What the Biden campaign thinks the Trump verdict means

Well before the Manhattan jury finished deliberating on Thursday, most of President Joe Biden’s advisers concluded that a guilty verdict wouldn’t drastically alter their 2024 election strategy.

Well before the Manhattan jury finished deliberating on Thursday, most of President Joe Biden’s advisers concluded that a guilty verdict wouldn’t drastically alter their 2024 election strategy. But it has stoked some hopes among supporters of the president that if 12 people who focused on Trump voted to find him guilty, there might actually be enough undecided voters who, if the Biden campaign can figure out how to get them to focus on Trump, will vote to keep him from returning to the White House. Aides have discussed among themselves whether the Biden campaign would use the term “criminal” to describe the likely Republican nominee in their messaging, even as they acknowledge the former president’s legal issues are largely baked in and voters care about other issues more. Still, a guilty verdict is a guilty verdict, and 34 of them hardly makes for bad news for Biden’s campaign five months before Election Day. The convictions might not move the needle in a major way in the election, those close to the Biden reelection effort told CNN, but an acquittal could have really helped Trump – and that makes Thursday’s historic decision a win for the Biden campaign, if only because it is not a loss. A sense of despondency had started to creep in from top supporters and donors in recent weeks, as more moments that reelection campaign strategists had projected would shift the race – the beginning of the 2024 calendar year, the end of the Republican primaries, the coming of spring when they figured more people would pay attention to Trump’s record—have come and gone without any notable movement in the polls or overall dynamics. So much frustration built inside the Wilmington headquarters that on Tuesday – with attention locked on the Manhattan courtroom – they sent out Robert DeNiro to shout at the crowd, and at the reporters. But the conviction on 34 counts has reassured some of their mantra that the more people focus on Trump and the choice ahead of them, the better Biden’s November is going to be – and to push back on the “nothing matters” sensibility that has helped power Trump through so many other dark moments over his last nine years in politics.