I wanted to take a moment to share with you, as well as I’m able, where I think we are with President Biden, the 2024 nomination and the fallout from last week’s debate. Not where I think we should be, but where we are.

My sense is that as of this moment the critical stakeholders in the Democratic Party, elected officials, party officials, prominent voices out of office, funders, opinion columnists, etc. remain behind President Biden on the most tentative and contingent of bases. They are waiting to see how Biden manages in his sit-down interview with George Stephanopoulos which will be taped tomorrow and now, in a change of plans, will actually be aired tomorrow as well. There’s also a couple rallies in swing states over the weekend. Those will tell the story of whether Biden can regain confidence of these people, not only in his health status and wherewithal but also in whether he is able to run the kind of vigorous campaign required for victory.

My own sense, based not on any secret information but just taking stock of all the information out there, is that this is as much a matter of giving Biden the courtesy and respect of trying as it is based on a confidence that he can. It seems critical to note that I don’t think the standard here is any level of performance. It’s in the result. He needs to show up in a way wherein people who had decided or feared that he simply wasn’t able and vigorous enough to continue on the ballot say, “The debate was terrible. I thought he should step aside. But based on what I see from him I think he’s good to go, I think he’s ready to fight this campaign and win.” If they say that and mean that then that’s kind of it. And I think saying that and meaning that means whoever is saying it is confident Biden can shut down this conversation.

Thomas Jefferson played no direct role in authoring the federal Constitution. He wasn’t even in the country at the time. He was living in France as the U.S. Ambassador. Indeed he was at least equivocal about key elements of the document, despite the fact that much of it was the work of his friend and protégé James Madison, who kept him informed about the progress of events by post from the United States. But Jefferson was of course a central figure in the creation of the American Republic and a critical figure in defining executive power under the federal Constitution both as Secretary of State and one of two principal advisors to George Washington and then, later, during his two terms as President. He spoke clearly to the question at the heart of the Court’s immunity decision and very clearly disagreed with the reasoning and any idea that Presidents weren’t subject to the law.

I should start by saying that we don’t have just Jefferson to go on. You can’t read any part of the discussions of the Constitutional Convention, the discussions leading up to it or the debates over it, without seeing that the idea that the President would be immune from the criminal law over his conduct in office would have struck these people as simply absurd. But Jefferson himself came at the question later from a different perspective, not as a theoretical matter but as a retired chief executive who had actually wielded presidential and prerogative power and believed that at least in some cases he had exceeded his powers in the interests of the nation.

Whatever else happens in the coming days with the presidential election, the whole saga will permanently affect my understanding of the culture of The New York Times. It is not the first time that in the midst of a presidential contest the Times has deployed and leveraged all its editorial resources to achieve a desired goal. We saw it in 2016 on a couple occasions. Tonight a TPM Reader suggested I look at the front page, telling me …

Eight out of 8 top articles are about whether Joe Biden should drop out, whether he’s doomed to be defeated by Trump, etc. Five out of 10 op-ed articles are about the same topic; of those, 4 are toeing the Times line, one (by the sole nonwhite author today) says that only Trump benefits from forcing Biden out.

Number of articles about any of the Supreme Court’s decisions this term, including the immunity decision: zero. It was literally a one-day story in the Times.

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.