The guilty verdict in Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan injects an explosive and unpredictable new variable into a presidential race that is stuck in a standstill and characterized mainly by voters’ frustrations over their choice of two well-known and unpopular candidates.
After participating in largely non-competitive and drama-free primaries, US President Joe Biden and Trump now enter the general election campaign navigating a sudden and unprecedented scenario in US political history: the leading candidate in the presidential race is a convicted criminal.
Such a seismic development would almost certainly have changed the trajectory of the presidential race in the past, and that could still happen. Yet few experts are confident that this will be the case.
