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But if Monday’s letter from the judge in the case is any measure, this last shorthand may not be entirely appropriate. In fact, New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Marchand seems to suggest that what we actually have is a third case of election interference.
“The allegations are substantial, that Donald Trump falsified business records to conceal agreements with others to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election,” Marchand said Monday. I summarized it while explaining the jury selection process that begins.
Marchand is not exactly rewriting the accusations against Trump. However, this persona reveals that there is a much bigger problem here than President Trump’s alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels, the hush money, and the alleged violation of the law by concealing the hush money paid to Ms. Daniels. It reminds me of. (These details are sordid, but they seem trivial compared to Trump’s other three indictments.)
There are also allegations of a conspiracy to illegally conceal harmful information to benefit the winning candidate in a closely contested election. And considering how close that election was, it’s not at all foolish to wonder what effect this criminal charge had on the country’s course.
But could it have swayed the 2016 race?
That’s puzzling. But a few things can be said.
One is that Trump won by less than 1 percentage point in the swing states. He won Michigan by 0.2 percent, Pennsylvania by 0.7 percent and Wisconsin by 0.8 percent. Just by changing 78,000 votes in those states, or shifting the entire electorate by just one point to Hillary Clinton, Trump would never be president.
The other is that Trump appears to have won because voters who were undecided in the final stages of the campaign strongly supported him. According to exit polls, late-game voters gave Trump an 11-point lead in Michigan, 17 points in Pennsylvania and 29 points in Wisconsin.
And, as I wrote at the time, there were enough such voters in each state to make a difference.
In Pennsylvania, it was 15 percent. [deciding late]. And in Michigan and Wisconsin, states where Mr. Trump lagged behind, a whopping 20% of voters said they had reached their choice in the past seven days.
…
If we accept that all the numbers are correct, considering that there is room for fluctuation in the exit polls, that is quite an “assumption”, but President Trump… That means they picked up about 4 points in Wisconsin, 2.5 points in Pennsylvania and 2 points in state in the final week. 1.5 points for Florida and Michigan.
Changes in each of these states, if accurate, would account for Trump’s victory.
The question from there is whether the late public announcement of the alleged affair with the porn star had enough of an impact on enough voters, many of whom delayed making undecided decisions, and other voters. I’m asking you something. Again, we never know.
I want to say that it couldn’t be like that. After all, voters elected Trump even though they knew a month before Election Day about the “Access Hollywood” tape in which he mused about sexually abusing women. . Mr. Trump overcame numerous other controversies to win the election. And those who are slow to make decisions tend to be at odds with the party that controls the White House, as was the case with Clinton’s party at the time.
But just because Trump won doesn’t mean he’s Teflon-coated. Critics often devolve into treating every attack on a winner as a failure just because the winner won. However, in some cases, it may not be enough to cause a loss, but it can be damaging to a winning candidate.
This seems to be the case with “Access Hollywood.” A 2020 study by the University of Massachusetts and Brandeis University examined the 2016 Joint Congressional Election Study. Those exposed to the tape were found to have 2 points less support for President Trump.
Without the tape, Jill S. Greenlee of Brandeis concluded that the 2.1 percentage point loss of the popular vote “might have been narrower for Mr. Trump, or it might not have happened at all.” Ta.
There are several things involved in thinking that Trump was more distressed by the Daniels allegations. One is that if she doesn’t get her reward, she will actually submit it publicly. That would have forced Trump to lose voters who weren’t sufficiently interested in the “Access Hollywood” tape or his other controversies, or who she didn’t recognize.
Certainly, there’s something to be said for important debates that can be watershed for voters. Or perhaps some voters who accepted Mr. Trump’s defense that the “Access Hollywood” tape was just “locker room talk” are more concerned about more serious allegations about Mr. Trump’s actual conduct. He might have been concerned. An affair with a porn star is the kind of thing that would cause at least some problem for many of President Trump’s then-new evangelical Christian supporters.
Of course, media coverage of Trump’s alleged affair had been following him for decades, so it may have been baked into his brand by that point. And given that this incident probably never happened and has yet to be proven, President Trump has always denied it while lying about the situation, but perhaps voters simply assumed there was no way they would know. I’ll decide. Perhaps they will even see it as a last minute dirty trick by someone with a bad reputation – an adult film actress.
What’s clear is that Trump and his then-lawyer Michael Cohen saw potential value in covering up everything. And illegally or not, they took this counterfactual away from us. It is not possible to redo the election, so in that sense the conspiracy may have worked.
But now that President Trump faces legal liability, even the abbreviations “hush money” and “falsification of business records” don’t really explain everything this alleged crime means to President Trump and the country. It’s worth recognizing that you haven’t.
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