There is no way to evaluate the total damage inflicted on Trump’s candidacy by Bragg’s prosecution until we learn what Judge Merchan will do.
I’ve been surprised at the punditry about the fallout of Trump’s convictions in the Manhattan criminal trial. It made sense to say that we’d needed to wait for a couple of weeks to get a reliable read on how the public was processing the jury’s guilty verdicts. That is, rose-tinted pronouncements by Trump enthusiasts that the convictions had no meaningful effect on the race — or even that the former president’s 2024 bid was somehow helped by his status as a convicted felon because it showed that Democrats had overplayed their lawfare hand — were daft.
