I spent most of the day under the hot sun of Jamaica Bay, close against the runways of Kennedy airport, sight fishing for Bluefish with my younger son. Most of the action was at the beginning of the day. But that was enough to make it worthwhile. The secondary result was that I haven’t caught a lot of news today. What I have caught is a flood of surprise and disgust that Democrats seem at best uncertain about whether to make Trump now being a convicted felon central to their campaign. We don’t know just how the messaging will shake out. Ideally there would be a Democratic chorus that the President himself can stay partly or mostly aloof from. In a moment like this I also cannot forget the example of 2022 in which I along with many others begged and screamed for Democrats to give the Dobbs backlash an operative, concrete focus by organizing a pledge to pass a Roe law with a filibuster exception. In the event, voters took the lead on their own after elected officials did not. (Don’t rule out the possibility that that will happen here.) And I actually see a lot of Democrats hitting him on this again and again. Indeed, the Biden campaign itself put out a statement roundly attacking him on it. But we don’t have the time to wait for things to shake out or see how they develop. The stakes are too high. If it ends up they’re just getting started on lowering the boom there won’t be any harm having also told them to lower it faster.

Donald Trump’s superpower is his impunity. He can do or say things that would end another politician’s career, marriage, freedom, and so much more. But he emerges always unscathed. It’s the root of his opponents’ revulsion and the anchor of his devotees’ devotion. That’s because Trump, as we’ve noted many times, is about power. And impunity is one of the great expressions of power. When you see Trump and his toadies turning their rage up to 11 you know they can see, if only intuitively, that the most damaging part of Trump’s conviction is the loss of the aura of impunity it represents, the damage to his brand.

He committed the crime — one we knew about and which Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to and later went to prison for all the way back in 2018. Trump was charged with the crime. He want on trial for the crime. A jury of his peers found him guilty on every count. Done and done. No levitation in defiance of the laws of gravity. No skating on the crime a mere underling did time for. Guilty. Done and done.

Very off brand. Sad!, as the man himself might say.

Sen. Susan Collins released a statement yesterday denouncing the Manhattan trial verdict and in the course of that claiming that District Attorney Alvin Bragg “campaigned on a promise to prosecute Donald Trump.” I and others have looked in vain for any evidence of this. My assumption going in was that this was false and all research supports that contention.

My main thought on this verdict, globally, is that I don’t know what it means in a political and electoral context.

It’s a good thing that Trump faced accountability, for once in his life, for his own conduct. It is ironic on many levels that this case, by far the poor relation of the family of Trump prosecutions, is the one that actually went to trial and actually secured a conviction. It’s a disgrace that the others are unlikely to go to trial before the election. But that’s where we are.

I got a note this morning from TPM Reader CH who asked me a question I get with some frequency. He basically asks, why does the end-state need to be two states? Why won’t it be ethnic cleansing or genocide or bantustans? These are good questions. And it makes me realize that I may need to state more explicitly what is maybe too implicit.

I am certainly not arguing that there is some natural or inevitable progression to two states. On the available evidence there’s a much better argument that there is a natural and irremediable inertia holding the status quo of the last half century in place.

I usually use words like “viable” or “plausible.”

Before we get a verdict, it’s important to recognize that this is justice, regardless of whatever the verdict is. It is a billowing outrage that the three other cases against Donald Trump have been stymied to date by judicial corruption (certainly that’s the case in the two federal prosecutions; the Georgia case is more complicated). But those are different cases. This trial is in a different jurisdiction and about totally different facts and crimes. Both sides were allowed to make their case before a judge who did a good job of controlling the process. Now it’s in the hands of a jury.

I am certainly hoping for a conviction, mostly because the evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable. I’ve always thought this was essentially a jury nullification case. Trump’s only hope for an acquittal is for the jury to essentially say: we’ve heard what you say the law is and we’ve heard the evidence but we just don’t think this is a crime. More realistically, I think Trump’s real hope is a hung jury. Regardless, this is our system. Donald Trump deserves to have his fate in the hands of a jury. And now he does.

Follow along with our Trump trial live blog right here.