From now until Election Day on November 5, Donald Trump is going to be spending a huge amount of time in various courtrooms.
Gleeful liberals believe that the less Trump is able to campaign, the more his prospects for victory dim. This demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the American electorate, one that is going to cost the Democrats the White House.
Long-time GOP politico Stuart Stevens sees it clearly. Trump's presence in the courtroom for some of the most pivotal months of the campaign instead of being out on the hustings is what's going to elect him in November.
Much of the public doesn't see the court cases against Trump as anything having to do with "justice." Instead, Trump and his team have successfully framed the prosecutions as persecutions. Trump sees himself as the victim, fighting a corrupt system that seeks to destroy him.
This theme is a part of the American mythos, portrayed in novels, movies, and endless loops of television shows.
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.
So while the Biden campaign is sending their candidate crisscrossing the country, Trump will be sitting in the Manhattan courtroom (and later, a Washington, D.C. courtroom) glowering at the judge while the prosecution helps him wrap up the presidency.
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.
Stevens imagines Biden and his team wondering, "How is this guy still in the race?”
Biden needs to look in a mirror at the 81-year-old looking back at him. That and maybe hire some advisors who would tell him the truth about what the American people think of him.
"The guy" is still in the race because Joe Biden is an extraordinarily weak candidate without much of a record to run on except his pandering to every Democratic interest group in the country.
Trump's "grievances" notwithstanding, Americans of all colors understand what's happening to Donald Trump. Even if Trump is convicted of one or more crimes, the vast majority of Trump supporters won't let it bother them. For Trump, the narrative is set. It's now a question of energizing his supporters, turning them into angry, vengeful voters eager to go to the polls and avenge the slights delivered to their hero.
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.
And that victory will be signed, sealed, and delivered from courtrooms across America.
