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The remaining primaries and convention at this point serve as little more than a coronation for the inevitable Trump nomination. It was discussed last week the unlikely circumstances in which Trump is prevented from running. The questions now are:
The likelihood Trump wins? Betting markets put the odds between 40-60%, which is not that useful but is what I would expect. The election will be very close and come down to the usual swing states like in 2020 and 2016. Biden's approval ratings are precariously low for an incumbent, especially given that the Electoral College works to Trump's advantage.
What will a second Trump term be like? My guess is much like his first term. A lot of hollow populist gestures to his base but not much happens. I still don't understand these people who are otherwise centrist or middle-left like Matt Yglesias and Noah Smith, who predict or expect a foreign policy crisis if trump wins , but always fail to articulate what this entails. I guess they have to keep toeing the 'orange man bad' line even though he was not that bad, and the economy and other metrics did well under his presidency (until Covid, which was out of his control anyway). Key alliances were strained much, as commonly feared in 2016-2017. The leadership of allies like Germany and France begrudgingly accepted Trump, and not much else happened.
I don't have much else to add except that I was reading the WSJ today and several polls showed between 22% and 34% of Republican voters stating that a criminal conviction would disqualify Trump from office.
Huh? How snail-brained are 22-34% of these voters? Why would you care if he gets convicted?
I could understand saying a credible accusation is disqualifying. I could understand saying his behavior was disqualifying in and of itself. But why would you outsource your vote to the jury pool of Georgia?
The same reason anyone outsources any judgements to anything: a level of epistemic humility, and acknowledging that other people and systems may know things you don't.
Republicans are the Tough on Crime party after all, Back the Blue and harsher mandatory sentencing and all of that. Their policy positions wouldn't make a lot of sense if they didn't think that criminal convictions had at least some pretty high correlation with actual states of guilt.
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