Daily Herald opinion: Coming courtroom dramas don't have to be the focus of the 2024 campaign

This editorial is a consensus opinion of the Daily Herald Editorial Board.

So now, the battle lines are drawn in the Donald Trump legal saga, and all that's left - though it is much - is to see how that part of his story plays out in state and federal courtrooms, potentially in front of juries of his peers.

The Georgia indictment, damning as it sounds and consequential in its scope, comes as no surprise. We've been reading and hearing about its details for months. Trump himself made no secret that he expected to be charged.

Even the political fallout has all but settled itself. Those who despise the former president revel in every humiliating headline. Those who love him shake their fists at his persecutors, invoke Hunter Biden's supposed crimes and send him more money. And we in our millions who place ourselves somewhere between those extremes, bow our heads, purse our lips and stare into our newspapers, TVs, radio sets and social media feeds for some sign of a route to a better place.

Many Democrats like to comfort themselves with fantasies that a second Joe Biden term can accomplish some magical return to more familiar and more respectful debates over the direction of government. Republicans who have resigned themselves to a Trump candidacy hold out some hope that maybe this time he'll focus more on policy than grievance. But far more of us share the reservations expressed from both parties in a New York Times story this week headlined "The Biden-Trump Rematch That Nobody Wants."

"Who do you hate? Hey, who hates you? Those are the motivating forces right now," the Times quotes Iowa Republican strategist David Kochel. "It would be better for the country if we had an argument about the future."

Wouldn't it though?

For now, we have naught but to endure the political theater of four high-profile trials of a former president while waiting to see what the legal system has in store for the son of the current one.

With 15 months still standing between us and the 2024 presidential election, it is not inconceivable that that picture could change. Perhaps new candidates will emerge and gain footing. Perhaps the upstart centrist No Labels movement will end up playing some more constructive role than spoiler.

But perhaps also another, slightly more realistic scenario deserves our attention. It is not only a president that we will elect next year. Senators and congressmen will be on federal ballots also. Of course, if the direction of their rhetoric takes the candidates into one or the other of the presidential camps we claim not to want, we will find ourselves no better off than we are today. But if we as voters demand more of them, demand that they bring ideas, vision and leadership beyond scare politics built on fear of the other, we can make a difference regardless of who wins the presidency.

True, even that option may have trouble negating the poisonous presidential politics of the last seven years. But it is something we ought to bring up now and then between acts of the coming courtroom dramas.