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Too much "boo outgroup," not enough substance. More effort than this, please.
As you wish:
It may well be the case that the Republican primary electorate will react to a Trump conviction by rallying behind him even harder. But it's hard to see how such a course of action results in anything but a Biden victory. If Trump is in jail, he can't campaign. He can't debate. He can't tweet. He will be limited in his ability to do media. And of course, those Americans who have some measure of trust in the criminal justice system (54% by this poll) will see him more negatively by virtue of the fact that he's been convicted - and he's an unpopular guy to start with.
Perhaps the day after the election people wake up and ask themselves "Hey, why did we decide it was smart to hitch our wagon to this loser again?" But at this stage I feel like too many people are in too deep to ever find their way out. Trump is a winner, so if he loses, it's because they cheated. And if he goes to jail it's because he was unfairly targeted, definitely not because he committed a stupendous number of crimes trying to illegally hold on to power. So another loss will simply become even more evidence of how rigged the system is, and another reason to support Trump even harder, onwards into the mists of time.
That is a pretty abysmal number, TBH, especially when the plurality of the three categories you're counting was in the middle of the overall range (they essentially had a scale of 1-5, and you're counting the 38% who were the equivalent of a 3). Also, it has clearly been trending downward, which is a bad sign. People are losing trust, because they're seeing what is actually happening. They keep getting told that this case or that case isn't a perfect equivalent, so we can't really be sure that there is a double-standard in play, but such a position keeps becoming less and less plausible.
Short Circuit just linked to a case in the D.C. Circuit:
Extremely high-profile uses of real bureaucratic power in service of The Party get noticed. Suddenly changing COVID messaging to allow for political protests that serve The Party got noticed. Differential enforcement of laws got noticed. Some of those times, apologists can retreat behind claims that there could have been differences, but the Difference of the Gaps argument is running thin as examples are mounting and we're seeing even circuit courts have to admit that it sure darn seems like laws are being selectively enforced depending upon whether The Party approves of the viewpoint being expressed. I've seen a lot of your comments here, but I don't think you've ever actually engaged seriously with this challenge. Every time someone tries to allege disparate treatment, it just rolls off your back. If you still have "some" measure of faith in the criminal justice system, can you agree with the D.C. Circuit that at least this sure seems be a pretty plausible example of disparate treatment based on the political viewpoint of the "criminals" in question?
I mean, probably a lot of why Americans distrust the criminal justice system is not because they think that it is in service of The Party, by which term I assume you mean the mainstream non-populist political establishment.
For many it is because they have eyes and can both see and read that the criminal justice system is obviously dysfunctional on every level, from the often incompetent cops, to the drug war, to the overworked court systems, to the sardine can prisons. I think that plenty of objective observers can probably agree on such an opinion of the criminal justice system regardless of what political ideology they support
Add on top of that the people who genuinely buy into Black Lives Matter-type reasoning about how the criminal justice system is supposedly racist.
And yes, people noticing what looks like lawfare is a third reason.
If 54% of Americans have some measure of trust in the criminal justice system, to me it means that about 54% of Americans have been lucky enough to never have to deal with the criminal justice system, plus do not spend much time reading about it.
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Certainly.
Now we're cookin'! Do you have an opinion on why Paul Combetta wasn't charged for violating the same law that Mike Flynn was charged for, but in a way that was vastly more flagrant?
No, I don't. I don't even know who Paul Combetta is, much less the particulars of any alleged offences he may have committed.
Ah, so you're actually just ignorant of the examples people have of a double standard. That's why you think they're just mists of time. Perhaps you could check out the IG report on the matter, with choice quotes from agents who were sure that he committed the same crime, more blatantly, and had no idea why he wasn't prosecuted? Perhaps you could look in to some of the allegations before broadly declaring that they're all nothing but mist?
This is not a thing I have said.
Ok, I'll venture on this side quest with you. I'll promise to come back to the main point afterward.
I am not the best at literary interpretation, so please help me understand what you mean here. When I look up the phrase "mists of time", it says, "used to show that something happened a very long time ago and is difficult to remember clearly". My sense is that this is because of the ultimate nature of mist - it is fleeting, never pinned down to being concretely known in the specifics. My sense is that the point here is that any allegations of double-standards aren't actually true, and that you think Trump-supporters are the ones who won't get pinned down to concrete specifics. Instead, they'll just roll it into the amorphous mist. Is this not what you meant?
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