Opinion | Trump Would Be Long Gone if Only We Could … – The New York Times
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Guest Essay
Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.
A central predicament of President Biden’s campaign is how to persuade voters to abandon Donald Trump.
“In 2012 the Obama campaign turned a nice guy, Mitt Romney, into a piece of crap,” Steve Murphy, a co-founder of the Democratic media firm MVAR Media, told me. “You can’t do that to Trump because everybody already knows he’s a piece of crap.”
Not only do voters know that Trump is a liar and corrupt, narcissistic and venal; his supporters have repeatedly found ways to slide past his liabilities.
In April, before the former president was convicted on 34 felony counts by a New York jury, and again this month, after he was found guilty, YouGov asked voters: “Do you think someone who has been convicted of a felony should be allowed to become president?”
In April, before the verdict, Republicans were decisively against a felon becoming president, with 17 percent in favor and 58 percent opposed (and the remaining 25 percent not sure).
After the conviction, Republicans flipped, with 58 percent in favor of a felon becoming president and 23 percent opposed (and 19 percent unsure).
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