Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Why Democrats want Trump

Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of an even more prominent fat man seems a big win for Donald Trump, regardless of how the case is decided. If convicted, Trump is a martyr, managing to portray himself once more as a persecuted Washington outsider, a status that’s quite a feat for a politician to retain after setting up shop in the White House for four years. If found not guilty, Trump is exonerated, a contrived case likely to rely on tentative legal reasoning exposed as an overtly partisan manhunt. After all, in a Quinnipiac poll last week, a plurality of Americans (42 per cent) considered the charges in New York either ‘not too serious’ (16 per cent) or ‘not serious at all’ (26 per cent). A hefty majority (62 per cent) believed the Stormy Daniels criminal case is mainly motivated by politics – including 93 per cent of Republicans, an electorally crucial 70 per cent of independents and a not-insignificant 29 per cent of Democrats.

Either way then, Trump 1, Dems 0, right? Not quite. It’s been obvious for some time that Democratic mandarins badly want Trump to be the 2024 GOP nominee. So Bragg’s arguably counterproductive ploy must have them wetting themselves in excitement.

Trump is the only credible Republican nominee the Dems think Joe Biden can beat

This preferred outcome was glaringly on display during the Republican primaries for last autumn’s midterms, when Dems ran ads for, as well as contributed considerable money to, Republican congressional candidates who supported Trump – the loopier the better. The reasoning ran that crackpots would be easier to defeat. It was a cynical strategy that willingly ran the risk the crackpots would win. Moreover, nothing stops Republicans from adopting the same tactic, thus swelling the treasure chests of the most woked-out police defunders on Democratic rosters.

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