Two Trials, Revisited

Editor’s note: A follow-up to A Tale Of Two Trials.

The verdicts have come in. Donald Trump, guilty of something or other related to misidentification of business expenses, 34 times. Hunter Biden, guilty of lying about his substance abuse on a firearms purchase form. Trump's conviction, born of a tortuous contortion of law and a judge who stacked the deck. Biden's conviction, plain-as-day guilt with a giant pile of affirming evidence.

My social media feed was promptly peppered, in the wake of the Biden verdict, with declarations that it was "proof" the system is not politicized. That, since a court managed to find Biden guilty, the whole system is pure as the driven snow rather than populated by partisans.

The surface simple-mindedness of this hides, in most-to-all cases I suggest, a grasping-at-straws attempt at making political hay. With no apologies for the groaning metaphor.

People have a propensity to reach for the tiniest sliver of supporting evidence when defending their team or their preferred conclusion, no matter how tenuous or inapplicable or rebuttable. Especially in high-stakes matters like a Presidential election.

First, let me get this out of the way. The system "working as it should" in convicting Biden - and that's setting aside the matter of selective prosecution (it's pretty rare that people are actually prosecuted for lying on a 4473) - tells us absolutely nothing about whether Bragg's prosecution of Trump was proper. The system is populated by individuals, and individuals can be paragons of virtue, total scumbags, or anywhere in between. I cannot fathom that a person with a somewhat functional adult brain could honestly believe that Biden's conviction proves that Trump's prosecution was not political, but somewhat functional adult brains appear to be in short supply.

So it goes, so on to the next bit - the political fallout.

Bragg already scored big for the Democrats, because now Biden et al can say "convicted felon" every time they mention Trump's name - and they will. Appeals, even if they happen before the election, won't carry much weight. The motivated reasoners got what they needed. The only caveat - and it's one that both the polls and the gambling markets support - is that the verdict is only a win for the already-convinced. Trump is getting a "martyr" bounce from his conviction.

The Hunter verdict, is a bit more complicated. Joe can preen as a "respect for the law" guy from now until Election Day with repeated insistence that he won't pardon his son, and the Dems now have their water-carriers asserting such nonsense as "proof the system is fair." On the other hand, the reality of the much-dismissed laptop has now been affirmed yet again, and Joe's entanglement in what that laptop has revealed can't be dismissed with assertions of Russian fabrication or something similar.

All this is an overlay on the real election driver: Biden's increasingly obvious senescence. He should be losing badly based on policy, and if someone like Ron DeSantis, with his stellar fiscal track record in Florida, were the nominee, I’d bet this’d be a runaway. But Trump's distastefulness has turned this into a contest of persons rather than ideas, and if Biden were as sharp, mentally, as Trump (despite his Untethered Orange Id behavior, no one thinks that Trump's mental acuity is deteriorating), he'd likely cruise to re-election despite his passel of putrid policies.

This is why I still think Biden will be convinced to step aside before the election. How and when remains to be seen, with new variables such as his debate performance influencing it all. Who will replace him? That’s anybody’s guess. Newsom would be the most superficially obvious should they manage to under-bus Kamala the blitherer (a tall order), but Newsom is so unctuous they might look elsewhere.

Interesting times, indeed.