In presidential politics, momentum swings fast.
Just ask Donald Trump.
In less than a week, Trump’s legal woes have been significantly minimized for now by the courts, his once daunting campaign cash deficit has all but disappeared, and a disastrous debate performance from President Joe Biden not only has Trump widening his lead in some public polling, but has Biden at odds with many in his own party who believe the 81-year-old president is not up to the task of running again.
“Big Mo is clearly on Trump’s side,” said South Carolina GOP Chairman Drew McKissick, using a slang term for “momentum,” which he believes the Republican has gathered over the past week. “From the national polls to most of the battleground state polls, and he is setting fundraising records, it has been a great several weeks.”
The politics of the 2024 race can perhaps now be seen as a split screen, with everything before last week’s Atlanta debate on one side and everything after on the other.
In late May, Trump had become the first former president to become a convicted felon and for much of the year was trailing Biden and Democrats in fundraising. Plus even after the conviction, there was the prospect of future legal woes dogging his campaign for the duration of the 2024 election cycle.
That started to turn around when he rode his conviction to big fundraising gains and then saw his opponent deliver a disastrous debate performance.
The latest bump for Trump came this week when the U.S. Supreme Court handed Trump a win, saying core presidential functions are immune from prosecution, a decision that could hobble the prosecutions he still faces. As a result of that ruling, on Tuesday the judge in his New York hush money case delayed sentencing after the jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to a porn star ahead of the 2016 election.
His sentencing was originally scheduled for next week, but now won’t be held until at least September — a delay that helps Trump avoid having the severity of his crime cemented in voters’ minds by having a sentence handed down. And it extends Biden’s bad news cycle as Trump heads into the Republican National Convention in less than two weeks.
The Biden campaign and high-level surrogates have acknowledged Biden’s debate performance was not good, but in a series of phone calls have tried to assuage the fears of supporters and donors that it was a one-off bad performance. Not only is Biden up to the task of beating Trump, they argue, but he is the only one who can in an election cycle centered on Trump being an existential threat to democracy.
“The state and the stakes of the race remain the same,” said James Singer, a Biden campaign spokesperson. “America has a choice between a Donald Trump: 34-time felon who is only out for himself, wants to destroy our democracy, rip away our rights and make himself a dictator with the immunity for the Supreme Court. And Joe Biden: a president fighting for our families, defending our democracy, fighting for our rights, and and is delivering actual results for the American people.”
But still, on Tuesday Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, became the first Democrat in Congress to call on Biden to withdraw from the 2024 race, and Democratic governors have huddled to discuss the party’s path forward. Biden is holding a video call with some governors on Wednesday to address growing concerns.
A slew of post-debate public polling offers a bit of a political Rorschach test.
To make their case that the past week has not altered the fundamentals of the race, Biden supporters point to surveys like a CNN poll that found just 5% of registered voters said the debate changed their mind, a separate 538 poll that found “the debate didn’t change many voters minds about either candidate,” and Reuters polling that found the race tied at 40-40. (NBC News has not independently vetted these polls.)
Conversely, nearly every post-debate poll found that Trump outperformed Biden, and others show Biden’s debate stage gaffes reinforced the perception he is too old to be commander and chief, and that Vice President Kamala Harris is now polling better than Biden against Trump.
Republicans are also hoping that now at least one state not recently considered in play is winable by Trump — New Hampshire.
“I now firmly believe Donald Trump will win New Hampshire,” said Republican Party of New Hampshire Chairman Chris Ager. “Up until last week, I was optimistic, but thought it was going to be a very tough road.”
New Hampshire is the perfect snapshot of just how the past five days have swung momentum in Trump’s favor.
No Republican has won the state since George H.W. Bush’s in 2000, and Biden won the Granite State by more than 7-points. But polling that came out in the wake of the debate has Biden up just 2-points in the state, although such polling immediately after a major event can sometimes fail to fully take into the fallout of the event.
“After the debate, Republicans who might not have been with Trump here are now with Trump and saying ‘no possible way it could be Biden,’” Ager said. “It solidified his base here.”
Some Biden supporters do see the past week as potentially a near-term drag on the president’s campaign, but that in the long term will serve to intensify his political base and get them to the polls.
“Here is why I think it has been good for Joe Biden,” said John Morgan, a Florida-based attorney and major Democratic donor. “Now they have all had the rug pulled out from under them. He [Trump] might never go to jail. Some are furious about that. You know what they are going to do? Vote.”
Morgan, who is in the process of planning a Biden fundraiser at his Florida home, said that the hush money trial matters little because it was “bull—- from beginning,” but says things like the U.S. Supreme Court’s immunity ruling on Monday can spur intensity.
“I believe the anger and frustration will spill over. People are going to ask ‘Why does he get to be king? Why is he above the law?’” Morgan said. “That anger will manifest itself into a sense of retribution and help tip the scales for Biden.”
The immunity ruling was just the latest political win for Trump in recent days, but has sparked grave concerns from Democrats and Republicans who do not support Trump that it could ultimately hand him near unchecked power in a second term and means a fundamental change to what the rule of law has long meant.
“No one, no one is above the law, not even the president of the United States,” Biden said Monday night in a White House press conference to address the immunity ruling.
That ruling, however, served to spark more legal wins for the former president. Without the immunity ruling in his favor, Trump’s attorneys would not have asked for a delay in sentencing in his New York hush money trail.
The delay of Trump’s sentencing could now serve to remind voters of the trial much closer to Election Day. But after the judge granted that delay, Trump predictably took a huge victory lap.
“TOTAL EXONERATION!,” Trump posted on Truth Social Tuesday afternoon, exaggerating the legal impact of the ruling and sentencing delays. “It is clear that the Supreme Court’s Brilliantly Written and Historic Decision Ends all of Crooked Joe Biden’s With Hunts against me, including the WHITE HOUSE AND DOJ INSPIRED CIVIL HOAXES in New York.”
