Democratic consultants and a previous special counsel for the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump argued Tuesday that a Trump conviction would hand President Joe Biden an advantage during a potential 2024 match-up.
Recent polling shows Trump maintains a lead over Biden in a hypothetical matchup, but voters signal a shift when asked what they would do if Trump were convicted. Democrats Norman Eisen, Celinda Lake, and Anat Shenker-Osorio wrote in The New York Times that developing criminal cases and legal challenges to the former president’s candidacy “offer a negative lens through which Americans may view Mr. Trump.”
“Again, this is all hypothetical, but the polls give us sufficient data to conclude that felony criminal convictions, especially for attacking democracy, will foreground the threat that Mr. Trump poses to our nation and influence voters in an election-defining way,” they wrote.
A Wall Street Journal poll from earlier this month that shows Trump in the lead by four points flips if he is convicted, with Biden slightly leading, 47% to 46%. A Yahoo News-YouGov poll shows Biden leading 46% to 39% if Trump were “convicted of a serious crime.”
The authors, former House Judiciary Committee special counsel Eisen, former lead pollster for Biden’s 2020 campaign Lake, and campaign advisor Shenker-Osorio, say this “shows that Americans care about our freedoms, especially the freedom to cast our votes, have them counted and ensure that the will of the voters prevails.”
“They are leery of entrusting the Oval Office to someone who abused his power by engaging in a criminal conspiracy to deny or take away those freedoms,” they wrote.
They also noted that the “effect is likely greater in swing states.” “Those are often places where a greater number of conflicted — and therefore persuadable — voters reside,” they wrote. “An October Times/Siena poll shows that voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania favored Mr. Trump, with President Biden narrowly winning Wisconsin. But if Mr. Trump is convicted and sentenced, Mr. Biden would win each of these states, according to the poll.”
Special counsel Jack Smith has sought to maintain Trump’s March 4 trial date, from continuing to file documents on deadlines suspended by the district judge to asking the Supreme Court to consider Trump’s presidential immunity appeal before the D.C. Circuit had a chance to weigh in. The justices rejected his request for them to quickly take up the question on Friday.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is slated to hear oral arguments for Trump’s appeal on Jan. 9.
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