Dick Morris: Trump's Criminal Trials Are Powering Him to Victory
Perhaps it’s true, as Donald Trump repeats endlessly, that Joe Biden is the worst president in American history. But what is undisputed is that he’s waging the worst campaign in American history.
His campaign serves as a daily reminder of Barack Obama’s warning to never underestimate “Joe’s ability to f*** things up.”
The core assumption of the Biden campaign is wrong: The criminal prosecutions of Donald Trump are not only not hurting him, they are helping to re-elect him.
Here’s why:
The accusations against Trump naturally dominate the news. You can’t indict a former president four times and expect any less coverage.
But the problem for the Democrats is that the indictments are truly sucking up all the oxygen and leave no room for any other critique of Trump. There is just no space or time to examine critically any of his policies, appointments and statements. Anything that Trump or others may do or say is completely drowned out by the criminal charges.
The Democrats have totally lost any room for maneuvering. The dynamics of the trials and various pre-trial motions usurp the entire political space. And there is no offsetting issue working in Biden’s favor.
The inevitable dynamics of a criminal trial also work against Biden. A prosecutor is always at his strongest on Day One when his indictments and arrests are revealed. On that day, he controls the debate.
But then his case always weakens over time. Sometimes the case lacks substance to begin with. Other times, the prosecutor is caught in bed with the district attorney. Events after an arrest or an indictment inevitably spin out of control and the prosecution’s case weakens.
In cases likely to come to a quick verdict, these pre-trial switches in momentum don’t matter. But since it is evident that at least three of the indictments will not come to trial before the election, pre-trial maneuvering matters a great deal.
Of course, Biden had to accept the prosecutors who brought the indictments, but to have Alvin Bragg or Fani Willis as the figureheads of the cases against him helps Trump.
Nor are all the charges against Trump that serious.
Voters would be hard-pressed to blame Trump for his handling of secret documents after Biden left his in his garage. Unless the prosecution explains what was in those documents, and elicits gasps from the jurors, they won’t do Trump much harm.
Nor is the almost-rape-but-not-quite case against Trump likely to amount to anything more than an election lawyer’s dream: From which pocket did the payoff come?
Finally, Biden is losing the pre-trial skirmishing.
The massive coverage of the New York appellate court’s decision to cut Trump’s bond by more than half does his prosecutors no good. And if it comes out that Trump did indeed ask for National Guard troops as Jan. 6 neared and that the committee investigating the events of that day tried to squelch the story, that almost dooms the Jan. 6 case.
All the cases against Trump look increasingly like prosecutorial overreach.
But the main fact is that with the developments in courthouses in New York, Washington and Atlanta, how can a candidate other than Trump campaign and get covered?
The indictments of Donald Trump smoothed his path to the nomination and are about to do so in the general election. No other candidate or issue is getting any attention.
The second biggest story will always be Biden’s age and senility.
Anyone who follows the race even peripherally runs smack into the issue of his mental incapacity. The most recent Harvard poll showed that 63 percent of voters feel Biden is too old to run and 57 percent say he is unfit for office.
The blunt fact is that if the Democrats don’t dump Biden, they will have no chance of winning the election. Zero, zilch, nada.
And the more Biden campaigns in person, the more his decline becomes apparent. Even with his handlers limiting his appearances and tightly scripting him, his inability to handle the job becomes more and more obvious.
Without a pandemic, Biden cannot hide in his Delaware basement and, when he comes up for air, his physical and mental frailty become the next day’s headlines.
But even within the foul lines of the election, Biden’s choice of issues is very poor.
After four years of Trump in office, who is going to believe that this time he will cancel elections and reign as a dictator? And after Biden’s supporters tried, without success, to knock Trump off the ballot, how disingenuous their argument seems. Nor does anyone believe that the economy is turning around amid all the evidence that inflation is back.
Biden’s excuses for the massive illegal immigration his policies have caused and his obvious lack of remedies will continue to dominate the election debate.
So it is obvious that Trump is not only headed to victory, but that the win will be so massive as to take Congress for Trump.
All harbingers in the Senate races point that way.
Republicans will elect Gov. Jim Justice in West Virginia. One seat picked up.
In Ohio, the primary victory of Bernie Moreno, Trump’s endorsed candidate, leaves him with a very good chance of defeating Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown. Two seats picked up.
In Montana, Republican war hero Tim Sheehy is likely to defeat Democratic incumbent Jon Tester — a third likely Republican pickup.
And in a similar race in Nevada, Sam Brown, a disfigured war veteran, has pulled even with Democratic incumbent Jacky Rosen — a fourth pickup.
In Maryland, former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan boasts 10-point leads over both Democratic candidates for the open Senate seat. That makes five.
The only recent setback is in Arizona where independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema pulled out, leaving a two-way race between Republican Kari Lake and Democrat Ruben Gallego. Lake has had difficulty winning a two-way race, but with Trump 5 points ahead in Arizona, she’s got a shot.
Prediction: Trump wins and Democrats face one of the most massive defeats in history.
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