Quote (Black XistenZ @ Feb 2 2024 12:54am)
Or the persecution of Trump has accomplished what it was supposed to do: make sure that the GOP base circles the wagons around Trump and picks him as their standard bearer over all of his challengers. Remember that DeSantis was actually polling rather closely to Trump, 46% vs 30% in March of 2023, before the first indictment dropped. Three weeks later, Trump was leading with 54% vs 24%:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-r/2024/national/?ex_cid=abcpromoNow that Trump has the nomination all but wrapped up, Democrats have no more strategic incentive to continue investigations which have a low chance of actually leading to a conviction and which are not swaying public opinion, but which continue to rile up and energize the GOP base.
After 2016 I sincerely doubt they're going with a pied piper strategy to prop up Trump again. They might have been that incompetent in the first round, they're not repeating it in round 3.
We can explain the prosecutions as sincere outbursts of authoritarian impulses, catering to a rabid wingnut base, the self-serving prerogative of individual political operators like fani willis or e jean carroll's benefactor reid hoffman. It makes the most sense as as a play to do the most obvious thing, make Trump less appealing to independents by trying to tar him with a criminal brush, or to simply try to disqualify him and outright rig the election. But it doesn't make much sense as reverse psychology to pump up Trump's base, and in all the scenarios that seems like their efforts backfiring.