With Trump indicted in Florida and New York City, and another indictment almost certainly coming in D.C. and possibly Fulton County, Georgia, if DA Fanni Willis can find the time, a lot of people are breathing a sigh of relief. Despite the two plus years of near silence, breeding wonderment as to why a Democratic attorney general hadn’t lifted a finger to do anything, the new stoic hero of the fair-weather friends of law and order, Jack Smith, is doing the job everybody thought Merrick Garland was doing in deep secrecy, but he wasn’t.

But now we’ve got him?

In a promo clip for the Alex Wagner show on MSNBC, Alex gushes to New York district attorney Alvin Bragg that he’s finally held Trump, or his organizations, accountable. Well, he did manage a smack at the Trump organization, but his indictment of Trump has yet to go to trial and Trump has yet to be convicted of anything. Same for Jack Smith, with the Florida indictment before Judge Aileen Cannon tentatively scheduled for trial in May, but who knows? Trial dates come and go.

David French applauds the “legal wall” being built around Trump based on these indictments and anticipated indictments.

Do you wonder why the 2022 election was relatively routine and uneventful, even though the Republicans fielded a host of conspiracy-theorist candidates? Do you wonder why right-wing media was relatively tame after a series of tough G.O.P. losses, especially compared to the deranged hysterics in 2020? Yes, it matters that Trump was not a candidate, but it also matters that the right’s most lawless members have been prosecuted, sued and sanctioned.

That many of those in Trump’s orbit have been “prosecuted, sued and sanctioned” is not only true, but overwhelmingly well founded. That doesn’t make it the reason the 2022 election was “relatively routine and uneventful,” as correlation does not imply causation, but it didn’t hurt.

But you know who has yet to be convicted of anything? We are three years past the 2020 election and Trump has yet to be convicted of a parking violation. In the meantime, he stumps about his victimhood, about being the weakest, most pathetic man in America, constantly having sand kicked in face like a 300 lb. weakling. He keeps announcing that he was “perfect,” a word that is stunningly reflective of his stunted vocabulary, and did everything according to the Presidential Records Act, a law that has nothing to do with anything and doesn’t help him at all. Yet, he keeps saying so, assured that his sycophants will never figure out how full of shit he is because they love him too much.

As of this moment in time, no one has laid a legal glove on Trump. His biggest woe is that he can’t find enough lawyers, no less competent lawyers, willing to take on his cause. As a criminal defendant, he poses three serious issues. The first is that the guy is a notorious deadbeat, stiffing those who worked for him and telling them to get in line to sue him if they don’t like it. The second is that there is a great likelihood that representing Trump meas losing one’s license to practice law and getting sanctioned for big money. Right, Rudy, Sidney, Jenna and his old buddy, Mike?

And the third is that he is the motherlode of humiliation, as he can’t shut his mouth and stop the stupid shit from coming out. This makes it hard to do a job in court when the client undoes it on TV and at every rally making arguments and admissions that may play well with the fans but not with a judge.

But the point missed by so many of us who are well aware that the charges against Trump are well-founded and the evidence strong is that even if and when convicted, it won’t matter. His supporters are already convinced that this is little more than a political attack on their hero by his fearful political adversary who has “weaponized” the DoJ to take down the last man who will defend them against the woke future.

So let’s assume, arguendo, that Trump gets convicted. So what? Will his supporters be convinced by the overwhelming evidence against him and finally come to the realization that he was nothing more than a grifter who used them for his own self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment? Will they realize he’s been lying to them all along, shamelessly saying whatever he thought would buy him another vote from people he would never let play on his golf courses?

They haven’t realized this up to now, even though it’s painfully apparently to everyone who isn’t a Trump sycophant. Bear in mind, these aren’t necessarily Biden or social justice fans, but simply people not under Trump’s spell.

For a brief and glorious moment, the power players of the hard right saw an opportunity to rid themselves of this blight and tried to pull their support, to proclaim Trump was dead and it was time to move on. But there was no one to pick up the torch, with MAGA wannabes like DeSantis blowing every opportunity to make himself the anti-Trump, and instead playing Trump lite with  the personality of a rock.

Between now and the 2024 election, at least one of these prosecutions is likely to come to fruition and result in an outcome. It should have happened already, but Garland wasn’t up to the task when the opportunity was ripe. At the point when America votes for its next president, will the fact of a well-earned conviction put Trump supporters off or will Trump end up with another first, the first felon elected president?