I don’t normally push people to our podcast. Maybe I should. But if you’re interested in what we think about the crisis at the top of the presidential ticket and, to a lesser degree, the Supreme Court immunity decision, I really recommend listening to this week’s podcast, which we will post soon — probably late this afternoon. There’s a lot going on and there are way more issues we address in the pod than I’ll possibly be able to write about today. So if you have questions about what we think on the numerous questions Democrats are wrestling with at the moment, that’s where to find the answers.

Two thoughts on our current predicament. The first is that while people are seizing on this or that bad poll — and there are some — we now have seven polls in which we have before and after data from individual pollsters, before the debate and after. This is the only real way to judge the public opinion of last week’s debate. Putting all those together you have Biden going down one point and Trump remaining unchanged. This data point is certainly not determinative in itself about what should happen next or anything about the campaign. But from what I can tell it is the best systematic and data-driven look at the impact of this event which has consumed the political world and especially the Democratic Party for a week. The slight shift could in fact quite easily be explained simply by non-response bias. By any measure it is very limited.

From TPM Reader JB …

Per your correspondent WT’s comments posted this morning:  I made a comment on Twitter before the Trump v. US ruling that the Court was taking so long because Republican Justices were looking for a way to protect Trump without empowering future Democratic Presidents.

It was a joke, the kind of sour humor that is the best I can do anymore.  But Roberts’ ruling did exactly what I said the Court’s Republicans were aiming for.

Some things I write are not what I believe, think should happen, etc. They are merely statements of what is happening. Statements today from Nancy Pelosi and Jim Clyburn make me think that Biden may be losing hold of the key stakeholders at the center of the Democratic Party. There’s far too much chaos and noise at the moment to confidently distinguish between signal and noise at the moment. But that is what I see.

Late Update: The comment from Jim Clyburn that I saw didn’t really accurately convey what he said. So this really now goes on a comment from Nancy Pelosi. Again, I think all remains in flux.

In addition to a plainly corrupt and unconstitutional decision, SCOTUS appears to have added rules of evidence fine print which will likely invalidate Trump’s felony conviction. Here’s TPM Reader WT, a TPM alum and now lawyer (and expert commentator on Trump’s various New York litigations) …

Yesterday’s decision handed Trump an even bigger gift that initial headlines have suggested. SCOTUS has effectively federalized the two state prosecutions against him. (Note: As I type this, news is already breaking that Trump’s sentencing in his New York conviction is likely to be delayed.) Reading yesterday’s opinion, I’d be shocked if Trump ever gets sentenced. More likely, his NY conviction will get overturned before it even gets up to appeal. 

From TPM Reader JG …

Saw the front page NYT on the Dems “strong bench” that all took a pass on 2024 to avoid (as I would put it) Carter-Kennedy and “now we are stuck with Biden.”   So let’s pivot to something constructive: let’s have that strong bench out there from now through November supporting a national campaign (and candidacy) based on preserving and extending reproductive freedom, protecting democracy (keeping a power-tripping maniac from the presidency), and celebrating economic stability and even prosperity.  In other words, start the 2028 election cycle now: let Harris, Newsom, Pritzker, Whitmer, Beshear [Klobuchar, Warnock, Shapiro, Cooper?] start campaigning nationally.  It’s not just a President we are selecting but a set of beliefs about America.  Lots of would-be leaders need to be out there making the case.  (I don’t mean to exclude Obama; his role is assumed, but he shouldn’t be the only other voice.

This is so precisely right it’s not even funny.

If the Roberts’ Court is right about the Constitution, it’s hard to imagine what the authors of the Constitution had in mind when they proposed that a President could be guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Yes, that is in a non-criminal context wherein criminal penalties aren’t possible. But they clearly meant this to be inclusive of official acts. Indeed, it almost certainly is primarily about official acts. Yes, you can kind of thread a needle to maybe work your way out of this contradiction. But you don’t need much of an acquaintance with the period in which the Constitution was written to know that the people of the time would have found this decision shocking. The mere words of the impeachment clause itself tell you that.

One of the many things we have going for us at TPM is that we have two really talented reporters covering different aspects of the world of the law and the courts and we have an executive editor who is himself a lawyer, which adds an additional layer of sophistication. I’ll leave the details of the Court’s decision to them. But I can speak broadly to the nature of president power. This decision creates two classes of presidential immunity for official acts, one absolute, the second presumptive. This is much closer to total immunity than many seem to understand. It is precisely the President’s official actions, actions taken with official powers, that we’re most concerned about. We’re not worried that the President will steal a toaster. If a President beats their spouse that is an outrage and he or she should be held accountable to the full extent of the law. But that doesn’t threaten the state itself. It is precisely official acts which matter most with a President and where legal accountability is necessary because the Constitution gives Presidents such vast powers and their conferral is personal and will-based in nature.