Why Donald Trump's Indictment Helps Him in the Primary...and Hurts Him in the General

This week, it seems possible, if not increasingly probable, that Donald Trump will be indicted for his involvement in a scheme where he (allegedly) bribed adult film star Stormy Daniels, with whom he supposedly had an affair.  While Trump giving Daniels payment for her silence about the affair in the run-up to his 2016 presidential election would not technically be a crime, Trump's attorney submitted phony invoices to cover up the "hush money" which would constitute a crime (falsifying business records in the state of New York is illegal), likely a misdemeanor charge, though if it was done to cover up another crime, it would be a felony.

I'll be honest-when the rumors came up that Trump was looking at a potential indictment, I didn't guess this would be the case that made it happen.  Investigations into Trump by the New York Attorney General, investigations coming out of the January 6th committee, and election tampering evidence in Georgia all felt like the more open-and-shut cases.  But it appears that this could be the first of several indictments the former president, who is currently running for the White House and is the leading Republican challenger for the GOP nominee, will have to sidestep as he attempts to get a second term in the Oval Office.

There are a lot of things to discuss here, and a few things I'm going to start right out of the gate with.  First, I don't know if Trump will be charged in this case.  It seems like a relatively solid case, but it's also a pretty paltry charge, and the kind that the Manhattan District Attorney would normally avoid for such a high-profile defendant.  That doesn't make what he's doing wrong (the law is the law is the law, and we shouldn't only charge poor people with misdemeanors), but it is an interesting front because this is probably the case that is most likely to result in a "Not Guilty" of the major investigations into the former president, which would be a win for Trump, if not politically, at least personally.

But what I do want to discuss is something Republicans have been trumpeting intently-that this is good news for Trump, to the point where they're saying "this is securing him a second term."  Politicians frequently have good reason to lie about their chances' in a political election, and it's not just good enough to look at what they're saying, but the why of what they're saying, and with this it's pretty clear to me how I think this might play out: this stands a far better chance of getting Republicans a flawed nominee that will lose the general...but isn't really helping him in getting an actual second term.

The best argument for judicial overreach hurting an incumbent party is the Bill Clinton impeachment.  Clinton's impeachment, on the very surface of it (looking back on it 25 years later), had some validity.  It is likely that, under oath, Clinton lied about his involvement with Paula Jones & Monica Lewinsky.  If he didn't perjure himself, he at the very least intentionally mislead the public and the judicial system in these investigations.  The Clinton administration, though, (wisely for them, arguably unwisely for the future of the Democratic Party, but that's a conversation for a different day), chose not to have him resign (which likely would've been the end of it from a judicial perspective) and instead made the case that he was being impeached not for lying under oath or abuse of power, but for being a married man who got caught cheating.  The American public agreed, basically saying this was a problem for the Clintons, and not for them, and didn't have an appetite to impeach a guy they otherwise liked.  Clinton had a decent 1998 midterms that otherwise could've been a disaster, and left office insanely popular.

Trump, though, isn't entirely in the same boat.  For starters, he's not as popular as Clinton.  Secondly, his administration is not well-regarded.  And third, even if you can note the similarities between the Jones/Lewinsky cases and the case of Stormy Daniels (both involve a married man having an affair and then allegedly breaking the law to cover it up), the similarities end there.  While the Clinton White House had some other allegations against it, it's nothing compared to Donald Trump, particularly given Trump's false allegations of election tampering in the 2020 election, and the attacks on the Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6th.  Clinton was a soon-to-be-retired politician who had led one of the biggest economic recoveries in modern history.  Trump is still an active politician, and one who most Democrats think deserves to be in jail, even if this specific crime doesn't usually top the list.

As a result, I don't think this helps Trump in the same way it helped Clinton-it's hard to imagine a lot of Biden voters switching to Trump because they feel bad for him-that's not how politics works anymore.  And it has to be pointed out-Trump has to make up ground in order to win the White House.  In 2022, his hand-selected candidates in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, & Wisconsin all lost.  These are all states that he didn't win in 2020, and he needs to win at least a few of them in 2024 to get a second term in the White House-it's hard to see how getting indicted for having an affair with a porn star is going to help him win over middle-of-the-road voters.

What it does potentially do, though, is shore up support for Trump amongst Republicans, which is why you have people like Mike Pence & John Bolton actively pushing the narrative that this helps Trump, because while it makes him weaker in the general, it makes him stronger in the primary.  Trump's campaign will wisely use this as a rallying cry, lying to the believing swaths of voters who view him as infallible that this is "retribution" and an attack "on the guy they voted for twice."  Trump's ardent supporters will harden their backing of the guy, seeing it as a way to stand up to the alleged corruption, and it will be much more difficult to go after him since he'll become a conservative cause.  It's also worth noting that Republican candidates like Pence and Ron DeSantis don't seem to have the courage to go after Trump here precisely because they are worried he's going to make "Trump is innocent" a mandatory part of the Republican platform.  These are "devout" family men (Pence has long been the poster child for the evangelical movement), but even with the gift of an opponent sleeping with a porn star just after his pregnant wife gave birth...they aren't willing to attack him for fear that his supporters will never get on their side.  Because even if Trump loses the primary, there's little indication that he would support the Republican nominee, and if even 3-4% of his support from 2020 stayed home or supported a third party bid by Trump...it would be catastrophic for the GOP, to the point of a Democratic trifecta being back on the table, if not the predicted outcome in 2024.

There are a lot of unknowns with this case and what will happen in indicting a former president, but the one that I think it's clearest after watching the last week: the Republican Party doesn't think Trump can win the White House again, and knows that an indictment makes it more, not less, likely that he'll be their nominee.