‘Almost any Democrat with a pulse better than Biden’, says former George W Bush adviser

We are joined by Professor Sarah Churchwell, a writer and professor of American culture and humanities from the University of London, and from Blue River, Colorado, the broadcaster Mark McKinnon, who advised President George W Bush and Senator John McCain.

Matt Frei: Sarah, the fact that the district attorney of Manhattan has delayed the sentencing that the whole world was waiting for, what does that tell you?

Sarah Churchwell: It tells us exactly what kind of chilling effect this is going to have, and how far reaching the consequences are going to be. How it throws everything up in the air, in an incredibly volatile situation anyway, where everything was to play for. Now, even decisions that have been made can be revisited, unravelled. Everything has to be second guessed. The fundamental thing that the court did yesterday, well, I mean, it did a lot of fundamental things, but one of its shortest term impacts will be that it’s sending everything back to lower courts to re-adjudicate, to re-decide. To decide what’s official, what isn’t official, what’s core, what isn’t core. And so now they’ve decided that with this decision, they also need to reconsider that. Although, under what arguments paying off a pornstar hush money, as that court determined, in order to affect the outcome of the election, how that could be the core or official capacity of an official who wasn’t yet an official, is quite mysterious.

Matt Frei: Mark McKinnon, is Trump getting his way? Is everything that could hurt him being kicked into the very long grass?

Mark McKinnon: Exactly right. After a couple hundred years of fooling around with this project called democracy, it turns out maybe we just wanted to have a king after all. Because that’s what Trump wants. He wants to knock down all the executive barriers to being president and now he has effectively, because of the Supreme Court, he’s getting everything he wants. And, as just noted, all his legal overhang is going to be, at the very least, delayed beyond the election. So he’s got clear field now, and that’s why I’m so concerned about Joe Biden being the nominee of the Democratic Party, because he was behind Trump before the debates, had a disastrous debate and he’s well behind now, and I just think if Joe Biden doesn’t withdraw, he’s going to lose.

Matt Frei: Just on the perils for the Republic, Joe Biden yesterday gave an address in the White House in which he more or less said, this is high danger for America. I mean, is the Republic in danger?

Mark McKinnon: Well, sure it is. I think we saw just how much danger on January 6th. We saw an insurrection that was approved by the president at the time, and a lot of the legal back and forth has been over that event. And now, it’s clear that Donald Trump may never be prosecuted for that insurrection and will have free reign to do that again if he so chooses to. But he may not have to, given the licence that he has now.

Matt Frei: We saw with the Roe v Wade decision, the abortion rights in America, when that was overturned by this Supreme Court, it massively backfired in the midterm elections. Trump’s candidates lost votes, one after another because of that. Could the same thing happen this time?

Sarah Churchwell: It absolutely could, and a lot of people are calling for this in the last 24 hours, saying that without question, the Democrats have to run as a body on this issue. This is about running to reign in the Supreme Court, whether we have to expand the court, whether they can be impeached. None of these solutions can be achieved without real political power. We need congressional majorities, and we need the presidency in order to have any hope of reining in what is indeed a rogue Supreme Court, way out of step with public opinion in the United States.

And something else that I think needs to be said, it’s worth saying that Mark and I are on very different sides of the political aisle normally, but I think we are in very strong agreement on this issue for this reason, which is that, I’ve been reading this described as the conservatives on the bench making this ruling. This is not a conservative ruling. This is a radical ruling. It’s an extremist ruling by any reasonable definition of that.

Matt Frei: Mark, Sonia Sotomayor, one of the liberal justices on the Supreme Court, wrote an incredibly stinging, minority opinion yesterday, which ended with the words, immune, immune, immune. In other words, more or less taking Trump’s word, his own word once, ‘I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.’ That used to be a joke, but not anymore?

Mark McKinnon: Well, he said his voters could do that. Now he’s saying the Supreme Court will let him do that. So that’s the problem. I only disagree, in the sense that, my worry is that the Democrats and Biden have been over and over again using this as an example to say, ‘oh voters, you don’t understand how grave the threat is.’ I think voters do get it. I think they understand, I think they’ve understood for a while, and that’s why Biden isn’t up to the job. Voters have looked at Trump, they recognise the threat, and they looked at Joe Biden in that debate. They tuned in to see if he looked 80 and he looked 90, and now they’re really worried, and I suspect there’s going to be a strong movement in the next couple of weeks to replace him.

Matt Frei: That’s a good point. But Sarah Churchwell, Biden has always been going on about the perils of Trump to democracy. He gave a very eloquent statement last night. He was reading it off an autocue, which is a bit easier than doing it in the debate. Will he now feel emboldened to carry on?

Sarah Churchwell: I don’t think so. I think he’s going to be under even more pressure. I think that pressure is going to escalate. There was a poll that just came out showing that now actually, [Kamala]Harris, for the first time, Harris is starting to surpass Biden in a head to head against Trump. We haven’t seen that before. Kamala has been trailing in hypothetical polls, but she’s starting to take the lead.

Matt Frei: But do you think he will bow to that pressure?

Sarah Churchwell: I think if the pressure is great enough, he will.

Matt Frei: What does that mean, ‘great enough?’

Sarah Churchwell: It’s going to mean governors coming together. It’s going to mean Senate leaders coming together. It’s going to mean the Democrat machinery coming together and saying, you have to stand down. Will that happen? I don’t know.

Matt Frei: What about the Biden family coming together, Mark? Joe Biden’s family is encouraging him to carry on and on and on?

Sarah Churchwell: But things have just changed massively.

Mark McKinnon: So I’ll just note that there’s a significant development just in the last half hour. Lloyd Doggett, who is a long time progressive Democratic member of Congress, came out. He’s the first member to call for Biden to step down. He said, I represent the district of Lyndon Johnson, and I know how hard that decision was for Johnson, and I know it’s hard for Biden, but he needs to do it. And that’s a big deal. I think the dam is starting to break.

Matt Frei: If he is going to be replaced, who do you think, Mark, will replace Joe Biden?

Mark McKinnon: I think almost anybody with a pulse on the Democratic Party will be better. Nobody was excited about Joe Biden. 72% of the country, including Democrats didn’t think he was healthy enough to be running. I know people have concerns about Harris, but I think Harris will be, as just noted, stronger than Biden. And she’ll have a vice president if she’s at the top of the ticket then. It could be any number of people, but as I said, I think it’ll create a sense of enthusiasm, excitement. Yes, it’s going to be chaotic, but at least people will be excited again.

Matt Frei: In just one word, will you bet your hat on Biden not being on the ticket?

Mark McKinnon: I don’t think he’s going to be on the ticket. I don’t think he can be. Or the Democrats lose.

Matt Frei: Sarah what do you think?

Sarah Churchwell: I think my opinion on this has shifted dramatically in the last 24 hours, and I think that’s going to be true for a lot of people as well. As you say, the situation is going to be chaotic no matter what happens, and I think he is going to have to pull out, actually, and I have been really, really struggling with this one.

Matt Frei: Trying to get into his mind?

Sarah Churchwell: I’ve just been really struggling with this one, because I think that there’s also a lot of reasons for not replacing him, but I do think that we’re going to end up with Harris and somebody like a [California Governor Gavin] Newsom or a [Michigan Governor Gretchen] Whitmer. I think that is what we are probably looking at.