The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday to grant Donald Trump immunity for past and potentially future presidential acts gave Democrats more urgency to defeat him, just as new polls showed last week’s debate intensified voter concerns that President Biden may not be the man to do it.
The conflicting reports underscored a dilemma the party has been grappling with for months: Evidence that Trump will have unchecked power in a potential second term energizes the Democratic base, but the growing importance of the election makes a decision to stick with Biden seem even riskier.
“He can’t afford to lose,” said Mark Buell, an influential Bay Area Democratic donor and fundraiser. “In any case, you still have to assess the risk of who has a better chance: another candidate or Biden?”
In a brief televised address at the White House on Monday night, Biden said the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity means there are “virtually no limits” on a president’s actions. “This is a fundamentally new principle and it’s a dangerous precedent.”
He said the public had a “right to know” about Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, even though a trial likely won’t take place before the November election.
“I know I will respect the limits of presidential power as I have done for these three and a half years, but any president, including Donald Trump, will now be free to ignore the law,” he said.
Denouncing the 6-3 decision, Biden concluded by saying: “May God preserve our democracy.”
Mark Gonzalez, the recently departed chairman of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party and California state director for Biden’s 2020 campaign, said he spent the weekend calming the nerves of his fellow Democrats. Monday’s ruling only reaffirmed the stakes for people who were concerned about Biden’s suitability for office and his poor political standing, he said. A CBS poll released Sunday showed a growing share of voters — 72% — saying Biden doesn’t have the cognitive ability to serve as president, compared with 49% who say the same about Trump.
“The reality is, whether it’s delegates, activists or five-dollar donors, they’re scared,” Gonzalez said of the people she spoke to this weekend. “They’re scared that we need a stronger person to represent the Democratic Party so we can win in November.”
Gonzalez said Monday “is a good reminder that we need to be prepared and know that the other side is going to do everything they can to defeat us. We cannot afford to lose democracy because of mistakes in this one debate.”
Biden’s campaign scheduled a news conference minutes after Monday’s ruling came out in hopes of diverting attention from Biden’s poor Thursday debate to Trump, whom they characterized as a singular threat to democracy. The ruling that he could not face criminal prosecution for official acts would only embolden him to carry out threats to prosecute his enemies and act like a dictator on his first day in office if he wins a second term, the officials argued.
“This is not a drill,” said Harry Dunn, a police officer who defended the Capitol on January 6 and has become a representative of the Democrats. “Donald Trump is the greatest threat to the United States of America in a generation. We cannot allow him to get anywhere near the Oval Office again.”
Quentin Fulks, senior deputy campaign manager for the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign, highlighted a new Jan. 6-focused ad the campaign released Monday and increased efforts to organize volunteers in battleground states.
But many Democrats have urged the president to appear at more events and give more adversarial interviews to the media to demonstrate his vitality. Fulks, asked during the call whether Biden had plans to increase his public engagement schedule with town hall meetings and other unscheduled encounters, said he had no changes to announce.
A USA Today poll conducted Friday through Sunday found that 54% of registered voters want Biden replaced as the nominee, compared with 37% who want him on the ballot. For Trump, the split was 51% to 46% in favor of removing him from the ballot, despite his record as a convicted felon who remains unwilling to admit he lost the 2020 election.
Trump, 78, had more support within his own party than Biden, 81, did in his own. The best news for Biden is that the question was virtually tied among independent voters: 64% said they wanted Biden replaced and 63% wanted Trump replaced.
Despite growing concerns among his allies, Biden has shown no signs of willingness to step aside, and party rules would make it nearly impossible to remove him from the ticket without his consent. A source familiar with a Biden family summit over the weekend at Camp David confirmed that the president’s family is determined to keep him in the race, calling it a “united front.”
Buell, who has been vocal about the need to evaluate polls in key states in the coming days, believes there is still a chance Biden will agree to drop out if the data suggests it is the best way to defeat Trump.
“Maybe the people around Biden see it that way privately, but publicly, of course, everyone is singing the song that he’s fine,” Buell said. “And I think they have to do that until he says he wants to pull the plug.”
Still, some of the party faithful are undeterred. Susan Reina, an activist in Antelope Valley who oversees voter registration efforts in a competitive congressional district, said it was essential to remind voters that this is a binary choice. The division within the Democratic Party plays into the hands of Republicans who have rallied around Trump, she said.
Monday's court decision gave Trump another political advantage. It all but guaranteed that Trump's trial would be postponed beyond November on charges that he collaborated with political associates to subvert the 2020 election.
For Reina and others, this means that defeating the former president at the polls is even more essential “so that in this country we can have the freedoms that we have today.”
This article included information from the Associated Press. Bierman reported from Washington and Oreskes from Los Angeles.
