Scoop: Schumer's pre-debate fears come true
 
Before Thursday night's debate, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) had signaled to political allies that he was open to options other than President Biden if his debate performance was disastrous, Axios has learned.
 
Why it matters: Schumer was clearly bracing for the possibility that his party's presumptive nominee — whom he served with for two decades in the Senate — could have a bad night. Biden did.
 
Schumer wasn't hatching a secret plan to swap out Biden for a player to be named later, but he liked the idea of any early debate for a couple of reasons, two people familiar with the matter told Axios.
It would give Biden time to recover from a potentially poor showing.
It would also give the Democratic Party more time to consider the best way forward.
 
Driving the news: Democrats' worst nightmares about Biden's age, mental stamina, and verbal dexterity became a primetime reality Thursday.
 
While columnists and pundits are loudly sounding the alarm about Biden's ability to defeat Trump, elected Democrats aren't publicly turning on Biden.
But if conversations about possibly ditching Biden in the coming weeks are to be taken seriously, they would need to come from some of the party's most senior leaders, like Schumer
 
He's still in Biden's corner.
 
(...)
 
As Democrats' leader in the Senate, Schumer is attuned to the down-ballot implication of a strong, or weak, presidential candidate atop the ticket.
 
One of his party's best tacticians, Schumer has worked closely with Biden on passing legislation to protect vulnerable members — but his loyalties are to his party and his senators.
 
This November, Schumer's Democrats likely will need a strong performance from the top of the ballot for their Senate candidates to sweep races in swing states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada the party probably needs to retain control of the chamber.
 
So far, Schumer's Democratic candidates are running ahead of Biden's pace in almost every swing state.

Nervous donors await polls before making a call on Biden
 
Some top Democratic donors are waiting on the first batch of polls from major media organizations before deciding whether to press for President Biden's removal as the party's presidential nominee, Axios has learned.
 
Why it matters: For now, fundraisers are holding their fire. But their anxiety is quietly raging after Biden's bad showing in his debate against former President Trump.
 
That makes the next two weeks as crucial to Biden's survival as the initial 24 hours after the debate, when Biden trotted out supportive statements from former Presidents Obama and Clinton, and held an energetic rally in North Carolina.
What we're hearing: In private, donors frantically are texting each other, eager for any information on just how disastrous the night was. But so far they aren't calling for the party to ditch Biden.
 
That could change if the next round of highly regarded polls look as dismal as his debate performance, several donors told Axios.
"You can't go into an election 10 points down in early July," said one top donor. "You just can't."
 
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Initial polling — including a survey from Morning Consult that said 60% of voters think Biden should should "definitely" or "probably" be replaced — still has the race essentially unchanged, with Biden and Trump essentially tied.
 
"The most consequential question that we asked voters, who are you going to vote for — between Joe Biden and Donald Trump — that is where you continue to see voters saying they are supporting the president," Molly Murphy, one of Biden's pollsters, said on MSNBC.
Donors likely will want several weeks of polling data before accepting the Biden campaign's line that the president can recover, but they're bracing for some bad numbers.
 
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Democrats Aren’t Calling for Biden to Quit—Yet
 
Congressional Democrats aren’t ready to demand that President Joe Biden quit his bid for reelection after a debate performance that was almost universally panned. But for the first time, some of them are taking the possibility seriously.
 
“The debate was a serious setback,” Senator Peter Welch of Vermont told me by phone yesterday. “It’s up to President Biden and his campaign to demonstrate that they do, in fact, have the energy for another four years.”
 
Representative Jared Huffman of California, a Democrat serving his sixth House term, told me that Thursday’s matchup between Biden and Donald Trump was “probably the worst debate I’ve ever seen.” When we spoke by phone yesterday, I asked Huffman if Biden should stay in the race. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I think a lot of us are trying to let this sink in and do some processing.”
 
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Neither Welch nor Huffman are known as Biden critics. And their doubts about his viability as a candidate were echoed by other senior Democrats who are usually stalwart allies of Biden. “The president had a really bad night,” Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire told a local radio station. “There will be assessments going forward of what happens next.”
 
Representative Ro Khanna of California, a frequent Biden surrogate, urged the president and his advisers to make “a clear assessment” on the damage he did to his candidacy and how to fix it. “They need to recognize that they had a bad night and not try to spin that,” Khanna told me yesterday, “and then figure out a way to move forward in a winning campaign.”
 
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Although congressional Democrats lambasted Biden’s debate performance, they remained reluctant to join the many pundits and columnists encouraging him to withdraw from the race. A major reason is that it’s not clear whether any other Democrat could do better. Vice President Kamala Harris fares even worse than Biden against Trump in head-to-head polling, and the slew of Democratic governors frequently mentioned as alternatives—Gavin Newsom of California, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, J. B. Pritzker of Illinois—are largely unknown outside their home states. “Absent Michelle Obama,” Khanna said, “there's no one else who really comes to mind who would just be able to step in and within four months have a clear ability to inspire the country.”
 
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The only way President Biden steps aside, despite his debate debacle, is if the same small group of lifelong loyalists who enabled his run suddenly — and shockingly — decides it's time for him to call it quits.
Why it matters: Dr. Jill Biden; his younger sister, Valerie Biden; and 85-year-old Ted Kaufman, the president's longtime friend and constant adviser — plus a small band of White House advisers — are the only Biden deciders.
 
This decades-long kitchen cabinet operates as an extended family, council of elders and governing oligarchy. These allies alone hold sway over decisions big and small in Biden's life and presidency.
 
The president engaged in no organized process outside his family in deciding to run for a second term, the N.Y. Times' Peter Baker reports.
Then Biden alone made the decision, people close to him tell us.
Behind the scenes: If Biden stays in, it's for the same reason he decided to run again: He and the oligarchy believe he has a much better chance of beating former President Trump than Vice President Harris does.

Biden’s family privately criticizes top advisers and pushes for their ouster at Camp David meeting
 
Members of Joe Biden’s family privately trashed his top campaign advisers at Camp David this weekend, blaming them for the president’s flop in Thursday’s debate and urging Biden to fire or demote people in his political high command.
 
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Among the family’s complaints about the debate practice: that Biden was not prepared to pivot more to go on the attack; that he was bogged down too much on defending his record rather than outlining a vision for a second term; and that he was over-worked and not well-rested.

The blame was cast widely on staffers, including: Anita Dunn, the senior adviser who frequently has the president’s ear; her husband, Bob Bauer, the president’s attorney who played Trump in rehearsals at Camp David; and Ron Klain, the former chief of staff who ran point on the debate prep and previous cycles’ sessions.
 
(...)
 
Biden allies and staffers have sought to blame a variety of factors in the aftermath of Biden’s dismal debate performance, including that the president was ill, was over-prepared and that the CNN moderators failed to fact-check former President Donald Trump. But as the crisis continued into a third day, the finger-pointing has turned inward toward some of Biden’s closest advisers.
 
The focus on the staff, however, also allowed the family to overlook Biden’s own failings in Atlanta, one of the people familiar noted.
 
These people said the Biden family wanted the president to continue in the campaign rather than end his career with a calamitous debate performance against Trump, whom they all loathe. First lady Jill Biden and his son Hunter Biden were the loudest voices urging the president to stay in the 2024 contest.
 
(...)
 
Additionally, Biden’s campaign staff only grew angrier at CNN as to how the debate was run, according to several people familiar with the conversations. Their complaints were lengthy, including that the moderators should have fact-checked Trump more often, that Biden was not told which camera he’d be on when not speaking and that the makeup staff made him appear too pale, according to the three people. Biden did, however, agree to the terms of the debate before it was held.
 
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Biden’s debate performance is likely to make the age issue an even bigger hurdle in the coming months. A CBS News/YouGov poll published Sunday showed that 72 percent of registered voters do not believe Biden has the mental and cognitive health to serve as president, up from 65 percent earlier this month. His party is split on whether he should run for president, with 46 percent of registered Democratic voters saying he should not compared to 54 percent who say he should.
 
Biden often consults his family on big decisions, and people close to him say that the only way he would come to the conclusion to drop out of the race would be if the first lady and members of his family encouraged him to do so.
 
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The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law. But under our system of separated powers, the President may not be prosecuted for exercising
his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts.

The Supreme Court has ruled 6 to 3 that former presidents have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts in office.
 

This case is the first criminal prosecution in our Nation’s history of a former President for actions taken during his Presidency.  Determining whether and under what circumstances such a prosecution may proceed requires careful assessment of the scope of Presidential power under the Constitution.  The nature of that power requires that a former President have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office.  At least with respect to the President’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute.  As for his remaining official actions, he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity.

It means that there’s likely going to be months — or years — of litigation aimed at figuring out what Trump can be prosecuted for and what he can’t.  
 
Trump lawyers will presumably challenge everything and we’ll end up back at SCOTUS.
 
It’s a delay tactic.