A little over a year ago, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced that Donald Trump had been indicted in his jurisdiction on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

It seemed like a turning point. For the first time in American history, a former president was facing criminal charges. In the months that followed, three more indictments came down. Conventional wisdom suggested that this would be more than enough to sink Trump’s chances of reprising his role as commander-in-chief.

It’s clear now that the Bragg indictment was, in fact, a turning point. But as Trump’s trial in New York City winds down, it’s equally as obvious that the conventional wisdom was wrong.

If Trump retakes the White House this fall, it will be in no small part thanks to his legal opponents, not in spite of them.

While the former president’s effortless romp through the Republican presidential primary has given observers the impression that his victory in it was inevitable, this is a false memory and product of hindsight. By early 2023, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had come within 15 points of closing the national polling gap between himself and Trump, even opening up leads in Iowa, New Hampshire, Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Michigan according to some statewide surveys. He did all this, mind you, without so much as declaring his candidacy for the office.

Alas, the Bragg indictment changed everything. Within a month of it dropping, Trump’s lead over DeSantis had doubled in size. The most viable challenger to the de facto incumbent had his knees cut out from under him before his campaign had even begun.

And while the instant rally-around-the-leader effect in the GOP electorate could have been predicted, the progressive establishment’s excesses in prosecuting Trump have, improbably enough, turned his legal battles into a political asset to him in the general election as well.

Of the four sets of charges leveled against Trump, the first is the weakest by far. Alvin Bragg’s attempt to raise his political profile and earn a spot in the history books is an affront to the legal profession and the rule of law. It’s obvious that his zombified corpse of a case reanimating minor charges after the expiration of the statute of limitations would not be brought against any other American, especially if the prosecution’s argument hinged on the word of a horrifying wretch like Michael Cohen.

The trial itself – in all of its boring, inane, weedy detail – has helped make this truth plain to the average American. Moreover, the media’s ceaseless, gleeful 24/7 coverage of it has compounded the damage. For the past several weeks, CNN has been running a new program called “Trump Hush Money Trial” from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon when the court is in session. Last Monday evening it followed that up with hours of specials on the trial and a dramatic reading of the transcript of Cohen’s back-and-forth with the prosecutors holding his leash.

This unseemly spectacle has betrayed the fact that it is personal disdain for Trump that is the driving force behind this case and raised questions over whether similar motivations are fueling the other, more meritorious criminal cases against the presumptive Republican nominee. By blotting out the sun with allegations against Trump and chatter about them, Democrats and their allies in the Fourth Estate have numbed voters to some of his very real sins. If everything Trump does is to be treated as criminal, in effect nothing is.

Trump’s character flaws have long been baked into any electoral contest in which he competes. His trial in New York hasn’t revealed anything new about him, but it has demonstrated that all of the furrowed brows and self-righteous monologues over the threat he represented to America’s political norms were little more than a convenient pretense for attacking him. While attempting to take full advantage of the moral high ground they believed they would enjoy in the 2024 election, Democrats have actually managed to cede some of it back to Donald Trump. Imagine that.

In the process they’ve not only come across as vindictive, but out of touch. The country has deep misgivings about Joe Biden’s exacerbation of post-pandemic inflation and empowerment of America’s enemies across the globe. He is the least popular incumbent president to seek reelection in the last 70 years. Instead of making the case for Biden on policy grounds – admittedly a tall task – progressives have spent the last year spiking the football over Trump’s legal troubles.

If Biden was a strong candidate highly regarded by the American people, a single, slam-dunk case against Trump might have been the final nail in the former president’s political coffin. But in light of Biden’s failures, the avalanche of criminal allegations leveled against his opponent is reflecting poorly on him.