Normally, it’s a joyous occasion when a presidential opponent is convicted of a felony.
But it is now 2024, and as President Biden’s campaign and its closest allies await the verdict in Donald J. Trump’s criminal case in New York, they have come to a collective decision that even a guilty verdict should not alter their plans to frame the election around their North Star issues: abortion rights and democracy.
At the same time, many Democrats are appalled by the idea that Trump could be a felon and that the Biden team wouldn’t do everything in its power to remind voters of that fact.
This tension will determine how Democrats respond if a Manhattan jury finds Trump guilty in the coming days, a result that could send thunderous shockwaves through the U.S. press and political circles. No U.S. politician of Trump’s stature has ever run for president after being convicted of a crime, making how he would respond and how it might affect the 2024 election unprecedented.
The Biden campaign played its cards right on Tuesday, holding a press conference outside the Manhattan courthouse where Trump is on trial. Robert De Niro and two former U.S. Capitol Police officers were in attendance. They spoke about Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and his role in the storming of the Capitol, rather than the pending criminal case, but the symbolism of the occasion was easy to understand. The Trump campaign was quick to accuse Biden of orchestrating a political stunt.
Of course, if Trump is acquitted or the jury finds a mixed verdict, the Democratic Party as a whole will want to move forward as quickly as possible, even while Trump touts his innocence.
Biden has so far limited his comments to lightly taunting Trump about falling asleep in court and other non-legal matters, but he may break his long silence on the trial once its outcome is known. And if the jury finds Trump guilty, Biden’s campaign and its supporters are likely to highlight his opponent’s new criminal history. For example, Biden’s social media team has been discussing early on whether to refer to the convicted Republican as “convicted felon Donald Trump” in posts.
But Biden’s campaign sees little evidence that a conviction would change the course of the election, preferring to focus on the differences between the two candidates on issues that matter most to Biden, and worries that a vengeful Biden would piggyback on Trump’s baseless claims that he orchestrated the criminal case.
“We shouldn’t wait for a conviction to have any influence in this election because Trump has never followed common sense before,” said Jim Messina, who ran President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign and is a trusted outside adviser to the Biden team.
Messina added that “there is no need for a presidential campaign to highlight an upcoming criminal conviction when there are bigger issues that matter more to voters and directly impact their lives.”
The Biden campaign has not shied away from attacking Trump, escalating months of harsh attacks over the past week and adding personal elements. Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, called Trump a “known anti-Semite,” and a campaign ad narrated by Robert De Niro declared that Trump “lost his temper” after losing the 2020 election.
A guilty verdict against President Trump would open new avenues of attack, but spending time and energy on it would carry strategic risks.
How much a conviction would change public views of Trump remains a $64,000 concern for the campaign, though confidence in the results is low because polls are inconsistent and the country has never had a felon named as a major party’s presidential candidate before.
Still, a Quinnipiac University poll released last week found that only 6% of likely Trump voters said a guilty verdict would make them less likely to vote for him in November, while 23% of independents said a guilty verdict would make them less likely to support him.
A significant number of Democrats believe that if Trump is convicted, Biden’s allies should make that development a central focus of the 2024 presidential race, even as the campaign itself focuses on other issues.
“I mean, are we really going to elect a convicted felon,” Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., said. “It doesn’t make sense to avoid the fact that Donald Trump was convicted of a crime. That’s part of who he is, and why shouldn’t that be an important part of his presidential campaign?”
The Biden campaign announced Tuesday that it would deploy Harry Dunn and other former U.S. Capitol Police officers to battleground states starting this week to highlight Trump’s actions leading up to the Jan. 6 riot, which the Biden campaign believes will help tilt voters to the president’s side more than the Manhattan conviction.
The Biden campaign event will be held with local law enforcement officials and is aimed at highlighting Trump’s penchant for inciting political violence and what Democrats say is a widespread disregard for the rule of law.
The Biden campaign has no immediate plans to highlight Trump’s conviction in ads in battleground states, but other campaigns are open to doing so.
The Lincoln Project, a center-right group known for taunting Trump with catchy ads, plans to run ads on digital platforms in Arizona and Wisconsin starting from the moment Trump is convicted, said Rick Wilson, one of the group’s founders.
Wilson said the group, which has often strayed from post-2016 Democratic orthodoxy by launching scathing personal attacks against Trump, targeted ads to the cellphones of Trump aides and to cable channels that were likely to air at Trump’s clubs in Bedminster, New Jersey, and Palm Beach, Florida.
Biden aides believe the main benefit of a conviction may be a side benefit: providing a glimpse of reality to many voters who still don’t believe or accept that this election is a contest between the current president and his predecessor.
In this line of thinking, reminding Trump that he is the presumptive Republican nominee is good for Biden’s prospects: News coverage and social media reactions to the conviction will remind people that Biden is the choice for felons, so his campaign won’t have to carry the weight.
“I don’t think anybody thinks this is a silver bullet,” said Matt Bennett, founder of Third Way, a centrist think tank that is supporting Democratic efforts to re-elect Biden. “Everyone is conscious of the risk of backlash, but at the same time, the fact that Biden was convicted of a serious crime is not going to be ignored.”
Then there’s the question of what Democrats will do if Trump is found not guilty or if the jury is unable to reach a verdict and a mistrial is awarded. For the Biden team, life goes on and they will continue to attack Trump on abortion and democracy.
Trump’s plan is predictable.
Although Trump has remained relatively silent publicly about his case due to a gag order issued by a New York judge, he has a long history of launching angry and vengeful attacks on his opponents and is likely to continue to do so after this trial, whatever the outcome.
Trump would likely view anything other than a conviction as a major victory, just as he did when he was acquitted in his first impeachment trial, and would seek to shift public opinion about the three cases pending against him.
And it wouldn’t be hard to find Democrats in a state of panic after the trial.
Democrats have long wanted Trump to be indicted and convicted. He also faces federal charges over his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 riot and his handling of classified documents, as well as state charges in Georgia for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
But none of Trump’s three other criminal cases are likely to go to trial before November, leaving the Manhattan case as his only avenue for holding him accountable for wrongdoing before he regains office and gets at least two federal charges dismissed.Legal experts generally rate the Manhattan case as the least serious of the four.
Some Democrats, hurt by years of watching Trump survive moments that would have toppled other politicians, have urged caution in messaging about the Manhattan conviction.
Kathleen Sullivan, a former chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said the former president’s conviction would be a “solemn” moment and that Democrats should avoid sounding “gleeful” about trying to score political points.
“You have to be careful not to overdo it,” she said.
