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Comment by lamontcg | Hacker News Reader

Trump supporters aren't going to sway the election.

They were always going to vote for him and will always vote for him.

The election is going to get decided at the margins by the kind of people who can still get swayed one way or the other to vote or not vote for one or the other candidate.

Actually convicting him can give a solid reason for someone who would have only very reluctantly voted for him to switch to Biden or just not vote at all. Old school Reagan conservatives who find that voting for an actual convicted felon is something they just won't do. It does create an additional nice red line of illegality, which should still matter to a few folks. It will cause some ethical problems with some Republicans for voting for him, and it really doesn't take much. The 2016 election was decided by a few 10,000s of people in 3-4 different states.

Where it can backfire, though, is if the conviction is overturned on appeal.

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I think you're missing a big factor here: both candidates have a track record as president. We haven't had that in a long time, often it's only the incumbent with a record, which we usually associate as in their favor. Part of that record, for both of them, isn't due to anything they did, but the times they ran things are associated with them. And of course part of it they're each responsible for.

Despite all the rhetoric, Trump has a pretty good track record to the average american. Wars ending, dollar a gallon gas. In contrast, Biden doesn't look too good. Wars starting, groceries going up weekly. We can say what is who's fault and what is out of their control and whatever, that is just noise to all but decided voters. I think that this case will sway some away, sway some for that don't like what they see as political weaponization of the justice system, and all in all it stays in Trumps favor.

> Despite all the rhetoric, Trump has a pretty good track record to the average american. Wars ending, dollar a gallon gas. In contrast, Biden doesn't look too good. Wars starting, groceries going up weekly. We can say what is who's fault and what is out of their control and whatever, that is just noise to all but decided voters.

Voters are able to assign fault to some degree, or they'd also assign "global pandemic starting" to Trump's record.

That's the thing, I think he gets a pass on that. Probably doesn't get a pass on the lockdown or money printing, but no reasonable person blames the president for an illness. A war between foreign countries, lots of people have it in their heads that the president is very powerful and can start or stop stuff like that, true or not, but an illness...

Do you think Alexey Navalny‘s conviction for embezzlement caused him to lose any supporters? Probably not. It was a transparently political use of the justice system to sideline an opponent.

People I’ve talked to feel the same way about Trump. I’ve asked why vote in the primary for a candidate who lost the midterms and his last election, and the sentiment is that “We can’t let them get away with it” meaning the lawfare against Trump.

It almost certainly won't sway very many. But the Electoral College means that a small number of voters in the right place can radically change the outcome.

His supporters can't "vote harder", so it's entirely a question of how the marginal voters comes down on it. They don't have to switch their vote, but just decide to stay home.

I doubt the effect will be measurable, given the vast number of confounding variables. But should he lose, they will almost certainly ascribe it at least in part to the conviction.

>People I’ve talked to feel the same way about Trump

You should tell them they're mistaken. He isn't being sidelined or kept off the ballot. That's a blatant lie that he is spreading himself. The case was supposed to happen last year until him and his lawyers used procedural tactics to delay it into this year. At any point he could have quietly chosen to settle, publicly declare innocence and then let the news pass just like he did with the Trump University case. But again, he chose not to for this one.

There were efforts in most states to remove Trump from the ballot. Some were more successful than others. What part do you believe is a blatant lie? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/02/us/politics/t...

>What part do you believe is a blatant lie?

All of it, for multiple reasons.

1. Those are unrelated to the falsifying business records case, and those efforts weren't what Trump and his campaign have been referring to for these past few days anyway.

2. Those cases happened because Trump is alleged to have led a violent coup against his own government in violation of the 14th amendment. Something we all seem to have forgot with this constant distraction of courtrooms that this individual finds himself in.

3. Several of those cases were in states that Trump won. Of the several states that Biden won, the challenges were dismissed. Based on your link, it is entirely unfounded to claim this was political retribution.

4. In March the Supreme Court ruled none of them can proceed anyway and the map is irrelevant now, the article says this too. The 14th amendment can't be enforced by state courts, it has to be enforced by Congress.

In my opinion, you have to ignore a staggering number of facts and disregard all the actions of every single person in the courtroom all this month, including the actions of Trump and his own lawyers, to believe that this case in any way a political hit job. The judge actually went out of his way to prevent the prosecution from making it about that; the case was entirely about the illegal ways he conducted business along with his subordinates. Read the transcripts yourself if you don't believe me. https://pdfs.nycourts.gov/PeopleVs.DTrump-71543/transcripts/

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