As evidence mounts that Donald Trump raped E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room, so his lead mounts in the race for the 2024 Republican nomination for president.

The jury has not yet issued a verdict in the New York courtroom where Carroll, a journalist and long-time columnist for Elle Magazine, is suing Trump for sexual assault. Still, witnesses under oath supported her claims in a New York courtroom this week.

In CBS polling done after the trial had begun, Trump climbed to a 36-point lead over runner-up Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. That's up from a 13% average advantage in mid-January polls.

There are two logical reasons why Trump could be widening his lead in the nomination contest despite the trial and despite another case where Trump has been indicted for paying hush money to cover up a sexual encounter. First, because any negatives surrounding the accusations don't count much in the opinion of potential supporters compared to Trump's appeal over DeSantis and other candidates. Second, because the accusations do count, but to actually increase Trump's appeal.

Under the first scenario, many GOP voters believe that anything Trump might do or say, whether legal or illegal, matters far less than the essence of what he stands for. They see him as their champion in a fight against an undeserving "other" that includes immigrants, coastal elites, liberals, Muslims, people of color, the Washington establishment, corrupt vote counters and feminist women. Why settle for any pale imitation?

Or could it be that the charges directed at Trump actually add to his brand and allure? Are MAGA voters flocking to him over DeSantis and others because of his swagger and machismo? Do they get vicarious satisfaction from Trump's upsetting norms set by the elite? After all, Trump won the 2016 election after he was broadcast boasting that he "could do anything" including grab the genitals of desirable women. This persona would logically appeal more to men than women. A fact supporting this reasoning is that Trump carried the male vote in 2020 and lost the women's vote to President Joe Biden by 13%.

Why choose between the two hypotheses? Let's just say Trump is climbing in the polls because he's a more compelling champion than other GOP candidates and because of the appeal of his persona to supporters' wish fulfillment.

Back in 1979, Suzannah Lessard wrote an article disclosing Sen. Edward Kennedy's proclivity for sexual trysts — behavior that was problematic but not illegal. So controversial was the piece that the New Republic refused to run it, but the Washington Monthly did. The author believed the people's need to know outweighed any privacy interest of a presidential candidate when it came to sex: "the character of a president has enormous significance because of his great personal power and the sensitive ways in which he can use it." Lessard argued that in Kennedy's case, journalists should lay out what they know, so voters can decide what to do about it at the ballot box. She herself was bothered because "this type of behavior ... suggests an old-fashioned, male chauvinist, exploitative view of women as primarily objects of pleasure."

About Kennedy, she concluded, "The fact that (his affairs have) been overlooked must be a sign of how much we want to believe in him." Sound familiar?

But Lessard said let the voters decide, and they did. They did not support Kennedy over incumbent president Jimmy Carter in the 1980 primaries. Rather than face the voters, the married Sen. Gary Hart dropped out of the 1988 presidential race when he was caught having an affair with Donna Rice, and the married New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned when he was caught visiting prostitutes in 2008.

On the other hand, during his 2016 campaign, Trump declared, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" There's no evidence that he's committed murder, but a civil jury in 2023 could well decide he committed rape and even so won't lose — and might gain — voters in the upcoming Republican primaries.

Lessard wrote her controversial article four decades ago, so voters could decide what Kennedy's sexual behavior said about him. We already know what Trump's sexual conduct says about him. The question is what does the reaction of us American voters say about ourselves?

In Keith Raffel's checkered past, he has served as the senior counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, started an award-winning internet software company and written five novels, which you can check out at keithraffel.com. He currently spends the academic year as a resident scholar at Harvard. To find out more about Keith and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at creators.com.

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