent than in decades – there is no “war on energy” causing rising gas prices and loss of independence
• Democrats are for order at the border, they are for Trumpian chaos
• The “Biden crime family” narrative was a fake Russian info op, once again laundered by Republican useful idiots
• And now we see in the State of The Union Biden strong, smart and vigorous; and it turns out, of course, that Republican Special Counsel lied about Biden’s memory challenges

Republicans have no clear shot at him any more. There is no longer a strong case against Biden’s re-election. With that, I think what we are beginning to see is the election is increasingly becoming a referendum on Trump and not Biden. And that my friends is an election Republicans cannot possibly win.”

Trump munchkins have been charged in yet another election fraud scam, this time in Wisconsin. As Talia Jane reports at The New Republic: “Kenneth Chesebro got smacked with a felony fraud charge by Wisconsin prosecutors on Tuesday. Largely considered the architect of the fake electors plot to flip the 2020 election to Trump, Chesebro was charged alongside Michael Roman, head of Trump’s 2020 Election Day operations, and fellow Trump lawyer James Troupis. All were charged with one count of forgery in the case brought by Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Paul, according to court records….The statute listed for the Trump trio’s charges, “forgery-uttering,” is a Class H felony in Wisconsin, essentially defined as touting bogus official statements or fake legal documents or public records as true while knowing they’re fraudulent….Chesebro, as part of the fake elector scheme, attempted to send fake certified elector documents—which falsely claimed Wisconsin and Michigan electors chose Trump—to Washington, D.C., ahead of 2020’s presidential electoral certification process. The plot was spoiled when the documents infamously got stuck in the mail, leading to a last-minute scramble by the schemers to get the phony paperwork into the hands of then–Vice President Mike Pence in time to certify election results on January 6, 2021….Chesebro is also named as a co-conspirator in Georgia’s fake elector charges, where he is cooperating with the state and has pleaded guilty to planning the goofily villainous scheme. Chesebro is reportedly also cooperating with prosecutors in Michigan and Wisconsin….Tuesday’s charges are a first for Troupis and Roman, who join the vaunted ranks of at least a dozen other Trump lawyers and toadies who conspired to submit fake electors to certify the 2020 election for Trump. Troupis and Chesebro are also being sued by Biden electors in Wisconsin for the plot, where 10 other Republican electors settled a lawsuit in December 2023 forcing them to admit Biden won the 2020 election.”

Some insights from “Swing-state Senate Democrats are touting Biden’s record – without mentioning him” by Arit John and David Wright at CNN Politics: “Democrats locked in competitive Senate races are leaning into their party’s legislative accomplishments in ads touting investments in infrastructure and manufacturing, as well as the lowering the cost of some prescription drugs, such as insulin….The senators, whose votes sent the bills to the White House, are front and center. But one name is often missing: President Joe Biden, who signed the bills into law….In an election in which most Democrats will be running on reproductive rights and contrasts with Republican leadership, senators such as Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania are emphasizing their roles in advancing key parts of the Biden agenda without mentioning the president….But the spots also highlight the balancing act they’ll have to perform to win crossover votes from independents and Republicans who won’t back Biden….Democrats will need to defend seven competitive seats – including five in presidential battlegrounds – and win the White House to maintain the majority in the Senate….Polls show Senate Democratic candidates running ahead of Biden, who has been plagued by low approval ratings and who trails or ties Trump in key states. For months, Democrats have argued the president’s support will grow as voters tune in closer to the election and learn more about his agenda….There are signs that voters aren’t broadly aware of Democrats’ record. A KFF poll from May found that 52% of registered voters older than 65 were aware the Inflation Reduction Act capped the cost of insulin for Medicare recipients at $35 per month. An AP-NORC poll from April found that about a third of voters didn’t know enough about the Inflation Reduction Act to say whether it had made a difference on climate change, the economy or inflation….Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, said he believes Democrats’ unified messaging on abortion, democracy and the contrast with Trump will help all party candidates on the ballot in the state. In addition to reelecting Biden and Baldwin, Wisconsin Democrats hope to gain ground in the state Legislature.” OK, 2024 is not a good year for spotlighting national  leaders for either party. But the opportunity is to encourage voters to compare the parties and their accomplishments as a whole, in which case Republicans have very few bragging points. There ought to be some swing state ads that invite the comparison.

In the wake of Trump’s criminal conviction, a rather obvious contrast between the two parties occurred to me that Democrats ought to think about. I wrote about it at New York.

One of the most notable aspects of the 2024 presidential contest has been how often voices have been raised in the left-of-center commentariat calling on Democrats to abort Joe Biden’s reelection campaign before it’s too late. In February, the New York Times’ Ezra Klein created an enormous buzz with a podcast episode suggesting that Biden “step aside” and let his party choose a more electable (and non-octogenarian) nominee. My colleague Jonathan Chait has discussed this possibility as well. And the idea was raised again quite recently by polling-maven-turned-pundit Nate Silver.

I’m on record as raining on this particular parade for multiple reasons, including the overreaction to marginally adverse polls it represents, the extremely unlikely Biden self-defenestration it would require, and the lack of any Democratic consensus on a “replacement” nominee. But if it’s odd how many Democrats have proved ready to panic and consider previously unimaginable survival strategies after a few bad polls, it’s downright weird that there is no such talk in Republican ranks after that party’s presumptive presidential nominee was found guilty of 34 felony criminal charges. Might that prove to be a problem in November? And if so, might Republicans, who frequently complain that the nation cannot survive another four years of Joe Biden as president, do well to choose someone from their own “bench” who has somehow managed never to be indicted for and convicted of a crime?

The very idea of Trump “stepping aside” or being pushed aside is laughable, of course. Whatever else he is, the 45th president is convinced he’s the most indispensable man in American — and perhaps world — history. After a hostile takeover in 2016 he has imposed an iron grip on the Republican Party that has clearly tightened after Trump demolished a large field of rivals this year. Nonetheless, the fact that these rivals even ran for president betrays the existence, however weak and attenuated, of an undercurrent of doubt about the wisdom of a third straight Trump nomination. But no one in GOP circles — absolutely no one — is articulating it now that there is a major objective reason for worry. Indeed, Team Trump’s savage reaction to prize Senate candidate Larry Hogan’s mild re-verdict suggestion of respect for the legal process that led to it shows how little grumbling will be tolerated. The two major parties couldn’t be much farther apart in this respect.

It is true there is one legitimate reason Republicans might not consider reconsidering Trump even if he and his supporters would allow it: Unlike Democratic delegates who are loosely bound to the candidate under whose banner they were chosen, Republican Trump delegates are formally and in some states legally bound to back the former president unless he explicitly releases them. A convention revolt against Trump (again, a laughable proposition) would require an overwhelming consensus of the party leaders Trump himself has chosen. So there’s not much point in talking about it, particularly since that would call down upon the doubters thunderbolts from Mar-a-Lago.

But in the end, the difference between Democrats and Republican in dealing with the problems facing their flawed 2024 presidential nominees is that unlike Trump himself, Republicans don’t seem to value winning above all else. Yes, he is a formidable politician with great strengths harnessed to great weaknesses, and yes, there’s no evidence yet the verdict in Manhattan is significantly eroding his consistent lead over Biden in most polls. But Republicans should rightly fear that day after day and week after week of Team Biden branding Trump as a convicted felon will eventually have an effect. Without question, years and years of data show Trump is as unpopular a politician as Biden, and if he did somehow “step aside,” Republicans could easily find a nominee better able to dispatch the unpopular incumbent. Republicans do not, moreover, have the kind of succession problem facing Democrats in the form of a sitting vice-president who is as unpopular as her boss.

Republicans are in unshakable solidarity with Donald Trump despite his criminal record because they truly don’t see an alternative path. And that’s true even if they privately fear he will lead them to defeat, and after that, to another denial of defeat that could end in another attempted insurrection or at a minimum in horrific civil discord. For all their famed irresolution, proneness to panic, and “bed-wetting” tendencies, Democrats still belong to a party where free speech is possible. If their nominee was convicted of multiple felonies, at least some Democrats would be looking actively and publicly for a replacement. But Republicans belong to a cult of personality where any hint of rebellion is punished ruthlessly. And that’s the party that will take power with Trump if he manages to get back into the White House.

Gabe Gutierrez and Monica Alba report at nbcnews.com:

“Facing mounting political pressure over the migrant influx at the southern border, President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed an executive order that will temporarily shut down asylum requests once the average number of daily encounters tops 2,500 between official ports of entry, according to a senior administration official….“The border is not a political issue to be weaponized,” Biden said in a White House speech announcing the order.

The shutdown would go into effect immediately since that threshold has already been met, a senior administration official said. The border would reopen only once that number falls to 1,500. The president’s order would come under the Immigration and Nationality Act sections 212(f) and 215(a) suspending entry of noncitizens who cross the southern border into the United States unlawfully.

Senior administration officials said Tuesday in a call with reporters that “individuals who cross the southern border unlawfully or without authorization will generally be ineligible for asylum, absent exceptionally compelling circumstances, unless they are accepted by the proclamation.”

The officials said that migrants who don’t meet the requirement of having a “credible fear” when they apply for asylum will be immediately removable, and they “anticipate that we will be removing those individuals in a matter of days, if not hours,”

Gutierrez and Alba note further that “the White House has repeatedly argued that it was congressional Republicans who have failed to act on immigration. Earlier this year, Trump urged House GOP members to kill a bipartisan border funding bill that had been negotiated in the Senate. At the time, House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans said that the Senate bill didn’t go far enough and they argued that a more hard-line immigration bill in the House was preferable.”

At Politico Jennifer Haberkorn and Myah Ward add, “It also is designed to give Biden’s campaign, as well as Democratic candidates in key House and Senate races, the ammo they believe they need to push back on relentless Republican attacks. Shortly after the president made his announcement, the Democratic National Committee sent surrogates talking points pointing to the February defeat of a bipartisan border bill by congressional Republicans and laying out its preferred framing for the debate: “President Biden took action after Donald Trump and his MAGA friends said ‘no’ to border security.” Further,

Polling shows immigration has risen among the main concerns for voters in both parties, and is the top concern of Republicans. A February NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist poll found that 41 percent of Americans believe the GOP will do a better job of handling the issue.

Hoping to turn around those numbers, the White House on Tuesday booked interviews for administration officials and allied lawmakers on national broadcast, Spanish language media and regional press across the country, according to an White House official. That effort is expected to go through the week.

Also,

Biden’s new executive action carries some risk within his own party. Progressives and immigration advocates are deeply frustrated at what they see as a return to Trump-era policies and worry about the long-term implications of Democrats embracing the new measures. The American Civil Liberties Union quickly said it would sue the administration over the action, threatening to stall it right at the point of implementation.

Immigration advocates and progressives are still holding out hope that the administration would follow Tuesday’s tough action with relief for long-term, undocumented residents like caregivers, farmworkers and spouses of U.S. citizens later this year. White House officials have not taken these policy moves off the table, according to three people familiar with the administration’s thinking, who were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. But a final decision could ultimately depend on how much political pressure is facing the president in the months ahead.

….The Biden campaign, for now, appears comfortable with its positioning. The president on Tuesday stood next to mayors from border cities and fellow Democratic lawmakers supportive of his new approach. In attendance was Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) — whose February special election race was seen among Biden campaign officials as proof that going aggressive on border security could appeal to a swath of independent voters; and, perhaps as importantly, defang Republican attacks on the issue.

Democratic Senate candidates have already posted ads on Republican opposition to the Senate border bill — particularly in the face of Democrats’ support for anti-fentanyl policies — and have talked about the local effect in non-border states like Ohio. Many of the Democratic candidates in battleground states are expected to maintain that drumbeat following Tuesday’s announcement.

Haberkorn and Ward conclude, “on Tuesday, there were also indications that Biden saw a need to ensure that progressives didn’t feel like he was giving away too much in search of a modest political gain….“I will never demonize immigrants. I will never refer to immigrants as poisoning the blood of a country. And further, I will never separate children from their families at the border,” Biden said, making a clear contrast with his predecessor and current opponent.”

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and co-author with John B. Judis of the new Book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

David Leonhardt made a bit of a stir recently with an article arguing that a “new centrism” is rising in Washington. He cites numerous examples of bipartisan cooperation in the last several years:

During the Covid pandemic, Democrats and Republicans in Congress came together to pass emergency responses. Under President Biden, bipartisan majorities have passed major laws on infrastructure and semiconductor chips, as well as laws on veterans’ health, gun violence, the Postal Service, the aviation system, same-sex marriage, anti-Asian hate crimes and the electoral process. On trade, the Biden administration has kept some of the Trump administration’s signature policies and even expanded them.

That does seem impressive. Much of Leonhardt’s essay is devoted to an explanation of how this new centrism has, counterintuitively, arisen in a time of intense polarization. There is much to his explanation but the most fundamental point is this: a relatively laissez-faire economic model, typically shorthanded as “neoliberalism,” which was supported in different ways for decades by both parties, ultimately failed to deliver the steadily rising prosperity most Americans desire. This has led to widespread voter dissatisfaction and an openness to alternatives across the electorate.

Both parties, Leonhardt argues, have been forced to respond to this shifting public mood, albeit in different ways reflecting their differing philosophies and political bases. But the potential for overlap has emerged as both parties chase the median voter. Hence the counterintuitive level of bipartisan cooperation and commonality of goals.

That commonality of goals builds on a shared sense that the shortfall in living standards must be addressed and that America now faces a dangerous new world where the emergence of rivals like China threatens the country on multiple levels. Should Democrats lean into that and seek to, in a sense, “own” this new centrism?

I’d say yes. The new centrism, as it has developed so far, provides clear indicators of the current policy sweet spot among American voters: they want to live better and feel safer and are pragmatically open to policies that could directly address these needs. They do not have an ideological litmus test for these policies, nor a definite view of how large or small government should be. Given the dysfunction and incoherence of today’s Trumpified Republican Party would this not be an opportunity to steal a march on their rivals and (dare I say it?) give the people what they actually want?

Of course, pursuing such a course would not be without its obstacles. As Leonhardt notes:

Americans lean left on economic policy. Polls show that they support restrictions on trade, higher taxes on the wealthy and a strong safety net. Most Americans are not socialists, but they do favor policies to hold down the cost of living and create good-paying jobs….The story is different on social and cultural issues. Americans lean right on many of those issues, polls show (albeit not as far right as the Republican Party has moved on abortion).

If you aim to promote and dominate a new centrism, it makes sense to target that fat center of American public opinion. But progressive Democrats would balk at this second part and would chafe at the limited nature of the first part; support for government action in the areas enumerated does not equate to support for restructuring American capitalism around a rapid clean energy transition. The new center of American politics is oriented instead toward concrete improvements in living standards and the safeguarding of America’s place in the world.

The importance of the latter is should not be underestimated. From the Leonhardt article:

“China is a unifying force, absolutely,” Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, told me. Senator John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, compared the rise of artificial intelligence to the Soviet Union’s launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957, which led to bipartisan legislation on education and scientific research. Anxiety about A.I., Fetterman added, made possible the passage of the semiconductor-chips bill. “We are most able to come together when we acknowledge the risks we have to the American way of life,” Fetterman said. “Whose side are you on—democracy or Putin, Hamas and China?”

That muscular, “whose side are you on?” approach resonates well with the new center but less so with the progressive left in the Democratic Party. They are far more interested in a quixotic quest to rapidly replace fossil fuels with renewables and get everyone to drive an electric car, whether they are interested or not. That’s nuts, both as policy and politics.

More broadly, it seems clear that building out the new center of American politics from the Democratic side depends on weighting down progressive left priorities and weighting up moderate priorities consistent with the views of most voters. It’s frustrating that when the Biden administration takes actions consistent with this approach, they are bizarrely reluctant to talk about them, presumably because they’re afraid to annoy the activist-industrial complex. Here’s a pertinent example from a recent Wall Street Journal article, “While Biden Worries About the Left, the Voters He Needs Are in the Center”:

Under Biden, American energy production has reached historic highs—a popular accomplishment that voters overwhelmingly support. But you would never know it from listening to him. The achievement went unmentioned in the president’s recent State of the Union address and his recent campaign speeches, where he has preferred to talk about climate investments and “environmental justice.” Perhaps as a result, most Americans disapprove of his handling of energy, and many blame him for high gas prices.

The president’s failure to tout this aspect of his record has frustrated moderate allies. Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) recently wrote a Washington Post op-ed sarcastically “congratulating” Biden for his energy record and urging him to tout it more vigorously. “This is the all-of-the-above strategy in action, showing results. But it seems some of the president’s radical advisers in the White House are so worried about angering climate activists that they refuse to speak up about these accomplishments,” Manchin wrote.

This seems like political malpractice, which has only been compounded by the administration’s decision to cave to pressure from climate activists and halt permitting on liquified natural gas (LNG) exports—a decision that makes no policy sense and is guaranteed to alienate working-class voters.

John Fetterman and Bob Casey, Pennsylvania’s two Democratic Senators had some stern words for administration’s peculiar decision:

Pennsylvania is an energy state. As the second largest natural gas-producing state, this industry has created good-paying energy jobs in towns and communities across the Commonwealth and has played a critical role in promoting U.S. energy independence…

While the immediate impacts on Pennsylvania remain to be seen, we have concerns about the long-term impacts that this pause will have on the thousands of jobs in Pennsylvania’s natural gas industry. If this decision puts Pennsylvania energy jobs at risk, we will push the Biden Administration to reverse this decision.

Fetterman, in particular, has made no attempt to hide his lack of interest in doing the progressive left’s bidding. He has said, “I’m not a progressive,” and “I don’t feel like I’ve left the label; it’s just more that it’s left me.” An amusing anecdote in a recent New York Times article makes it abundantly clear where he’s coming from:

Senator John Fetterman was hard to miss, lumbering down an empty hallway in a Senate office building dressed in his signature baggy gym shorts and a black hoodie. So when Stevie O’Hanlon, an environmentalist and organizer from Chester County, Pa., spotted him recently, she took the opportunity to question her home-state senator about a pipeline in her community.

Mr. Fetterman’s reaction was surprisingly hostile. Raising his phone to capture the confrontation on video, the senator began ridiculing her.

“I didn’t expect this!” Mr. Fetterman said, feigning excitement. “Oh my gosh!”

As Ms. O’Hanlon politely pressed him on what she called his “change of heart” on the issue of the local pipeline, which he had previously opposed, Mr. Fetterman pulled faces of faux concern until he stepped onto an elevator and let the closing door end the interaction.

Ms. O’Hanlon, a co-founder of the progressive Sunrise Movement, was stunned.

A Democratic Party that wants to build out the new center needs a lot more stunning of Sunrise Movement activists and a lot less genuflecting to their concerns. I’ve called this The Way of the Fetterman; it models how Democrats should declare independence from an activist-driven agenda at variance with the emerging center of American politics.

The dividends from embracing that new center could be not just desirable but critical for the Democrats moving forward. The Split Ticket November-April average of cross-tabular results from public polls finds Biden with an average 4 point deficit to Trump among independents, compared to Biden’s 10 point advantage in 2020 (a 14 point pro-Trump swing). And among moderates, Biden is leading Trump by an average of 14 points, way down from his 27 point advantage in the 2020 election (a 13 point pro-Trump swing).

That should make the idea of embracing the new center of American politics pretty darn attractive. In truth, it’s a golden opportunity for a Democratic Party that, right now, needs all the help it can get.

For what it’s worth, “One in 10 Republicans less likely to vote for Trump after guilty verdict, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds,” Jason Lange writes at Reuters. Lange explains, “Ten percent of Republican registered voters say they are less likely to vote for Donald Trump following his felony conviction for falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Friday….The two-day poll, conducted in the hours after the Republican presidential candidate’s conviction by a Manhattan jury on Thursday, also found that 56% of Republican registered voters said the case would have no effect on their vote and 35% said they were more likely to support Trump, who has claimed the charges against him are politically motivated and has vowed to appeal….The potential loss of a tenth of his party’s voters is more significant for Trump than the stronger backing of more than a third of Republicans, since many of the latter would be likely to vote for him regardless of the conviction….Among independent registered voters, 25% said Trump’s conviction made them less likely to support him in November, compared to 18% who said they were more likely and 56% who said the conviction would have no impact on their decision….The verdict could shake up the race between Trump, who was U.S. president from 2017-2021, and Democratic President Joe Biden ahead of the Nov. 5 election. U.S. presidential elections are typically decided by thin margins in a handful of competitive swing states, meaning that even small numbers of voters defecting from their candidates can have a big impact….Biden and Trump remain locked in a tight race, with 41% of voters saying they would vote for Biden if the election were held today and 39% saying they would pick Trump, according to the poll, which surveyed 2,556 U.S. adults nationwide.” Plug in all of the usual caveats, especially the one about swing state polls being more meaningful in 2024 than national polls, and we still have a bunch of “what if?” scenarios and no safe bets. At The Hill, Nick Robertson writes, “Trump leads Biden by about 1 percentage point in The Hill/Decision Desk HQ average of polls, though Biden has gained on Trump since the conviction, leading Trump in most polls since Thursday.”

In “Donald Trump Gets More Bad News From Fourth Post-Verdict Poll” at Newsweek, Mandy Taheri adds, “Meanwhile, three separate polls conducted since Trump’s guilty verdict also show similar findings with the ABC News/Ipsos poll….A YouGov snap poll of 3,040 Americans conducted just hours after the verdict was announced revealed that 50 percent believe Trump was guilty, while 30 percent thought he was not. Another 19 percent were unsure. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points….Broken down into party lines, 15 percent of Republicans think Trump is guilty while 64 percent do not, 48 percent of independents think Trump is guilty while 25 percent do not, and 86 percent of Democratsbelieve he is guilty while 5 percent do not. A total of 831 Republicans, 1,114 independents, and 1,113 Democrats were surveyed. The margin of error of the subgroups are unclear….Morning Consult’s poll of 2,220 registered voters found 54 percent approve of the jury’s verdict while 39 percent disapprove. Across party lines, 18 percent of Republicans approve of the verdict while 74 percent disapprove, 52 percent of independents approve while 33 disapprove and 88 percent of Democrats approve while 8 percent disapprove. The poll, which was conducted on Friday, had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.” Nonetheless, “Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign communications director, told Newsweek via email on Saturday, “President Trump has seen an outpouring support, which has led to polling increases and record-shattering fundraising numbers that include close to $53 million in just 24 hours, 30% of those who are new donors.”….He also mentioned a snap Daily Mail/J.L. Partners poll taken after Thursday’s verdict, which found that Trump’s approval rating was up by 6 percentage points compared to those who disapproved….A total of 22 percent of likely voters had a more positive view of Trump after his guilty verdict while 16 percent had a more negative view. Meanwhile, 32 percent of likely voters who already had a negative view of Trump had no change of opinion while 27 percent of likely voters who already had a positive view of Trump had no change. The poll surveyed 403 likely voters from Thursday to Friday and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percent.” Perhaps all of the polls taken thus far can be likened to knee-jerk reactions so soon after the verdict.

“A Bit of Trump Trial Campaign Advice” by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo: “Trump’s play is always dominance. The weapon of choice against that puffed-up pro-wrestling-like dominance spectacle that is at the heart of Trumpism is mockery. And this provides such a wonderful opening….Trump was convicted of a felony. So the trial was rigged. Just like when Donald Trump lost a whole presidential election. Remember that? And he said that was rigged. He couldn’t just take it like a man (or woman) like the other … what, 44 guys who lost, and just admit he lost? And remember back in 2016 when it looked like he was going to lose, well … that election was rigged too. And then he won so it wasn’t rigged anymore. And the lawsuit that dissolved his company for decades of serial fraud. Also rigged, surprisingly!….Don’t we all know that guy? From our own lives? It’s not his fault? Someone always set him up? It was rigged!….And why stop there? Remember the convictions of Bannon and Flynn and Manafort and Stone and good lord almost every one who’s ever worked for him? All rigged. And what about the time he pulled up a U-Haul on the White House lawn and made off with a few hundred boxes of classified records and kept them in random rooms at his beach resort. Also rigged? Yes, would you believe that prosecution was also rigged! We know this guy….The way to constantly inject Trump’s felony conviction into the campaign, other than remembering that “convicted felon” is now his first name, is to simply make his pathetic whining, excuses and demands for never-ending life mulligans the center of the campaign against him. He’s a disgrace but more than that an embarrassment. It won’t be hard because he’ll be making this claim non-stop through November, just a constant cue up for the same lethal mockery. It is the heart of his politics to always be jacking the conversation up to higher and higher levels of drama, even when the drama is his own menace, indeed especially when the drama is his own menace. That’s his power. What cuts him down is to zero in on the pathetic excuse-making and whining, a trait all of us associate with the most odious and pitiful people we’ve ever known. And let that pull the disgrace of his many crimes and prosecutions along with it.”

Sofia Benavides explains “Why Mexico’s election is more important than ever for the United States” at CNN Politics: “With more than 98 million eligible voters, some 70,000 candidates and over 20,000 public offices being contested, Mexico’s general election on June 2 will be the largest in the country’s history….But it’s not just the massive scale of the event that makes it so important in the eyes of observers across the border in the United States….For the first time in history, the country looks set to elect its first female president. The two front-runners are both women – Claudia Sheinbaum, of the Morena party, who is backed by the governing coalition Sigamos Haciendo Historia, and Xóchitl Gálvez, who is backed by an coalition of opposition parties….The vote is also important because it falls in the same year as the US presidential election – something that happens only once every 12 years – and comes at a time of transition in the relationship between the two countries….Mexico became the United States’ top trading partner last year, surpassing China and Canada….Experts say this is largely because geopolitical issues such as the pandemic, the legacy of Trump’s trade war against China, and the war in Ukraine all encouraged near-shoring – the relocation of supply chains nearer to home – which boosted US imports from Mexico and its investment in the country….Key to facilitating this shift was the creation of the USMCA trade agreement, which came into effect in 2020 between Mexico, the United States and Canada….Many analysts believe the US is currently playing down disputes over the USMCA in the hope that this can ease differences in other areas, both in domestic Mexican issues – such as alleged human rights violations, the government’s treatment of journalists, and the increase in political assassinations – and bilateral concerns such as immigration and the drug trade….“It’s very transactional. Mexico agreed to partially manage the immigration crisis in the US, keeping immigrants in Mexican territory and taking care of their deportation, in exchange for the United States not activating these lawsuits,” said Raquel López Portillo Maltos, executive secretary of the youth group of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (Comexi) think tank….While migration across the countries’ 1,933 miles long border is a shared concern, the issue is much lower on Mexican politicians’ agenda than in the US — where it could be a decisive factor in the November vote, according to Carin Zissis, editor-in-chief of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas website….The rub for US politicians is that they need buy-in from their Mexican counterparts if their own immigration policies are to succeed.”

Now that Trump has been convicted of multiple crimes, the 2024 presidential campaign could change. I thought about how the former president would handle things, and wrote about it at New York:

Donald Trump’s most important consolation after a Manhattan jury found him guilty of 34 criminal counts is that he has anticipated this moment for a long time. He was indicted 14 months ago with subsequent criminal indictments following in Florida, in Atlanta, and in Washington. Ever since, he has been running for president as a man under criminal indictment, and coping with that fact has been central to his strategy and message. Indeed, it became clear a long time ago that Trump’s endless preoccupation with his failed 2020 stolen-election fables, a backward-facing stance that initially baffled political observers, was actually a way of conditioning voters to view his future treatment by the justice system skeptically, if not with great hostility.

During this year’s Republican nominating contest, this strategy worked brilliantly, not only insulating Trump from criticism from his rivals about his misconduct in the cases that led to his serial indictments but actually making his alleged criminality a badge of honor. His increasingly shrill attacks on the prosecutors he faced helped boost him to an easy win in the primaries as the hero of conservatives angry at the Democrats and liberal elites seeking to hold him accountable. Now that he has been found guilty in a case brought by a Democratic prosecutor in a dark-blue constituency, to the delight of those liberal elites, Trump can be expected to keep on with the same chest-thumping professions of innocence and victimization (and promises of vengeance) with the Republican Party that has already nominated him dragooned willingly into joining his crusade for vindication.

There’s no particular reason to doubt that Trump’s ongoing call for loyalty will continue to work with a Republican base that very badly wants to respond to it favorably. Pre-verdict polls have consistently shown that a significant share of Republicans would “reconsider” their support for Trump if he were convicted of any crime. But “reconsidering” isn’t the same as “abandoning.” As a May 5 AP-Ipsos poll showed, most of these voters will likely wind up right back in his camp with any encouragement at all (only 4 percent of Trump supporters said they’d drop their allegiance to him after a conviction, and that may be overstating the reaction given past experience with moments when Republicans seemed to be jettisoning the 45th president — but didn’t).

But even if Trump can confidently count on his base of supporters to stay loyal — indeed, perhaps even cling to him more fiercely than ever as the victim of a “witch hunt” — he must still deal with possible fallout among the small but potentially decisive sliver of swing voters that is open to voting for him but might seriously reconsider voting for a felon. He will need something different from tribal loyalty fed by conspiracy theories to seal the deal in November. For these voters, the key may be to double down on every line of attack on Joe Biden as a feckless incompetent and an active danger to the peace and prosperity of America. Conservative Christian activist Rod Dreher may have identified precisely the right precedent for what the Trump campaign will try to do to assuage concerns over his conviction, in tweeting a copy of an old Louisiana bumper sticker that read, “Vote for the Crook: It’s Important,” and commenting: “I had this bumper sticker on my Louisiana car in 1991, urging my fellow voters to vote for sleazy Edwin Edwards over ex-KKK leader David Duke. After Trump’s felony convictions, I say it’s time to bring it back for the fall election.”

Yes, supporters of the ethically challenged Edwin Edwards frontally attacked concerns he was corrupt by minimizing the significance of his corner-cutting as compared to the dire consequences of letting David Duke become chief executive of Louisiana, and what had been a close “race from hell” turned into an Edwards landslide. Nobody will ever mistake Joe Biden for David Duke, but the basic idea of suggesting that a little criminality is better than bad leadership could be fruitfully adapted by the Trump campaign. Trump’s sentencing (scheduled for mid-July) by Judge Merchan could create some serious logistical problems for him, restricting his movements while reminding voters he’s on the wrong side of the law. But he is just lucky that the clock has probably run out for any further criminal convictions prior to Election Day that might make the verdict in Manhattan harder to overlook.

Even if this strategy does not work for Trump and he loses in November, the consequences of the guilty verdict will continue, and not just for the convict. If there was any doubt that Trump will deny and reject an election loss even more vociferously than he did in 2020, it should vanish now. Not only is he deeply invested in the claim that his legal peril represents “election interference” by Democrats, but he also needs the kind of get-out-of-jail card a return to the White House might offer.