Whether former President Donald Trump has bitten off more than he can chew legally remains to be seen, but there is one way the growing number of indictments plays to his advantage.
In the Republican primary, at least, "us" would be those who have doubts about the 2020 election, see the justice system as having been “weaponized” against conservatives in a way it would never be against President Joe Biden or his family, and therefore think the indictments are bogus.
BIDEN HEADS TO WISCONSIN NECK AND NECK WITH TRUMP
The people on the other side of those issues are “them.”
Presidential politics in the 21st century is a Hatfields vs. McCoys feud. Few understand this better than Trump.
So Trump’s rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination can side with “us” but then not have a particularly compelling way of distinguishing themselves from the front-runner.
Or they can more forthrightly and directly challenge Trump on these issues and become one of “them.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have tried the former approach. It has gotten DeSantis into the double digits in most polls while producing upward movement for Ramaswamy in some.
But in the latest Morning Consult poll, for example, Trump is up by 41 points nationally. An Emerson College poll has Trump at 49% in New Hampshire but no one else in the double digits.
It has only gotten DeSantis and Ramaswamy so far.
Candidates who have tried the more directly confrontational approach get attention but have fared even worse.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, who has only recently sharpened his attacks against his erstwhile boss, tends to do the best of this bunch in national polls. Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has a decent pocket of support in New Hampshire.
Beyond that, anti-Trump candidates are polling in the low single digits.
The dilemma was evident in the GOP field’s responses to Trump’s latest indictment in Georgia. Only Ramaswamy and the Never Trumpers proactively responded to the Fulton County charges.
DeSantis and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) responded more or less in defense of Trump but only after being directly asked.
Everyone else has as of this writing stayed quiet.
Trump can easily portray the Georgia case and the 2020-related federal indictment by special counsel Jack Smith as the criminalization of views Republican primary voters largely hold.
That doesn’t leave the other candidates in an optimal position.
Political polarization isn’t new. Ever since 2000, presidential elections have been hard-fought affairs, often with disputed results. Barack Obama’s election in 2008 was the most lopsided of the past quarter-century, and he won 52.9% of the popular vote.
Nor is Trump the first political figure to use polarization to his advantage. Longtime North Carolina GOP Sen. Jesse Helms won five terms, usually by a slim margin, by splitting the electorate in his state and arousing his base’s passions.
But Trump is uniquely suited to the post-2000 American divisions in a way that Mitt Romney and John McCain were not. This is true of some of Trump’s other rivals inside the GOP. The immediate aftermath of 9/11 produced a brief period of national unity and subsequently allowed George W. Bush to navigate the polarization in a dignified manner consistent with his comfort zone once it faded.
This is why Trump has survived Access Hollywood, the Russia investigation, two impeachments, the 2020 election loss, Jan. 6, and indictments in four cases spanning multiple jurisdictions.
He leads nearly a dozen other Republicans by a margin that has never been overcome even at this early phase of the race in modern primary history. And he trails Biden by less than a point.
Trump is going to make the argument that his legal troubles stem from Biden’s Justice Department and partisan Democratic local prosecutors trying to “lock him up” while turning a blind eye to more serious crimes, including their own.
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That might not get him out of his legal jam.
But it could be enough to make Trump the Republican presidential nominee for the third straight election. And after that, anything can happen.