Many voters say they don’t want a convicted felon in the White House. But do they mean it? And can prosecutors get to trial before the vote?

Many voters say they don’t want a convicted felon in the White House. But do they mean it? And can prosecutors get to trial before the vote?

Can anything stop former President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign juggernaut, now that Trump has all but crushed his GOP primary opponents and pulled ahead of President Joe Biden in national polls?

While November is a long time away, and plenty could happen before then, voters do say Trump has a massive weakness: A potential criminal conviction. In poll after poll, lots of voters who shrug off Trump’s four indictments say they wouldn’t support him if he’s convicted of a felony. If they mean it—or even if a big chunk of them do—they could easily be enough to keep him out of the White House.

What remains to be seen, of course, is whether they mean it—and, crucially, whether prosecutors can put Trump on trial in time for the rest of us to find out.

That makes prosecutors’ race against the clock one of the most important narratives of the 2024 election cycle, as teams of lawyers work feverishly around the country to overcome Trump’s efforts to gum up the gears of the judicial system and push the start-date of all his trials past November.

  • DarkGamer
    9•11 months ago

    thank you for the clarification. Looking into definitions, evidently the word “convicted” only refers to criminal proceedings, as you say.

    • @orbit
      7•11 months ago

      Yeah you’re right and I think we’re looking for civily liable instead of conviction in this scenario - not that it should make a difference.

      • @[email protected]English
        2•11 months ago

        The technicalities can get weird, but it makes a huge difference. In the US (it works differently in different legal systems) even the defendant’s basic constitutional rights are different between civil and criminal proceedings. For example you can’t plead the 5th (invoke the right to not be compelled to provide incriminating evidence against yourself) in a civil trial because your testimony couldn’t incriminate when the trial’s not criminal. Any evidence gathered this way in a civil trial is therefore inadmissible in a criminal trial about the same matters. That’s why Bill Cosby got his rape conviction overturned on appeal. A lot of the criminal case against him was based on evidence he was compelled to give when he got sued over it earlier, so it shouldn’t have been allowed in the criminal trial. The appeal didn’t find him innocent, just that the conviction had to be thrown out because the process had violated his rights.

        • @orbit
          2•11 months ago

          I was referring to the perception from the results of the trial by the public, but you’ve given me quite a bit to mull over. Appreciate the context.