As always with Trump, the question is with whom a particular event makes him stronger, his base or his base and a broader electorate? Kavanaugh juiced up Republican turnout and they still got absolutely crushed in 2018 with relatively favorable economic fundamentals/no foreign crisis. Why? Because he and his party's brand were absolutely toxic among vast swaths of the electorate who weren’t part of the base.
I agree that the indictments have made a good chunk of his supporters even more enthusiastic, but there’s absolutely no evidence it’s made him stronger in a general election.
Yes, Trump's base is vocal; it’s really, really loud, it’s super-passionate, but for the umpteenth time — it’s not even close to a plurality of the American electorate. An unenthusiastic Biden vote counts just as much as an enthusiastic Trump vote.
We know Trump's supporters do not make up the majority of the electorate, but as we saw in 2020, Trump can still come extremely close to winning the EC even when losing the popular vote by as much as he did.
All it takes is a few thousand votes to shift in GA, PA, WI, AZ, etc. for another 4 years of chaos.
The issue is in all 4 of those states, demographic change and generational turnover should net Biden tens of thousands of votes by itself. So Trump has more than just 2020 margins to make up with turnout and vote-flippers.
Even in “right trending Wisconsin”, nearly half of new residents added since 2020 have been from high turnout and extremely Dem leaning Dane County. Assuming those new residents turnout and vote like current Residents, that alone should net Biden around 15k votes. Stuff like this might be small, but it pads Biden’s margin for error in case he loses some voters and/or turnout dynamics are more favorable to Trump.
