How Will Trump’s Conviction Affect the Election?

To the Editor:

Re “‘Guilty’ May Not Matter,” by Frank Bruni (Opinion, June 2):

Mr. Bruni fears that Donald Trump’s newfound status as a convicted felon may not be enough for him to lose the election. Although Mr. Bruni may be right, he and the rest of us who desperately want to keep this despicable demagogue from returning to the White House should consider why so many millions would vote for a candidate with a criminal record.

Mr. Trump’s appeals to grievance and nostalgia for a bygone era have found fertile ground among the non-college-educated working class whose economic advancement has stalled over the past several decades. In many cases Mr. Trump simply exploits racism and xenophobia, but legitimate injury is there as well.

Income gains have stagnated despite rising productivity; good blue-collar, union jobs have been offshored, replaced by lower-paying nonunion jobs in the service sector; and the profit-driven health care system grows increasingly heartless.

With his declarations of a system rigged against both him and his supporters, Mr. Trump has cynically channeled anger at elites who have successfully ridden out or even engineered capitalism’s latest jolts.

Although Mr. Trump leads the party that has traditionally championed the interests of the moneyed elite, Democrats have largely failed to offer a compelling alternative for these disaffected voters. The Democrats need to start concentrating on progressive solutions to working-class woes, and President Biden must make a convincing case for the real-life impacts of his not-insignificant achievements.

If this does not happen, we could well see a second Trump presidency, no matter how many criminal counts he has against him.