OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Democrats may be feeling somewhat giddy now that former President Donald Trump is officially a convicted felon — for the time being — but they shouldn’t be, according to a new analysis in Politico.
Outlet op-ed editor Jamie Dettmer began his analysis by noting that, in 1960, then-GOP presidential nominee Richard Nixon opted not to potentially put the country through a “constitutional crisis” by challenging the election results in Illinois and Texas “amid credible allegations of election fraud and ballot stuffing.”
He did that because, as he told a journalist friend, Earl Mazo, “Our country cannot afford the agony of a constitutional crisis.” Had he successfully challenged the results, however, he would have defeated Democratic nominee John F. Kennedy by two Electoral College votes.
Dettmer then noted that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg ignored the decisions by his predecessor, Cyrus Vance, Jr., and federal agencies—the FEC and the DOJ—not to pursue any charges against Trump because they couldn’t find any.
“Of course, whether Bragg’s courtroom victory in securing Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal will pass muster in the appeal courts is another matter — there are plenty of reputable legal experts who suspect a Trump appeal will eventually be successful,” he wrote. “Regardless, with two cases down and another three to go — federal cases in Florida and Washington, and an election-tampering case brought by a state prosecutor in Georgia — Democrats are in a triumphal mood.”
He added: “But they shouldn’t be.”
Dettmer notes further:
There are two reasons for this: First, it’s doubtful the conviction will have any lasting impact on Trump’s election prospects in November.
Take the Morning Consult poll, released a few hours after the conviction was handed down on Friday. According to the survey, just 15 percent of Republican voters nationwide now want Trump to drop his election bid. That matches the percentage of those who supported Trump’s final primary challenger Nikki Haley when she halted her campaign. So, essentially, no Republican minds seem to have been changed by the hush-money trial.
Moreover, when it comes to independent voters, 49 percent think Trump should halt his campaign due to the conviction. But that’s not really much of a change either, as prior to the case, independents were split pretty evenly between Biden and Trump.
Overall, consistent with other pre-conviction polls, Morning Consult found the White House race to be nearly evenly split between the two candidates. Interestingly, the poll also revealed that around half of voters would oppose the former president’s imprisonment, with a majority (69 percent) believing he should only face a fine. This indicates that most voters do not view the felonies as particularly serious, suggesting they believe the offenses warrant merely a slap on the wrist, Dettmer pointed out.
However, none of this should come as a surprise. Even prior to the case, a poll by PBS NewsHour, NPR, and Marist revealed that for two-thirds of registered voters, a guilty verdict would not influence their voting decision in November — this was true even among independents. Additionally, the poll indicated that if Trump were found guilty, it would exacerbate partisan divides: 25 percent of Republicans reported they would be more inclined to vote for him, while 27 percent of Democrats stated they would be less likely to do so, he said.
“This leads to the second reason why Democrats shouldn’t be cheering, and that’s because the conviction will likely only accelerate the dizzying and ugly downward spiral in tit-for-tat partisan retaliation, including the use of courts and prosecutions, well-founded or otherwise, to settle political scores,” Dettmer wrote.
After writing that Trump likely means what he says when he threatens to retaliate against those who have wronged him, Dettmer once again used another Nixon-era example of constraint. After Nixon resigned from office, his then-Vice President, Gerald R. Ford, pardoned him, and while that created outrage in the country, Ford reasoned: “I was absolutely convinced then as I am now that if we had had [an] indictment, a trial, a conviction, and anything else that transpired after this, that the attention of the President, the Congress and the American people would have been diverted from the problems that we have to solve.”
Dettmer then closed with this advice: “Ford was a man who knew when it was best to leave well alone. We should take note.”
