So now what? Much much will this alter the presidential race?

We know Joe Biden will attack this non-stop. Will it work?

The polling suggest that about half the public doesn't care if Trump was convicted or acquitted in New York. The rest are approximately split on whether it makes them more or less likely to vote for him. Some of the other cases might have mattered more, but this was about Stormy Daniels, NDA, Campaign contributions and ultimately about the 2016 election.

So will it hurt Trump now that a guilty verdict was actually brought? Probably not as much as it would have helped him if he got an honest judge and had the case tossed as it should have been. This really was a win/draw for Trump, more than a win/lose situation. Now we will be playing the waiting game to see how Merchan sentences Trump and how fast the Trump team can get an appeal heard. It would be inconceivable that a judge would jail Trump for this, but given the way this has been handled, I could see him giving the old college try.

At the end of the day, this was about rehashing the federal campaign contribution case surrounding the NDA for Stormy Daniels that some in the Southern District of New York demanded should be brought. However, the FEC investigated without finding a crime or even finding a reporting violation to fine the campaign. They provided the reasonable legal explanation as to why and then two people from SDNY childishly quit over it.

Obviously Alvin Bragg was one of these people from the SDNY who was chopped down by the FEC. He dishonestly brought the case back to life by charging Trump with falsification of the business records associated with the NDA of Stormy Daniels. To move this past the statute of limitation at he stated was intended to hide another crime. He failed to offer the campaign violation as the second crime in the indictment knowing that the FEC would likely come after him and in fact he failed to provide a second crime at all. He hid the intentions prior to the the trial and even most of the way through the trial. The opening statement suggested that they were prosecuting a stolen election charge with only marginal talk of a possible campaign violation.

It was only in the closing arguments (when there was no more chance for the defense to defend from it) that they demanded that the crime being covered up was indeed the campaign finance charge. They stated this over two dozen times during their six hour closing. Judge allowing it all the way. The judge followed suit, providing instructions that the campaign contribution issue was a potential crime (which is to be assumed by the jury as a matter of fact). He provided his version of how the federal statute worked, which was entirely different from how the FEC suggested it worked. Again, his version of the Federal Law was to be assumed to be fact by the jury in spite of no jurisdiction over that crime.