- More than a week after Donald Trump announced he would be indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, the official announcement came down Thursday evening that it's finally happening.
That conservative rag that is the Washington Post questioned the legitimacy of this indictment.
Pyramiding two transgressions of state rules to go after a federal candidate is legally plausible. But the strategy is also novel, and courts may regard it with skepticism. What’s more, the potential campaign finance charge itself is shaky.
Breaches of campaign finance law undermine democracy and deserve to be taken seriously. Yet the potential downsides of indicting Mr. Trump ought to be taken seriously, too. This prosecution is now bound to be the test case for any future former president, as well as, of course, proceedings against this former president in particular — of which there are plenty. Other investigations underway include Justice Department examinations of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and classified documents discovered at Mar-a-Lago, where the possibility of obstruction of justice is particularly grave. These are straightforward cases compared with the one proceeding in Manhattan. A failed prosecution over the hush-money payment could put them all in jeopardy, as well as provide Mr. Trump ammunition for his accusations of “witch hunt” — in light of which House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was right to urge supporters to refrain from protesting.
Public perception and political strategy shouldn’t dissuade a district attorney from bringing a solid case, but neither should they persuade him to bring a shaky one. This prosecution needs to be airtight. Otherwise, it’s not worth continuing.
As someone who would love to see Trump not be the GOP presidential candidate in 2024, I prefer he be taken down legitimately, whether it's due to his other (and more serious) legal woes or being defeated in the Republican primary. And if his biggest detractors are being honest, they would concede that this only galvanizes support for Trump in '24. While I believe he would ultimately lose in the general election, does the anti-Trump crowd really want to chance a repeat of 2016?
Bottom line is Trump needs to go away, but this stunt achieves the exact opposite effect.
- Two U.S. House reps went toe-to-toe over how to handle gun legislation in the aftermath of the Covenant school shooting earlier this week.
🚨Watch: GOP @RepThomasMassie
— The Calvin Coolidge Project (@TheCalvinCooli1) March 30, 2023
proposes arming teachers instead DNC Rep. Jamaal Bowman started a shouting match.
pic.twitter.com/TxlIQ0NaFi
This is a helpful lesson whenever someone shrieks "DO SOMETHING!!!!!!" in the aftermath of a spree killing. But when "something" is suggested, the gun grabbers always pivot to inhibiting legal gun ownership. So why is it that grabbers don't care about kids' safety?
- I saw this graphic earlier in the week and found it somewhat depressing.
Fascinating long-term trends on what Americans value, per the latest WSJ-NORC poll: pic.twitter.com/BPqUElmohj
— Ben Pershing (@benpershing) March 27, 2023
However, professional pollster Patrick Ruffini indicates that the polling methodology (online in 2023; via phone in 2019) is a key distinction.
Why should this matter? After all, panelists on NORC’s Amerispeak panel are recruited probabilistically, using the same random sampling methods as a telephone survey. It’s more expensive, but when when you want online data that looks as close as possible to the old gold-standard telephone survey data, you use NORC’s Amerispeak.
But survey mode still matters. Surveying the exact same types of respondents online and over the phone will yield different results. And it matters most for exactly the kinds of values questions that the Journal asked in its survey.
The basic idea is this: if I’m speaking to another human being over the phone, I am much more likely to answer in ways that make me look like an upstanding citizen, one who is patriotic and values community involvement. My answers to the same questions online will probably be more honest, since the format is impersonal and anonymous. So, the 2023 survey probably does a better job at revealing the true state of patriotism, religiosity, community involvement, and so forth. The problem is that the data from previous waves were inflated by social desirability bias—and can’t be trended with the current data to generate a neat-and-tidy viral chart like this.
That all may be true, but it still doesn't take away from the fact that traditional American values are absurdly low. Apparently they've just been on a decline at a much slower pace than the WSJ/NORC poll have led us to believe. Still depressing though.
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