Less Than Zero

Whether it’s “very solid” or just a chance, it’s not zero https://t.co/anXO8mGGBq

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) April 28, 2023

What’s interesting about this “analysis” is that it makes no mention of the one actual, and three pending (at least), indictments of Trump, which are certainly “game changers,” too. This is unprecedented territory: a POTUS candidate facing criminal charges in multiple courts and, before May is out, likely being tagged a rapist and liar in civil court.

I don’t think that’s going to expand Trump’s base of support very much.

Yes, Biden’s unfavorables may be high at the moment, but he runs against another candidate, not against himself.  It takes an extraordinarily bad politician to lose to himself. Like, say, Ron DeSantis is currently doing. Joe Biden is not an extraordinarily bad politician.

Trump is going to have to run against his own actions; something he’s already admitting with that desperate appeal to the House to save him from the DOJ. He’s abandoned any hope of a valid legal defense with that pathetic ploy. What simple, understandable defense does he offer to multiple indictments? The phone call was perfect? The speech was perfect? The documents were his? How’s all that worked out so far?

He is already testing the envelope of the court’s warnings about public statements on the Carroll case by posting a link to a scurrilous claim about her case. Hey! It’s not his words!

More of Trump’s antics that will just get him in more trouble. MAGA may love it, but that’s no way to win political friends and positively influence voters. More and more stories about Trump being hauled into court to defend the indefensible is not, by anyone’s standards, a winning political strategy. And as more indictments inevitably come, speculation on what Trump faces harden into concrete facts. And politically speaking, those facts become a cement overcoat.

Biden may not be popular, but Trump is even less popular; and there’s nothing in the foreseeable future likely to change that.

No, Trump’s chances are not zero. But they’re going to get as close to that as humanly possible.