Since the indictments first started rolling, it was always obvious that Donald Trump’s legal foibles were nothing more than a political hit job. So it’s strange that after finally getting the “convicted felon” label they always wanted, the Biden campaign decided to sit on the verdict for a few weeks before making hay. The strategy behind this decision is just as cynical as you’d expect.

While Joe Biden’s presidential campaign remained uncharacteristically quiet in the weeks following Trump’s guilty verdict, it turns out they were just waiting for the right moment, Politico reported. It simply took some time before internal polling and focus groups showed voters were turned off by verdict.

The result is what Politico described as the campaign’s “sharpest attack ad yet” — an especially nasty little piece of agitprop. The ad, titled “Character Matters,” is part of the campaign’s $50 million ad buy for June.

“In the courtroom, we see Donald Trump for who he is. He’s been convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual assault and he committed financial fraud,” the narrator proclaims, as a montage of Trump’s courtroom photos splash by. “Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s been working — lowering health care costs and making big corporations pay their fair share.”

The campaign told Politico this is just the start. They’re hoping to make Trump’s felony conviction top-of-mind heading into the June 27 debate.

But let’s back up for a moment: it apparently took some time for the American people to warm up to this line of attack. Aides initially “downplayed” the significance of the verdict, arguing it could prove “counter productive” by tying Biden to an issue voters don’t care that much about. Additionally, some Democrats “discouraged” Biden from “directly addressing” the verdict, worrying that the attack could open the president up to vulnerabilities over his son’s own criminal conviction. But then internal polls apparently altered the calculations.

While we’ll never know what these polls said, some public polling can help fill in the blanks. Trump was convicted on May 31, and he held a 0.8% lead against Biden in the RealClear polling average. By June 7, that lead had narrowed to just 0.3%.  Now, the spread is once again back to 0.8%. So it doesn’t seem to have moved the needle much.

Just before the verdict, an PBS/NPR/Marist poll showed that the ruling would have no impact on a whopping 67% of voters. This was a good sign that conservative media ran with. But voters do tend to change their position on something once it is no longer abstract. Faced with a tangible guilty verdict, opinion seems to have hardened somewhat.

Politico makes a big deal of the “liability” the outlet’s own poll found from the verdict — particularly with independents. Conducted after the first weekend in June, the poll found that just over 20% of Independents said the verdict mattered to them and made them less likely to vote for Trump. Yet 12% of Independents said the verdict made them more likely to support him, and overall, a 38% plurality of all voters still said the verdict would have no impact on their vote.

This isn’t quite as good as the broad indifference found in the PBS poll, but still, it offers no immediate political danger for Trump. Things either look more decisive in Democrats’ internal polling — or they’re taking a big gamble.

It seems just as likely that the new emphasis will backfire. Independents and moderates may be mildly put off by the verdict. That makes sense; if you don’t pay too close attention to how crazy politics have become, this still seems like a monumental development. But incessant media-Democratic harping will show them how banal it really is. Like every other hysterically-covered issue, the Trump fatigue will set in.

Just look at immigration. Democrats have spent almost a decade comparing Trump’s immigration and border policies to those of Nazi Germany. The result? A majority of Americans now support mass deportations, including 45% of Latinos and 42% of Democrats, according to an Axios/Harris poll.

What about the supposed “threat to democracy?” Democrats have spent the past three years warning that a Trump victory will be the end of democracy as we know it. Meanwhile, Republicans echo little of this message about their objectively more authoritarian opponents. As it turns out, polls show Republican and Democrat voters are about neck-and-neck in their fears over the future of democracy.

So no matter what the internal polls say, don’t put too much stock in the Democrats’ latest attacks. You can always count on Democrats to overplay their hand. Voters have so many real issues to worry about — the economy, inflation, crime, to name but a few. This latest moral outrage will, in all likelihood, fade into the background where it belongs.

But it just goes to show: the Bragg trial was never about justice. It was about hitting Trump where it hurts at the right moment. Too bad for Democrats; after all the practice, they’re still too incompetent to pull off a political hit job.